For Sharon Singer of New Jersey, October 18 was a double whammy: It was not only her 62nd birthday, but also the opening of Manhattan’s first Wegmans.
Singer and more than a hundred fellow “Wegmaniacs” eagerly lined up along Broadway in Lower Manhattan on Wednesday morning, awaiting the opening of the long-awaited new store.
The 87,500-square-foot space, staffed with as many as 600 newly hired employees, is the historic retailer’s first foray into Manhattan and the newest of its more than 100 stores along the East Coast.
Spread over two floors, it is filled with a variety of concessions, selling fresh sushi, salads, hot sandwiches, soups and pizza, as well as an array of fresh produce and groceries.
“Wegmans is just a great, great supermarket,” said 63-year-old New Yorker Michael Zorek, who was on the line at 7:30 a.m., an hour and a half earlier than the scheduled opening.
Michael Zorek, 63, stands in line outside the new Wegmans on Astor Place ahead of its opening Wednesday morning. He said he has been waiting for more than a decade for a Wegmans to come to his home community
Pictured are a handful of the store’s 600 employees greeting customers as they enter the new store for the sushi concession on Wednesday morning
Sharon Singer (left), 62, of New Jersey said she was impressed when she first stepped into a Wegmans years ago
He had been waiting for the store to arrive for more than ten years.
‘I waited. I waited,” Zorek said. “I knew they took over this space and I felt like it was a match made in Heaven.”
Wegmans Food Markets is known for its fresh baked goods, Buffalo Wings and extensive cheese selection.
It has 109 stores along the East Coast – the majority of its locations are in New York State and others are located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Virginia and North Carolina.
But today it ventures into Manhattan for the first time.
Zorek, who lives on the Upper West Side, discovered Wegmans in 2011 while traveling across the country with his son. Ever since he dreamed of the day someone would arrive in his neighborhood of New York.
“In Manhattan, the supermarkets are overcrowded and squashed, and people are bumping into you with carts, the produce is bruised and looking picked off. Here at Wegmans it seems like everything was outside five minutes before I walked in the door. The aisles are wide, the staff is incredibly friendly, polite and helpful.’
“And not only does it have great produce, but it also has great meat. It has a great personality. I think once people in Manhattan shop here, they won’t want to go anywhere else.”
An on-site dining room with a sushi bar and champagne oyster bar will also open at the location in the first half of 2024, the company said.
The Astor Place store will be the second in New York City following the October 2019 opening of a location in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It is located in the building that once housed Wanamaker’s department store.
On the first floor, shoppers can purchase a variety of prepared dishes, such as sushi, sandwiches, pizza and salad. The photo shows a chef working behind the sushi bar
Pictured is a fresh seafood stand on the lower level of the new 80,000-square-foot Wegmans store in Manhattan. It is staffed with 600 new employees and is stocked with a variety of stand-alone concessions, selling fresh sushi, salads, sandwiches, hot sandwiches, soups and pizza.
Blocks of parmesan cheese and olive oil lined the shelves of the new Wegmans on Astor Place.
Pictured is the escalator at the back of the store that takes shoppers to the lower level
And 26-year-old Katie Gold was sitting not far from the front of the line, in a folding camping chair, just before 9 a.m.
She grew up in Rochester, New York, where Wegmans was founded in 1916, and also arrived well before its opening to ensure she was one of the first to make it.
Her passion for Wegmans is so intense and deep-rooted that at the age of 14 she called her local store asking for a job. Although she was rejected because of her age, her dreams came true within just a year.
“I worked there for seven years through high school and college, and I even wrote my Common App essay on Wegmans,” she said.
‘It’s like a European open-air market. They have the selection of giant Publix, the prices of Walmart, the quality of Whole Foods, customer service and Trader Joe’s. Like anything you want.”
Singer told a similar anecdote to demonstrate her unique fandom. After a travel update many years ago, she happened upon a Wegmans. In awe, she wrote to management requesting its opening in Bergen County, New Jersey.
“I wrote them a letter saying I had never experienced anything like this in my life,” she said.
She also drew a comparison between Wegmans and Trader Joe’s in the seconds before the staff opened the doors and eager customers poured in.
“Trader Joe’s is great, but this is like Trader Joe’s times ten,” she said.
‘Wegmaniancs’: Katie Gold (center), 26, and her friend (left) grew up in Rochester, New York, where Wegmans was founded in 1916. Sharon Singer (right), 62, wrote Wegmans a letter many years ago requesting it be opened in New Jersey
An assortment of fruits, vegetables, fish and meats were for sale in the lower basement at the rear of the new Wegmans store
In addition to the cash registers, the store is full of dozens of self-checkout machines. It also has a shared entrance and exit
The Manhattan store is part of a broader expansion of the Wegmans brand. In March, it announced plans to open its first store in Connecticut.
Although Zorek lives on the Upper West Side, he said he will regularly visit the new Wegmans in Lower Manhattan. And he hoped they would even open smaller stores in the city in the future.
“I don’t think they will become the Duane Reed of supermarkets, but in an ideal world there would be one in almost every neighborhood.”
The Astor Place store is open seven days a week from 7am to 11pm.