On 9/26/2020 at 8:34 AM, BeeZee said:Wegmans is far from the ideal supermarket unless you are someone like my divorced Uncle who can’t cook and likes to buy their prepared foods. Produce, meat and fish are certainly better than average, but they don’t carry many brands in dry goods, it is primarily geared towards you buying their house brand. I find it too frustrating to use it as my regular market.
I have the opposite experience with Wegmans, honestly — I think it really depends on what you shop for. I find that since they don't waste space having twelve brands of everything, they have room to carry a lot overall variety. Pre-COVID, they were our primary store in large part because I could get the largest share of the items on my list in one place. But I am not typically someone with incredibly strong brand preferences for a lot of things, and the majority of my grocery shopping is for things I'd probably consider raw ingredients.
Case in point: while I prefer to head to a specialty store for various international foods, there's a much better chance that I'll find the one thing I'm out of at Wegmans than any other mainstream grocery in our area. E.g., they have multiple varieties of gochujang, vs one or none at other stores, and have Red Boat fish sauce and three varieties of Maesri curry paste where everyone else only carries Thai Kitchen for both. Likewise, I don't think anyone else in our area reliably has Chinese soy sauce — anything decent is Japanese or Japanese-style. Wegmans always has Pearl River Bridge. The Indian selection isn't as good but what they do have is stuff I'd actually buy.
Their produce really depends on the store, though. Of the three we go to, only one is really reliably well-stocked, and they waste a lot of space on prepped stuff I don't buy. Probably the biggest source of frustration for me. But we have a CSA in the summer and the best produce market in Boston is near my office. (I think it was called an office? Place with the little cubicles.)
Prior to Wegmans opening, I would typically go to Whole Foods for stuff I cared about, and a mainstream store like Star / Shaw's / Stop & Shop for more middle-of-the-road things that Whole Foods didn't carry. Wegmans replaces both of those, which saves me a trip. That frees up time I can spend going more interesting places.
