If you don’t live in the Northeast, you may not be familiar with Wegmans. Suffice to say, Wegmans is a regional (national?) legend in the grocery business. The store consistently gets high marks from both her customers and employees. People, myself included, love shopping their, and it seems that every employee loves working their. It is mind boggling.
In Rochester, if you want to impress your out of town visitors, you take them to one bigger Wegmans, such as Pittsford or East Avenue.
While Wegmans has store up and down the east coast, they have had no stores in New York City. That is in the process of changing, Wegmans is in process of opening a story the old Brooklyn Navy Yard, from Buffalo News [1](registration nag) [1]:
When Wegmans announced it would open its first New York City store on the Brooklyn Naval Yard, everyone seemed to rejoice.
The announcement went viral on social media, set Facebook abuzz and sent Wegmans trending on Twitter in New York City.
But the union trying to organize the store’s workers is not happy.
The Union Food and Commercial Workers, the largest grocery workers union in the state, has launched a campaign against the Rochester-based grocer’s arrival. The union’s website, GoodJobsBrooklyn.com, urges residents to send form letters to city officials
Wegmans is a giant in the grocery business. However their recent business model has been to focus on high end suburbs. As such Brooklyn and New York City amount to Indian territory, and in this case the Indians, the Union Food and Commercial Workers, are not giving up their territory without a fight. Wegmans sees the Brooklyn Navy Yard as toe hold for entry in the New York City market, and I suspect the UFCW sees it the same way.
This could prove to be interesting.