Wegmans: A Food Market That's On Top of the Food Chain with Employees and Customers

Wegmans is a successful, family-owned food market chain that is loved by customers

and employees alike. They have won numerous accolades since opening their first food market in 1930 (Lyon, 2016). Wegmans has made it on to Fortunes’ Top 100 list of the “Greatest Places to Work” since the beginning (Wegmans, 2019). They have even ranked in the top of 10 on the list for 16 years with this year ranking third (Wegmans, 2019).  Moreover, Wegmans was ranked number eight for diversity by Forbes in 2018 (Danziger, 2018). So, how has Wegmans managed to stay at the top of the food chain with customers and employees all these years?

The answer is quite simple. Wegmans takes a counter-intuitive “employees first, customer second”(Hudson, 2005 as cited in Lyon, 2016) approach to business. According to Wegmans Vice President of Media Relations Jo Natale, “in order to be a great place to shop, we must first be a great place to work” (as cited in Danziger, 2018). Wegmans employees treat each other like family from the top-down, and that sentiment reaches their customer base. 

The Wegman family’s leadership has created a culture that makes employees well-being and development a top priority and fosters innovation. Not only does Wegmans provide a traditional benefits package, they even offer adoption assistance (Walter, 2011 as cited in Lyon, 2016). They also invested fifty million dollars to help their employees learn and improve managerial and culinary skills and five million dollars toward employee scholarships in 2017 (Danziger, 2018). Moreover, Wegmans recruits employees with diverse backgrounds, which in-turn inspires innovation and builds credibility with diverse shoppers (Danziger, 2018).  

For this blog post, I conducted some informal research on Wegmans on Indeed.com. I looked at the last 20 reviews by current and former employees ranging from September 26, 2019, through October 12, 2019. Each reviewer was able to rate Wegmans on a scale of one through five, with one being the worst and five being the best. I found that the average rating for the last 20 reviews was 3.85 and the overall average for all reviews was 4.2. Most reviews gave four and five-star ratings. However, there were a few that rated the company one and two. A former cashier complained about the lack of respect, no perks, and bad hours for part-timers, whereas a former meat team leader described his/ her experience as being terrible due to bad management and hours, under-staffing, and no advancement opportunities (Indeed, 2019). Below, I have created a word cloud with the most common words in the last 20 reviews.

Wegmans business approach could work for other grocery stores as well as other industries that revolve around customer service and hospitality (e.g. retail, hotel chains, restaurants, banks, etc). However, implementing this type of business strategy would take time, patience, consistency, and the right employees.

References

Danziger, P. (2018). Why Wegmans Food Market gets the love of customers. Retrieved from Forbes : https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2018/03/03/why-wegmans-food-markets-gets-the-love-of-customers/#1fc43d174ce5

Indeed. (2019). Wegmans reviews. Retrieved from Indeed: https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Wegmans/reviews

Lyon, A. (2016). Wegmans food markets says "employees first, customers second". In Case studies in courageous orgizational communication (pp. 302-307). Retrieved from https://moodle.drury.edu/pluginfile.php/923860/mod_resource/content/1/Case%20study%20Wegmans.pdf

The Buffalo News . (2018). Wegmans (image). Retrieved from The Buffalo News: https://buffalonews.com/2018/04/26/two-story-wegmans-with-a-tequila-bar-to-open-in-massachusetts/

Wegmans. (2019). Great Place to Work® and Fortune Name Wegmans One of the 2019 FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For®, Ranking #3. Retrieved from Wegmans: https://www.wegmans.com/news-media/press-releases/2019/great-place-to-work--and-fortune-name-wegmans-one-of-the-2019-fo.html