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captainsblog(I should preface this entry with an important non-disclosure disclosure: while it is about Wegmans, it contains no information that has come to me as the store's occasional customer-bankruptcy-case lawyer, and absolutely none that has come to Eleanor on the job. Yes, she did just get back from a fairly rare Saturday store meeting, but except for Eleanor's observation that "Jill is awesome," I have no fresh Wokery from that session to dish out here. This all comes from reading the news and roaming the aisles myself in a purely customer-ish capacity.)
It's got to be rough being in the grocery business in these times. Profit margins, always historically tiny, are being squeezed by a combination of rising overhead and serious pressure not to pass along those extra costs. You're not just selling food and staple items, you're contributing to your customers' psychology as you do so, and grocery stores are full of trigger-items like gallons of milk and loaves of bread that will seriously change their perception of your store if you raise THOSE prices. Wegmans made a major corporate decision earlier this year to limit that damage, by committing to hold the line on prices of 40 regularly purchased products. The list includes some fluff items (not the marshmallow kind), like their $6.00 ready-to-eat entrees and rotisserie chickens, but it does cover a bunch of things we do regularly use, from coffee to non-concentrated OJ to bananas.
The cynics on the various local news sites came right out as soon as this announcement did, claiming that they'd just raised the prices the day before, or that Danny would just shrink the packages to keep the prices the same. While the store is nowhere near being that stupid (particularly in knowing that its customers aren't that stupid, either), I have noticed ways in which this business model may be taking a slightly subtle toll on the store's Fair Haired Kid Who Can Do No Wrong reputation.
For one thing, while I haven't seen any mad increases in prices, or decrease in the percentages or frequency on-sale prices, of items not on the list, there has been a noticeable reduction in quality in some of their non-name-brand items. I use a Pert shampoo knockoff from a "diddly-boom" brand used in Wegmans and other chains in place of putting the store's own name on the package, called TopCare. My most recent purchase of this 'poo came in slightly different packaging, but with very different contents. The stuff is noticeably thinner, yet also way more lathery than I'd like, leaving behind more of a tacky residue than I'd want from a supposedly conditioning product. Just wipe it off with a paper towel, you say? The Wegmans-branded eight-packs of those have also had their packaging changed, too, and the rolls inside the pack are a change for the worse, as well.
And don't get me started on their toilet paper. I'll spare you the TMI, but suffice it that this is one area where, after a certain age, you do not scrimp by buying the house brand. That, however, is the source of the second problem seen in recent weeks: Wegmans has stopped carrying bulk packages of the name-brand product. They still exist- I now add them to my list on my occasional hold-my-nose trips to Wally World- but the store has apparently decided that they were taking up too much space for the amount of revenue they were producing, at least in comparison to filling that space with more of their Rough-and-Ready store brand version.
One area they haven't gone to yet is self-serve checkout. The main competition in these parts replaced all of their express lanes with those children of Satan some months back, and while I've come to a grudging acceptance of them, I still resent having a choice taken away from me, and I suspect Wegmans customers in general would be just as resistive of as much of an in-your-face change as that. Yet they've made other changes along similar lines: Redbox is now their only meaningful option for video products, with only the occasional bin of bargain remainders and some impulse-grab Barney DVDs near the kiddie books at the checkout. Self-serve food bars of all make and manner pop up on a regular basis, limiting interaction between customers and staff and, just as important, limiting interaction between customers and their own kitchens. Even their demos tend toward the trendy and brand-named, rather than actually teaching the customer how to cook or prepare something.
The bloom is by no means off the W-Rose. Just in the past week, Eleanor and I have both heard from friends in distant outposts, gleefully anticipating the arrival of the Wegmans franchise in their RoyalFlaming A-hold and Pubix-dominated communities. For everything they do wrong, I can find 100 more done far worse by just spending half an hour in a Waldbaums, or even a Tops. I just hope it stays that way; even the Wegman family must have a Price, and it would severely ruin my outlook if suddenly that word, along with Chopper or such, showed up outside the Happiest Stores on Earth.
It's got to be rough being in the grocery business in these times. Profit margins, always historically tiny, are being squeezed by a combination of rising overhead and serious pressure not to pass along those extra costs. You're not just selling food and staple items, you're contributing to your customers' psychology as you do so, and grocery stores are full of trigger-items like gallons of milk and loaves of bread that will seriously change their perception of your store if you raise THOSE prices. Wegmans made a major corporate decision earlier this year to limit that damage, by committing to hold the line on prices of 40 regularly purchased products. The list includes some fluff items (not the marshmallow kind), like their $6.00 ready-to-eat entrees and rotisserie chickens, but it does cover a bunch of things we do regularly use, from coffee to non-concentrated OJ to bananas.
The cynics on the various local news sites came right out as soon as this announcement did, claiming that they'd just raised the prices the day before, or that Danny would just shrink the packages to keep the prices the same. While the store is nowhere near being that stupid (particularly in knowing that its customers aren't that stupid, either), I have noticed ways in which this business model may be taking a slightly subtle toll on the store's Fair Haired Kid Who Can Do No Wrong reputation.
For one thing, while I haven't seen any mad increases in prices, or decrease in the percentages or frequency on-sale prices, of items not on the list, there has been a noticeable reduction in quality in some of their non-name-brand items. I use a Pert shampoo knockoff from a "diddly-boom" brand used in Wegmans and other chains in place of putting the store's own name on the package, called TopCare. My most recent purchase of this 'poo came in slightly different packaging, but with very different contents. The stuff is noticeably thinner, yet also way more lathery than I'd like, leaving behind more of a tacky residue than I'd want from a supposedly conditioning product. Just wipe it off with a paper towel, you say? The Wegmans-branded eight-packs of those have also had their packaging changed, too, and the rolls inside the pack are a change for the worse, as well.
And don't get me started on their toilet paper. I'll spare you the TMI, but suffice it that this is one area where, after a certain age, you do not scrimp by buying the house brand. That, however, is the source of the second problem seen in recent weeks: Wegmans has stopped carrying bulk packages of the name-brand product. They still exist- I now add them to my list on my occasional hold-my-nose trips to Wally World- but the store has apparently decided that they were taking up too much space for the amount of revenue they were producing, at least in comparison to filling that space with more of their Rough-and-Ready store brand version.
One area they haven't gone to yet is self-serve checkout. The main competition in these parts replaced all of their express lanes with those children of Satan some months back, and while I've come to a grudging acceptance of them, I still resent having a choice taken away from me, and I suspect Wegmans customers in general would be just as resistive of as much of an in-your-face change as that. Yet they've made other changes along similar lines: Redbox is now their only meaningful option for video products, with only the occasional bin of bargain remainders and some impulse-grab Barney DVDs near the kiddie books at the checkout. Self-serve food bars of all make and manner pop up on a regular basis, limiting interaction between customers and staff and, just as important, limiting interaction between customers and their own kitchens. Even their demos tend toward the trendy and brand-named, rather than actually teaching the customer how to cook or prepare something.
The bloom is by no means off the W-Rose. Just in the past week, Eleanor and I have both heard from friends in distant outposts, gleefully anticipating the arrival of the Wegmans franchise in their Royal
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Date: 2011-06-05 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-06-06 03:45 pm (UTC)It's sad that the Weggies-brand products are falling in quality; one thing I always loved about the store was how wonderful its house brand products were...often better than the name-brands.