Wegmans is open
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Jeff Mankie/For the News & Messenger
Lottie Eubank of Lorton browses through some of the packaged sausages in the meat department at the early morning grand opening of the new Wegmans in Woodbridge on Sunday.
It was quite the event.
The line started at 4:50 a.m. for the 7 a.m. opening of the new Wegmans supermarket in Woodbridge on Sunday.
By 7 a.m., 1,000 people stood in a line that wrapped around the 140,000-square-foot building all the way back to the loading dock and the parking lot was full.
By 8 a.m. cars continued to circle the parking lot looking for an open slot while others streamed in from Neabsco Mills Road.
Prince William County residents had long begged and pleaded for high-end retail. The arrival of upscale New York grocer Wegmans signaled the beginning of a change and resident
responded by coming out for the opening.
Jerry Trenkelbach of Woodbridge was standing outside the Wegmans front doors long before sunrise on Sunday. His wife Kate soon joined him.
"He wanted to be first in line," Kate Trenkelbach said. He succeeded.
Friends Evelyn Lester, Kathy Gibson, both of Woodbridge, along with Mary Greenway of Fairfax County, arrived at 5:02 a.m. and queued in behind them.
"We're here just for the fun of it," Lester said. "I used to hate grocery shopping. Wegmans is an experience. It's not just a grocery store."
The women had shopped in the other two Wegmans stores in Sterling and Fairfax County.
"It's a cooks dream to have everything in one place that you need and want," Greenway said.
Former Prince William County Supervisor Hilda Barg of Woodbridge also was on hand for the opening. She had driven back eight hours from vacationing in Myrtle Beach, S.C., to make the event.
"I wanted to show my appreciation to the Wegmans family for coming to our community and being a community partner," Barg said.
Wegmans recently donated a tractor-trailer filled with 16,839 items of non-perishable food, including canned soup, vegetables, cereal, fruit, baking mixes, crackers, condiments and pasta to the Action in Community Through Service food pantry.
"I believe this [store] will help us rehabilitate eastern Prince William County," Barg said. "It's the first step that we are coming back."
Wegmans employees gathered in a semicircle around the front entrance at 7 a.m. A pep rally atmosphere wa
created as they spelled out Wegmans in a cheer with plenty of clapping and shouting before the first customers were let in.
After touring the store, Gibson said she was not disappointed. "It's fabulous and I will be back."
Wegmans is located at the Potomac Town Center off the new stretch of
Neabsco Mills Road between Optiz and Dale boulevards. Wegmans Food Markets Inc. is a 71-store supermarket chain with stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and Maryland.
Staff writer Aileen Streng can be reached at 703-878-8010.
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Reader Reactions
phdee, it sounds like you haven’t visited the store yet and really compared prices.
I agree, the grocery industry works on razor thin margins (I worked in the industry for 4 years), and yes, wegmans does pay employees more than other stores and does have huge stores. One thing you may not realize is that Wegmans has been a privately owned business since it opened and as such it’s owners can focus on doing what they do best and not answer to stockholders. Wegmans has also been slowly growing more stores, so it’s profit at the end of the day may not be as high as others. If you look at the volume of sales wegmans does compared to any other chain in the region, you’d see massive differences. In the Dulles’s store first 10 months of being open, it did more business than all of the region’s Harris Teeter stores COMBINED for 12 months. And that was with just one Wegmans store in VA! The key to making good money in the grocery business is to sell in volumes where you can, negotiate great prices with local vendors (something they have done all the time), have a loyal customer base, and make the high margins in botique items, such as their pastries, cakes, prepared foods, etc.
I’ve been shopping at wegmans in VA since day one the Dulles store opened, and then moved to the fairfax store when that opened, and now will to woodbridge. For my family, I’ve done the comparison shopping and everytime I save more by only shopping at wegmans.
I know you said they cherry picked their comparison items in their flyer, but I found more items not listed that no one seems to beat, such as every day low prices on Ore Ida French Fries and Heinz Ketchup.
Upscale, you say. Gigantic stores, Well paid enployees. Let’s look at the grocery business - which has a profit margin of a couple of cents at best. How can Wegmans be all this stuff and be cheaper than others? It can’t. Unless it was to be a losing business. The Wegman’s flyer had few if any merchandise cheaper than other stores. What Wegmans did, was like Shoppers food, pick the cherries, i.e don’t put on sale what Giant & Safeway have on sale that week, and find items where there is a price spread. It’s an old game. Why pay double price for Wegman’s store brand of veggies, for instance, when you can get them for half the price at Bottom Dollar, Aldies, and sometimes Bloom. Maybe we have can have a grocery price war in Woodbridge. For fully stocked groceries, Giand and Bloom are today the cheapest - forget Teeters and Shoppers. My family shops at all the stores - we buy the sale items usually. SZure, everyone’s bill or diet is different, so it’s hard to say my bill is less than yours, but I do follow prices.
Posted by ( John B ) on June 09, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Hilda drove 8 hours up the road to just to show support for Wegmans, talking about “Rehabilitating” Eastern PWC. Where was she during the 20 year period that it actually became a near ghetto? Oh yeah, she was in charge of the Route 1 corridor. Hilda sure didn’t care then.
The facts are that the BOCS in the late 70’s rezoned the Elrod tract at the NE corner of Dale Blvd and I-95 where the golf driving range was later located for a Regional SC. At that time Ted Lerner of Tyson’s and White Flint SC fame had a joint venture with Hylton to build a Reginal SC. Lerner told the BOCS if you zone an additional parcel for a Regional SC you will get nothing. They did not listen and that was way before Barg’s time. What Eastern PWC got was a K Mart instead. Teh Four Horsemen and the current BOCS have about the same level of intelegence. ZERO
Posted by ( LRMan ) on June 09, 2008 at 11:47 am
Most of the signs outside of the new Wegmans are written in Spanish. Does this indicate Wegman’s target clientele? Does Wegman’s believe that Spanish speakers are uniquely challenged to learn English and thus necessitate signs in Spanish? Why the emphasis on signs in Spanish?
I guess they are following the path laid out by the PWC Government who has on Ch 23 Spanish messages as well as so many different things published by the county in Spanish
I haven’t been able to buy fresh seafood in the Woodbridge/Lake Ridge area since the 80’s. I sincerely hope the addition of a Wegman’s will alleviate this issue. Can’t be any worse I suppose.
If you own in the area (as I do) and dislike the idea of Wegmans (for whatever reason), you may be doing so against your own interest.
Wegmans is poised to drive other higher-end businesses into the area. This down the road will also help the development of the Featherstone and Neabsco Mills strip malls (which are practically abandoned anyways) to become more successful.
This store will eventually spread assistance to the Northern end of Woodbridge (near the bridge) as well.
Developers are able to buy the property (strip malls) more cheaply now and that provides an incentive for further development. Once the market kicks back up, this will probably happen much sooner rather than later.
Let’s face it, Potomac Mills malls, the chain restaurants and the rest of businesses in the area are about 15 years out of date - also, Wegmans is cheaper and or price competitive on a ton of items, compared to the recently closed Giant and the Safeway most people are currently forced to shop at, due to the lack of options.
As a resident, I am sick and tired of the same old options - do i stand in line at Macaroni Grill for an hour for their lackluster, overpriced food? Or do I go over to another chain restaurant for a similar experience?
Besides providing an uptick in business and property values, Wegmans is a highly rated employer and has created good jobs for many Woodbridge residents - I don’t know a single person that actually works and lives in Woodbridge right now.
Hilda drove 8 hours up the road to just to show support for Wegmans, talking about “Rehabilitating” Eastern PWC. Where was she during the 20 year period that it actually became a near ghetto? Oh yeah, she was in charge of the Route 1 corridor. Hilda sure didn’t care then.
phdee:
Wegmans is much cheaper than Giant, Harris Teeter and even Shopper’s Food Warehouse. Go to Wegmans.com and look at the weekly ad. They have a list of commonly bought products that show the difference in price.
MOre often than not, I can still get a gallon of milk for below $3 at Wegmnans in Fairfax. I hope the same holds true in Woodbridge. I have also found the Wegmans store brands to be better than name brand on a lot of stuff. Give it a chance.
While I’ll admit that Wegman’s are interesting stores and they are gigantic, they still don’t have the same high standards for products like Whole Foods does. Whole Foods also offers fresher and better produce, meat, and seafood than Wegman’s - and with better customer service, from my experiences.
Wegmans may be considered an upscale grocery store, but the bulk of its prices (especially for produce, dairy, and grocery) are much lower than Giant, Safeway, Harris Teeter, and Shoppers Food Warehouse, let alone Whole Foods.
The meats are more expensive at Wegmans than Shoppers (overall), but the quality can’t be matched by them.
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