On this Valentine week let me share with you my love for the company in my life who brings me all sorts of unexpected happiness. Oh Wegmans. How I love thee. Let me count the ways:
1. WKids Fun Center. A 2-hour free babysitting service that allows mom or dad to go shopping without a reluctant child (ages 3 and over) in tow. Enough said.
2. Drive up service. Weather bad? Have your hands full with kids?Just don’t feel like schlepping all your groceries out to your car? Ask for drive up service and you can take your car to the drive-up service lane where your cart full of groceries will magically be transported into your trunk without you having to leave your vehicle.
3. Cooking classes and beer demonstrations. I wrote about one here before. They’re fun. We learn a lot. We get full on lots of yummy food and slightly high on the interesting beers to try. The classes, which last an hour, are usually only $10 with a Wegmans card, making it a fantastic deal.
4. Wegmans magazine. It is a happy day when we get our Wegmans magazine in the mail. I stash them next to my cookbooks and have quite a collection with dog-eared and stained pages.
5. Prices. Wegmans feels like an upscale grocery store, but that doesn’t translate to the prices. An example: A club pack of chicken breasts (10 breasts to a package) are priced at $1.99 a pound, which is significantly less than the price I found at Sam’s Club recently.
6. Chicken packaging. Speaking of chicken, I love the new packaging Wegmans uses for the club pack of chicken. Each breast is individually vacuum sealed so all you have to do is cut off the number of breasts you want to use. So nice not to have spend time repackaging yucky raw chicken when I get home.
7. Local food selection. I love when summer hits and Weggy’s produce area is crowded with choices from local farmers. It’s nice to be able to buy local without changing my routine.
8. They’re nice to their employees. Wegmans has been on the Fortune magazine list of best places to work 16 years in a row. Employees’ helpfulness, friendliness, expertise — not to mention their attention to customer satisfaction — show its place on the list is deserved. Case in point: I bought a brie and warmed it at home. It melted everywhere. Next time I went to Wegmans I talked to one of the women in the cheese section about it. She explained what I did wrong. Then she gave me a brie FOR FREE to take home. She told me not to be discouraged, just to try again.
9. The entrees. Wegmans has a whole selection of ready-order meals that cost $6, $8 or $10 depending on your choice of entree and sides. Our planned Valentine’s Day dinner this year? A ready-order special meal for the night that includes a 4 ounce filet, two shrimp, and our choice of two sides. The price? $10 each. Perfect.
10. Free stuff for the kids. Free cookies at the bakery counter. Free helium balloons on the way out. Oh, and can’t forget the free diapers in the bathroom. All designed to keep kids happy (and dry) — which keeps moms and dads happy. Which keeps us coming back again and again and again.
Oh Wegmans. This is a love that will last forever. I’m so glad you’re mine.
It’s my favorite grocery store too and I live in Denver, for heavens sake! It’s a good thing I have Whole Foods as a back-up….
Kara- I enjoy your blog. I work at Youngsville High School and your mother-in-law shared it with me. After all, she has a granddaughter, Zoe, born in Dec. and I have a granddaughter, Zoey, born the following year in Dec. We compare notes, and laugh about our stories. I am a huge Wegmans’ lover also!…and talk about it often in my blog, http://www.thymepassages.wordpress.com. My husband has said that if we ever move, it has to be within short driving distance from a Wegmans. Keep writing. ~Shelly
Shelly–Just checked out your blog. Yummy! Donna has told me about your Zoey. Thanks for writing and reading and I hope our paths cross sometime in Youngsville — or at Wegmans!