Wegmans opens a 3d giant store in Philadelphia suburbs

Here comes Wegmans - again.

The regional grocer's answer to Wal-Mart opened its newest store on the site of a former steel plant in job-rich Chester County.

It is the sixth Wegmans in the region and the third in the greater King of Prussia area, which is unusual for a chain that typically spreads its food emporiums an hour apart.

The 650-employee Malvern store opened Sunday with a crowd of about 800 lining up outside the doors at 7 a.m. and about 200 Wegmans employees from other areas lodged at local hotels to help with the festivities.

Wegmans now has giant stores in Collegeville, Downingtown, and Malvern, well-off suburbs that fit the supermarket's criteria for new stores. A fourth Pennsylvania Wegmans is in Warrington, Bucks County. The chain also has stores in Cherry Hill and Mount Laurel.

The chain's retail concept marries a large supermarket that competes on price with an equally large prepared-food section, or food court.

Wegmans executives say they have been encouraged by the popularity of its take-it-and-go prepared-food section in the Philadelphia area. The percentage of prepared meals sold to customers, they say, is higher in this region than in other places.

"It's the antithesis of the big box," Danny Wegman, the chief executive officer, said in a phone interview last week of the chain's format. "It's really a lot of small boxes in one place."

Periodically, a retail format captures the zeitgeist of the time. Starbucks Corp., for instance. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., for another. It's too soon to say whether Wegmans has. But this Rochester, N.Y., grocer with 76 stores in the Northeast and about $5 billion in annual sales has definitely gotten the attention of the food-chain watchers.

Jeff Metzger, publisher of Food Trade News, said Wednesday that Wegmans stores take business from several retail channels when they enter an area: traditional supermarkets, convenience stores, discounters, and restaurants. According to the June edition of the Food Trade News, Wegmans now has 2 percent of the Philadelphia region's food sales among all distribution channels, ranking just below BJ's Wholesale Club Inc.

Metzger noted that one of the region's top-volume Acme supermarkets is about three miles away in Paoli. Acme Markets Inc. is the Philadelphia region's largest supermarket by market share.