Lake Grove: First Wegmans on Long Island

Retailer expanding presence in the New York area and eastern U.S.

With its store opening earlier this year in Lake Grove, NY, on the eastern end of Long Island’s Suffolk County, Wegmans Food Markets has established a presence across the most densely populated part of the New York City region.

In the thick of it, a rough line of Wegmans stores proceeds from Woodbridge, NJ, just beyond the New York borough of Staten Island, to lower Manhattan, Brooklyn and now Lake Grove. Then, not far beyond, Wegmans locations in Harrison, NY, and Parsippany and Bridgewater, NJ, fan out in a curve around New York City in the deeper northern and western suburbs.

The Wegmans in Lake Grove is in a major retail center, including an indoor mall, outdoor malls and single-unit operations including Costco, so the draw to the vicinity is deeper than Wegmans would normally enjoy by itself.

CONTINUED EXPANSION

Although it hasn’t announced immediate plans for additional New York supermarkets, Wegmans has revealed plans for a Norwalk, CT, store, about 30 miles from the northern New York City border. Norwalk will be the company’s first store in Connecticut. In January, Wegmans and Sippel Enterprises LP announced plans for a new Wegmans store in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania — the company’s first entry into the Pittsburgh region. The regional supermarket chain now has 112 stores located along the East Coast.

In geographical terms, Lake Grove is the first Wegmans store on Long Island.

The 100,000-square-foot Lake Grove supermarket is a slightly scaled-down version of the 120,000-square-foot stores the company has lately opened, including the one in Harrison, which debuted in 2020 and came in at 121,000 square feet.

Wegmans is renowned for its larger supermarkets, with extensive prepared food sections and perishables departments, which, of course, have a heavy emphasis on produce. The Lake Grove store includes the major product categories and services Wegmans offers, just at a slightly smaller size. Indeed, all three stores Wegmans has slated for 2025 openings are on the smaller side of the portfolio, with Norwalk at 92,000 square feet and Rockville, MD, at 80,000 square feet.

HOT ZONE

During a March store visit, the produce section opened with crate-style displays of citrus, and boasted a display topped with “Hot Zone Prices” signage. Hot Zone displays featured easy-to-grab bagged items, including yellow onions, Haas avocados, red and yellow peppers, mini cucumbers and russet potatoes.

Displays in the Hot Zone vicinity combined tomatoes, peppers, clamshell salads, artichokes, asparagus and peppers, combining value and quick-stop convenience across the range of popular commodities.

Although it has a full range of groceries typical of Wegmans, the store made convenience and value-added products conspicuous.

Take the fresh-cut presentation, for example. Fresh-cut fruit with signage surrounded a processing area, demonstrating the store is committed to ensuring quality. The layout made it easy to pick up a tub of product and promoted impulse purchasing.

Although the domestic berry season was weeks off, Wegmans offered a floor display of berries on promotion adjacent to a refrigerated case with neat rows of packaged product.

The tomato display was grand in scale and included red and yellow varieties in a presentation that fell back from cherry to vine-ripened and bulk, all finally backed by cucumbers. Close by, a floor display of tropical and exotic fruit included pineapples, kiwi, mangos, coconuts and tubs of tamarind.

The selection of potatoes and onions, with some carrots thrown in, was relatively comprehensive and included deeply merchandised presentations that housed multiple varieties of each commodity.

In an interesting piece of cross-merchandising, rising from the bulk potatoes was a small table display of Wegmans’ Gruyère cheese. Although not the first combination consumers might expect, the Gruyère display was a link to the adjacent cheese section.

SIGNAGE, MERCHANDISING

Signage and related merchandising are a big part of the store’s product presentation. Signage over the cold case, for example, includes proprietary banners declaring “Near Our Store Reducing Food Mile Emissions” and “From Family Farms Near Our Store.”

Some of the identifying messages were more specific. For example, Wegmans topped a special merchandising section of clamshell greens and salads in the cold case with a green frame that delivered a central message emerging under an arc and reading “New! Greenhouse Grown.” Just beyond that in the cold case was a selection of clamshell products signed “Organic Salad Leaf,” followed by “Salad Blends.”

The cold case on the opposite side of the section included more top signage stating, “Grown Near Our Stores Working With 125+ East Coast Farms,” and below that was an extensive display identified as “Fresh Cut Vegetables” and “Cooking Vegetables.”

In an independent cold case display, signage called out “Carrots & Celery” and “Salad Kits.” The low-profile floor displays and demonstrative signage combined to make the Wegman’s Lake Grove produce section easy to view and navigate.

As is commonly the case at Wegmans, the Lake Grove store is well-kept and organized and provides shoppers with a lineup rich in quality and at a fair value.

Although not exactly bordering New York City, the store not only boosts Wegmans’ place in the Big Apple region, but it also taps another major market opportunity, demonstrating Wegmans wants to be a significant presence in the New York area.

FACT FILE

Wegmans Lake Grove
3270 Middle Country Road, Lake Grove, NY 11755
631-285-1300
wegmans.com/stores/lake-grove-ny