There is a huge supermarket store about every 10 miles from one another out here called Wegmans. If you aren't familiar with the store, perhaps you remember Alec Baldwin mentioning it on Letterman. Since then Baldwin was contacted to make a few commercials.
Everything in our city is affiliated with Wegmans. I can remember attending grand openings as a kid and being excited when the "new big" Wegmans opened near our house. Then they started serving food, SUBS!!!!! This city went crazy, not only for Wegmans, but for their "old fashioned" subs. (Side note: I've never liked the subs.) The more recent additions to the store spread from beers from around the world to tea bars, veggie bars to wine bars and even restaurants. Wegmans had everything you needed and everyone shopped there. Notice the past tense. Wegmans used to have everything you needed.
We haven't shopped at a Wegmans in over a month and we plan to never shop there again. Why? Recently they started pulling brand names from shelves and adding more of their own brand. Simple things are now hard to find, unless you want a knock off that doesn't taste the same. That was the final nail in the coffin for us. But we had talked about starting to buy our groceries elsewhere before we noticed the product swap. Before they slowly and sneakily removed name brand products from the shelves they started to take apart the entire "nature's market" section (which included organic, vegetarian and vegan food) and spread it across the store. This became incredibly irritating for us since we are both vegan. We used to be able to run into Wegmans and grab just about everything we needed...fast. Now we would have to do a scavenger hunt to look for all our items, some where easy to find and sometimes we had to give up. For example, vegan soup is more than likely in the regular soup aisle now, makes sense. But it wasn't always that easy, haha, believe me. Maybe this was a good idea? Maybe Wegmans wants the customer to be exposed to more healthy options? I wish that was the case (and maybe it is) but upon looking for my soup, I discovered that they didn't just move my soup but they got rid of just about all the flavors. An almost two shelf selection was quickly reduced to four selections overnight. What the hell? Where's my soup?! It wasn't just the soup. Suddenly a trip to Wegmans was an instant headache. There was no bread or pasta we could buy anymore since Wegmans products were taking over and our grocery list from the store became smaller and smaller.
Then one day I was in another local, and sometimes forgotten, grocery store, Tops (it's hard to not think "Wegmans" in this city when you need groceries). I found myself in the pasta aisle and was surrounded by pasta on both sides. HOLY SHIT! LOOK AT ALL THE PASTA! We've been shopping at Wegmans for so long that we were used to only seeing one or two name brands surrounded by loads of Wegmans brands. I instantly started checking labels and what I found infuriated and excited me. Most of the pasta at Tops was vegan. There was nothing special about it, it wasn't organic and it didn't have a big V on the front of the box. It was regular pasta and (something Wegmans rarely does anymore)....it was on sale! Was I dreaming? I scoped out the oatmeal section next. SWEET JESUS! Wegmans now has just one box of Quaker Instant Oatmeal, the variety pack, surrounded by Wegmans brand oatmeal. Tops had what seemed like every flavor of instant oatmeal that Quaker squeezed out. Wanna know what else I found? BREAD! And it didn't cost $6 a loaf either! WTF was Wegmans doing? I hit the jackpot! They even had my soup! The Tops near our house has a lot of organic and vegan-friendly products. To be honest, a lot more than I thought they would. I look forward to going into Tops every week now and I'm excited we can have pasta again! I hope that Tops continues to carry organic products and more importantly (for us, at least) vegan-friendly products. We still have to travel into the city or across town from time to time to the smaller, more expensive, organic stores to buy our faux meat and cheese, but Tops already sells one kind of dairy free cheese, yogurt and veggie dogs and sausages! I can't wait for them to carry more!
I really don't understand what Wegmans is trying to do. When the organic products were scattered throughout the store I sent out some angry tweets. Wegmans saw them and responded. They told me that they would love to talk to me more about what was going on at the store. I was impressed and decided to reply back in a professional way (unlike the way I handled things with Verizon Wireless...I sent them a picture of a middle finger). Wegmans asked me to follow them on Twitter so we could DM one another. I did. After four days and no response, I stopped following Wegmans on Twitter and a few months later I have stopped shopping in their stores. I may sound bitter towards Wegmans and really, I'm sad about it. Wegmans really was awesome. It was a bragging right to visiting travelers. A one stop shopping store. I realize I may lose some friends over this, as quite a few work for Wegmans, but that's not why I wrote this post. I didn't write this to offend anyone at Wegmans. If any employees read this, I hope all these store changes lead to something good for the public. We are all people and we all live on Earth, let's take care of one another. Finally, I hope that the good people in Rochester, NY know that there are other options out there. Go to Tops, check it out. The one near us has way more cool stuff than any Wegmans in this area. In fact, that's a promise. If you need the address, I'd gladly give it you.
Everything in our city is affiliated with Wegmans. I can remember attending grand openings as a kid and being excited when the "new big" Wegmans opened near our house. Then they started serving food, SUBS!!!!! This city went crazy, not only for Wegmans, but for their "old fashioned" subs. (Side note: I've never liked the subs.) The more recent additions to the store spread from beers from around the world to tea bars, veggie bars to wine bars and even restaurants. Wegmans had everything you needed and everyone shopped there. Notice the past tense. Wegmans used to have everything you needed.
We haven't shopped at a Wegmans in over a month and we plan to never shop there again. Why? Recently they started pulling brand names from shelves and adding more of their own brand. Simple things are now hard to find, unless you want a knock off that doesn't taste the same. That was the final nail in the coffin for us. But we had talked about starting to buy our groceries elsewhere before we noticed the product swap. Before they slowly and sneakily removed name brand products from the shelves they started to take apart the entire "nature's market" section (which included organic, vegetarian and vegan food) and spread it across the store. This became incredibly irritating for us since we are both vegan. We used to be able to run into Wegmans and grab just about everything we needed...fast. Now we would have to do a scavenger hunt to look for all our items, some where easy to find and sometimes we had to give up. For example, vegan soup is more than likely in the regular soup aisle now, makes sense. But it wasn't always that easy, haha, believe me. Maybe this was a good idea? Maybe Wegmans wants the customer to be exposed to more healthy options? I wish that was the case (and maybe it is) but upon looking for my soup, I discovered that they didn't just move my soup but they got rid of just about all the flavors. An almost two shelf selection was quickly reduced to four selections overnight. What the hell? Where's my soup?! It wasn't just the soup. Suddenly a trip to Wegmans was an instant headache. There was no bread or pasta we could buy anymore since Wegmans products were taking over and our grocery list from the store became smaller and smaller.
Then one day I was in another local, and sometimes forgotten, grocery store, Tops (it's hard to not think "Wegmans" in this city when you need groceries). I found myself in the pasta aisle and was surrounded by pasta on both sides. HOLY SHIT! LOOK AT ALL THE PASTA! We've been shopping at Wegmans for so long that we were used to only seeing one or two name brands surrounded by loads of Wegmans brands. I instantly started checking labels and what I found infuriated and excited me. Most of the pasta at Tops was vegan. There was nothing special about it, it wasn't organic and it didn't have a big V on the front of the box. It was regular pasta and (something Wegmans rarely does anymore)....it was on sale! Was I dreaming? I scoped out the oatmeal section next. SWEET JESUS! Wegmans now has just one box of Quaker Instant Oatmeal, the variety pack, surrounded by Wegmans brand oatmeal. Tops had what seemed like every flavor of instant oatmeal that Quaker squeezed out. Wanna know what else I found? BREAD! And it didn't cost $6 a loaf either! WTF was Wegmans doing? I hit the jackpot! They even had my soup! The Tops near our house has a lot of organic and vegan-friendly products. To be honest, a lot more than I thought they would. I look forward to going into Tops every week now and I'm excited we can have pasta again! I hope that Tops continues to carry organic products and more importantly (for us, at least) vegan-friendly products. We still have to travel into the city or across town from time to time to the smaller, more expensive, organic stores to buy our faux meat and cheese, but Tops already sells one kind of dairy free cheese, yogurt and veggie dogs and sausages! I can't wait for them to carry more!
I really don't understand what Wegmans is trying to do. When the organic products were scattered throughout the store I sent out some angry tweets. Wegmans saw them and responded. They told me that they would love to talk to me more about what was going on at the store. I was impressed and decided to reply back in a professional way (unlike the way I handled things with Verizon Wireless...I sent them a picture of a middle finger). Wegmans asked me to follow them on Twitter so we could DM one another. I did. After four days and no response, I stopped following Wegmans on Twitter and a few months later I have stopped shopping in their stores. I may sound bitter towards Wegmans and really, I'm sad about it. Wegmans really was awesome. It was a bragging right to visiting travelers. A one stop shopping store. I realize I may lose some friends over this, as quite a few work for Wegmans, but that's not why I wrote this post. I didn't write this to offend anyone at Wegmans. If any employees read this, I hope all these store changes lead to something good for the public. We are all people and we all live on Earth, let's take care of one another. Finally, I hope that the good people in Rochester, NY know that there are other options out there. Go to Tops, check it out. The one near us has way more cool stuff than any Wegmans in this area. In fact, that's a promise. If you need the address, I'd gladly give it you.
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