They do have rc provisions pastrami.
It’s chain-wide, sadly. I went to college in Rochester NY in the late 90s-early 2000s, Wegmans’ birthplace and hey-day - and it truly WAS paradise back then. Insanely great cheese selection, the best Mediterranean bar around, excellent meats and seafood, huge selection of national brands, really great prepared food bar and bakery. I really, REALLY missed it when I moved to NYC, even with places like Fairway and Zabars at my fingertips.
I was thrilled to hear about their expansion into the NJ/NY metro area but then equally dismayed when I first visited one of the NJ locations back in the early 2010s. Drastic cuts to the cheese/meat/seafood departments and Mediterranean bar, prepared foods now pre-packed and selection diminished, and national brands replaced with their (generally inferior) house brands. And it has only gotten worse since then. They opened a location relatively near us in Westchester in 2020 and we’ve only gone a couple of times - not worth the 15 mile trip when we have Stew Leonard’s, Costco, Hmart, Whole Foods, Shoprite, Foodtown and a host of others within a 5 mile radius, not to mention Amazon Fresh (which offers surprisingly great prices on a lot of pantry staples) and any number of independent bakeries and specialty stores.
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Interesting. I just saw a blog post made by a woman who went to 17 grocery stores with the same grocery list and recorded the total price and the percentage of items on her list that each grocery store had in stock. Wegman’s did pretty well on price, surprisingly.
I went to my first Wegman’s in Northern Virginia around 12 years ago (?) and both myself and GF were amazed at the selection and the freebies. She is a very discerning shopper and she really liked it.
But here is the link to the shopping blog:
Fun read. And I’m not surprised Wegmans did well on price - they’ve always been more reasonable than their higher-end appearance would indicate. I am surprised at her assertion that they have every brand imaginable on the shelves, though, because that has not been my experience in a very long time.
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Aw, that’s a shame. Maybe handing out several samples of shrimp salad to X custies a day wasn’t lucrative anymore. I also remember they had a big fat truffle sit out in the shroom section. Didn’t take long until that was behind glass.
My PIC’s from upstate, but we never made it to the OG flagship store.
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I remember seeing a truffle once, right when it opened. Produce is still good, but the selection isn’t at all what it used to be.
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I loved that bit of showmanship. The Pittsford flagship store was truly something to behold. On a related note, did you know they’re branching out into restaurants? We recently had dinner with some friends at their new high-end Japanese restaurant, Next Door, located inside of their Astor Place location in NYC - it was a nice meal but nothing I’d be in a hurry to repeat - the menu was a bit confusing/not fully thought-out and the service was WAY too eager. They opened one in the Pittsford store as well, but apparently had to move it across the street because the ambiance wasn’t working for their audience (or so I’m told). They also have an Italian place called Amore in one of their stores closer to downtown Rochester.
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I did not know that. Until we had a good sushi place in town that gets their fish from NYC twice a week, Wegmans sushi was about the best in town.
I can’t bring myself to get it anymore as I’d rather hold off until we treat ourselves to the good place, but it used to be an easy lunch for us.
