Market’s the coolest thing
since the express line

Robyn’s ’Hood
By Robyn McCloskey

The other day I had to take our 6-month-old male kitten, Chiefy, to the vet. He was due for some shots, as well as a minor but delicate procedure . . . castration.
While I felt bad for our poor unsuspecting cat, Bob Barker has convinced me that this is the only proper pet-owning choice to make. Plus I didn’t want to feel responsible should any kittens appear at our door bearing an uncanny resemblance to Chief.
Since the vet’s office is not close to our home, and it happened to be raining cats and dogs (no pun intended), I decided to bide my time while little Chiefy was being rendered a eunuch.
And so it was on this cold, rainy, non-spring-like day that I stumbled upon an unexpected ray of sunshine, a beacon of light, a harbor in the storm. I discovered Wegmans! The supermarket to beat all supermarkets, ye olde corner food store on steroids. The Whole Foods meets Williams-Sonoma meets Harry and David meets CVS meets Hallmark meets Chinatown, Italian Market and the French Patisserie all rolled into one.
Upon entering the store, I could have sworn I heard angels singing as the automatic doors welcomed me warmly into the Wegmans family. People were smiling. People were chatting. People were eating. People were happy . . . in a supermarket, of all places . . . where they were spending money, and lots of it.
As I freely roamed extra-wide aisle after extra-wide aisle, I couldn’t help but think that when I die and go to heaven, I hope there’s a Wegmans nearby. Every food imaginable is readily available in abundant display cases. There are more than 500 specialty cheeses alone, or roughly 498 more than my usual pickings of cheddar or American. There’s a café that offers everything from freshly brewed gourmet coffee to an all-you-can-eat Asian buffet.
I felt like Belle in Beauty and the Beast as she leisurely strolls through the open-air market as the merchants break out in song.
I was so impressed with this place that I decided to do a little research, which basically means I Googled it. I learned that Wegmans began in Rochester, N.Y., with its founder, the philanthropic Robert Wegman, a golf-loving, harmonica-toting son of a grocer. The chain is now run by one of his sons and two of his granddaughters.
After reading up on Wegman family folklore, it became obvious to me that Mr. Wegman believed not only in taking care of his own but others as well. Before his death in 2006, he and his wife had donated millions of dollars to various charities and institutions, a practice the company still continues.
As a consumer, I had to wonder where Wegmans had been all my life. For years now I have been shopping at the same boring local food store in my area that everyone else frequents. It’s a typical grocery store with the typical foods and the typical weekly specials and, on occasion, the typical BOGO — buy one get one free.
The deli counter is always understaffed, and so are the checkout aisles. Some of the cashiers are friendly, some are not. Some of the cashiers work quickly, some do not. The parking is . . . well, let’s just call it sparse.
I’d pretty much accepted these hardships as just the way supermarkets are these days, at least until my recent shopping epiphany. I particularly found the service people friendly, knowledgeable and pleased to help. My Wegmans cashier happened to be a newly minted grandma who couldn’t help but share her good news with me, falling just short of unraveling three feet of pictures from her wallet.
Normally this would annoy me. I am an extremely task-oriented person who doesn’t typically take the time to get to know strangers. Unlike folksy humorist Will Rogers, who once insisted that "strangers are only friends I haven’t met yet," I prefer to go with the adage that "strangers are only people who will take up my time if I get to know them."
But there must be something in the air at Wegmans. Just like the belief that casinos pump oxygen onto the gaming floor to keep their gamblers awake and spending, I’m convinced that Wegmans must pump in happy gas to keep their patrons smiling and shopping.
I do feel bad that, in all this excitement, I almost forgot what poor Chiefy was going through at the vet’s. True, he lost a lot that day, but I gained so much more. ••
Robyn McCloskey’s column appears every week in the Northeast Times. She can be reached at crmccloskey@verizon.net