LANCASTER, PA - Strengthening its position in the Northeast grocery market, Wegmans Food Markets debuted its 98th store this week—a 120,000-square-foot property at the corner of Harrisburg Pike and Route 30 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The store made its debut Sunday, September 23, drawing outsized crowds to the much anticipated location.
“We’re all here for the same reason: our customers,” said Store Manager Jimmy Bellis, in a press release anticipating Sunday’s opening. “Our aim is to make food shopping a pleasure. We can’t wait for the doors to open at 7 a.m. on Sunday. Shoppers from this area have been traveling to Downingtown and Harrisburg to shop at our stores for a very long time…That’s part of what makes this opening so special for us. We felt welcome here before the first shovel was in the ground.”
According to local news source Lancaster Online, the 7 a.m. opening drew a crowd of close to 2,000—with some prospective shoppers waiting in line for hours to be the first shoppers inside.
The Lancaster store employs a team of 475—a team that had been working for the past several months, according to the company’s press release, preparing the store for its opening.
The store focuses on organic choices and features more than 4,000 organic items. And the company noted that Executive Chef Keith Briggs and his group of 100 culinarians at the new store have been ready to bring Wegmans’ latest innovations starting day one.
The store features three innovative firsts for the Pennsylvania market:
- The Burger Bar: a family-friendly, casual restaurant that serves burgers and sandwiches, fresh salads, soup, sides, kids’ meals, and beer and wine by the glass
- Authentic Italian pizza, made to order, from a custom rotating brick-hearth oven, and quick-fired at 800 degrees on volcanic stone from Mt. Vesuvius in Italy
- A made-to-order salad station with fresh ingredients from the market: crisp greens, grains, toppings, and dressings
The company also noted that Lancaster-area shoppers can now enjoy everything Wegmans is known for—including an expansive produce department that offers hundreds of fresh fruits and vegetables.
For more, read Wegmans press release in its entirety, here.
