I must say that I was more interested in seeing if this upstate New York grocery chain was going to carry white hots more than anything else. I haven't had one of those white veal hot dogs in about 2 years and I was even thinking of traveling over 500 miles round trip to pick up a box until I thought better of it. With the price of gas it would just be smarter to have them shipped to me. Then again, no one ever said I was smart...
Still, going to Northboro, MA was about an hour away from where I was this weekend. Just to make sure that a trip to Wegmans would not be all in vain, I sent an e-mail to the company asking if this store was going to carry the white hots. To my surprise they promptly replied that they would.
I guess that I shouldn't have been surprised that they got back to me so fast. After looking at their website and reading stories about the grocery chain they are quite popular to shop at and to work for. They are very big on not just low prices but on great customer service. It looked like people even get fanatical about the stores, kind of like those people who travel the country going to Chik-Fil-A restaurants.
According to some news reports, the store was involved with town officials about having enough police around to help with the extra traffic. At some grand openings they have had over 30,000 people show up on the first day. I must admit I was getting kind of excited about this. How can a supermarket generate this kind of interest? It sounds insane, but at least I will be able to get my white hots.
This new store is the first in Massachusetts and it is one of the largest in the whole state. It took Wegmans a dozen years to move into the Bay State and supposedly the other grocery stores tried to lock up leases on places that Wegmans was looking to move so they could not move into the state. The reports also said that Wegmans can be a game changer in the area as they not only have thousands more items on their shelves but they price some of their items for the whole year!
The store's grand opening was at 7am but I wasn't going to get up early to travel an hour for a grocery store. I got to the area around noon time. I didn't get to the store until about 12:30pm. For 30 minutes I waited in traffic to get into the parking lot. The whole place was packed. There were lots of police officers to help with the traffic but there were too many cars heading to the store.
When I did get into the parking lot, there were officers there too to help direct traffic. They even had people on those Segways running around the parking lot. I ended up parking about 1/4 mile away from the store.
People were streaming in and out of Wegmans. It was pretty funny to think about it, that all of this was for a grocery store. The aisles were packed with people and sometimes you bumped your cart into someone in front of you or you got hit yourself. One lady accidentally hit a little girl, it wasn't a hard hit but the 6-year was on the verge of crying a tear but not before giving one of the nastiest dirty looks at the lady with the cart. It was pretty funny.
It was hard to more around but I did pass by the food court section. They were serving all kinds of hot foods and even had a dim sum bar. I just didn't feel like fighting through the mob to take a look.
Not being a fan of crowds I used my store map to go find my white hots which were in the dairy section at the back of the store. When I got there I didn't see them. They had all kinds of hot dogs, but then at the bottom was an empty space with a sign in front of it. It said, "Sorry to our upstate New York fans, but they were sold out. New shipment, tomorrow".
To say the least I was pretty bummed. I was not able to get the white hots but it was so busy that I really couldn't see what else they had in the store. The few quick glances at items as I worked my way through the crowd were some pretty good prices and items that are not usually available in Boston nor New York city.
The trip was an experience. It is hard to imagine that so many people are fans of a supermarket, that they even call themselves "Wegmaniacs" and even have t-shirts made up for them. The prices looked pretty good so I will go back again, at least to get some white hots.
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