At Long Island's first Wegmans, in Lake Grove, some came to shop, others for the 'thrill'

Hundreds of customers stood in the cold outside Wegmans in Lake Grove, some for hours, waiting for the grocer to open its first supermarket on Long Island on Wednesday morning.

Some were there to shop, others came out of curiosity. 

“I just like the thrill of getting there first. I didn’t know what to expect,” said Jean Carroll, 67, of Nesconset, who arrived at 3 a.m. and was the fourth person in line.

Brooklyn resident Jordan White, 32, who checked out the store for his job as a personal chef, said he liked the store's diverse offerings.

“It has a large variety of ingredients and everything looked great,” White said after leaving the store, adding he would be regularly buying meat and seafood, including sushi-grade fish, from the supermarket for his work.

A regional chain that is considered a traditional supermarket, Rochester-based Wegmans has a cultlike following that is contributing to its growth, while other traditional stores lose market share to specialty and discount grocers, grocery experts said. 

The opening of the 101,000-square-foot Wegmans in Lake Grove — which is the largest supermarket on Long Island excluding warehouse clubs and supercenters — was highly anticipated. It also drew some union members who protested outside the store.

After the store opened, shoppers piled in, perusing every department, from the hot prepared foods, to the produce, to the seafood, to the beer and the boxed cereal.

First-time Wegmans shopper Patricia Hottinger, 72, of Smithtown, who said she liked the store’s selections, wanted to buy milk and other household staples but was unable to. 

“I couldn’t get to it. … There was just too many people. So, I just got some other stuff,” she said after paying for her purchases, pointing to a bag of cookies, paper plates, Easter place mats and other items.

With 112 stores on the East Coast, Wegmans is known for its wide section of prepared foods.

The Lake Grove store has ready-to-eat and ready-to-heat restaurant foods, including sushi, pizza, wings, hot soup, salads and sandwiches, as well as Asian-inspired cuisine, a self-serve coffee station, Old World cheese department and packaged, ready-to-go entrées and sides, the grocer said.

The store also has an 86-seat cafe and dedicates 10,285 square feet to prepared foods.

More than 500 employees have been hired for the Lake Grove store.

Located at 3270 Middle Country Rd., Wegmans is in the 28-acre DSW Plaza at Lake Grove at the corner of Middle Country and Moriches roads.

In 2023, the grocer paid $15.3 million to buy 8.5 acres of land in the plaza from Prestige Properties & Development, which continued to own and operate the rest of the shopping center.

Former Babies R Us/Toys R Us and Ashley Furniture stores in the shopping center were demolished, replaced by Wegmans. 

Unions protest outside Wegmans

Outside the store Wednesday, about 40 members of various unions protested on the grass along Moriches Road, with some calling for Wegmans employees to join the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union to receive better wages, benefits and job protections. Some groups also criticized Wegmans' construction contractor for allegedly paying workers below union standards or hiring nonunion workers.

“We’re out here just to inform the public what went on during the construction of this Wegmans," said Allen Foley, a representative for District Council 9 of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades, based in Manhattan. He said KBE Building Corp., the general contractor hired by Wegmans, hired subcontractors that do not pay the area standard wages and benefits.

The expensive cost of living on Long Island makes hiring union workers, who earn higher wages than nonunion workers, more critical than in upstate New York, said Sal Correa, field agent for BAC Local 7 Tile, Marble & Terrazzo, based in Long Island City.

Based in Farmington, Connecticut, KBE Building did not respond to Newsday's requests for comment.

Wegmans did not respond to a request for comment about the unions' allegations.

A focus on filling gaps in markets

Founded in 1916, Wegmans Food Markets Inc. is a family owned regional supermarket chain of East Coast stores in Washington, D.C., and eight states, including New Jersey, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The company opens two to three new stores annually, focusing on filling gaps in existing markets, including more urban areas, Wegmans spokeswoman Mandee Puleo said.

Besides the Lake Grove location, two other stores will open this year — in Rockville, Maryland, in June, and Norwalk, Connecticut, in July.

In the past five years, Wegmans has opened 13 stores, some in new markets.

It entered New York City with a Brooklyn location in 2019, followed by stores in Harrison, Westchester County, in 2020, and Manhattan’s Astor Place in October 2023.

Like the nation, Long Island is seeing increased grocery competition from specialty and discount stores, while traditional supermarkets lose market share. 

“Because the specialty retailers have found a way to appeal to those customers who no longer say, 'I need to do my entire weekly shop at supermarket A or B.' There's a lot less shopping loyalty. There's a lot more cross shopping," said Jeff Metzger, publisher of Food Trade News, a Columbia, Maryland-based publication.

But traditional grocer Wegmans is an anomaly, grocery experts said.

“Wegmans has an offering that you would typically think of as high-end, with their prepared foods, focus on service, their focus on fresh. That gives them enough market appeal but it’s also a place with very low prices [on boxed and canned goods] in the center of the store,” said Jon Hauptman, founder of Price Dimensions, a Chicago-based pricing strategy consulting firm for grocery stores.

Wegmans also has a higher percentage of its own private-label brands than most traditional supermarkets do, he said.

The grocer’s Lake Grove store should be a successful high-volume supermarket, said Metzger, a Wantagh native.

“The demographics prove it, and the fact that it is the only one on Long Island at this point,” he said.

Nationwide discounter Walmart is the largest grocer, but on Long Island traditional supermarket chain Stop & Shop ranks first, though it is losing some market share to competitors.

Among all stores that sell food on Long Island, including drugstores and warehouse clubs, Stop & Shop had 18.2% of the market share as of March, down from 20.08% in 2021, according to a June report from Food Trade News.

Discount grocer Aldi made the list for the first time in 2023, and ranked 19th last year, with 0.90% of the market share on Long Island.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.