Many local grocery stores have taken steps to protect customers from contracting COVID-19, but some have been more aggressive than others. PC: Staff Photo
Shielding up
While many businesses have been forced to close due to the coronavirus, grocery stores are busier than ever—and their employees have had to continue showing up for work, potentially putting themselves at risk. On March 31, some Whole Foods workers stayed home in a nationwide “sick out” to protest a lack of protections, and call for benefits like paid leave and hazard pay.
In response, the company has made some changes, but conditions for both employees and shoppers still vary widely among grocery chains. We checked in over the weekend to see how Charlottesville’s stores stack up.
Plexiglass shields have been installed in front of the registers at most stores (Wegmans and Reid Super-Save Market say they are coming soon).
Cashiers wear masks and gloves at Whole Foods, while those at Trader Joe’s, the Barracks Road Kroger, and Reid’s currently wear only gloves. Employees at Wegmans and the Food Lion on Pantops have neither.
Social distancing markers have been installed to keep customers six feet apart in check-out lines in all stores, and most cashiers wipe down registers between transactions.
Of the places we visited, Trader Joe’s seemed to be taking the most stringent precautions, limiting customers to 20 at a time in the store. Employees wearing face masks and gloves sanitize each cart before handing it off to a customer, and cashiers have no physical contact with customers.
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For the record
As the virus has shuttered the economy, a record-breaking number of Americans and Virginians have filed unemployment claims. For one on-the-nose example of how bad things have gotten, head to the Virginia Employment Commission’s website—or don’t, because it has shut down, overwhelmed by the amount of new traffic.
Number of unemployment claims last week nationwide: 6.6 million
Number of unemployment claims last week in Virginia: 112,497
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Quote of the Week
“Voters should not be forced to choose between exercising their Constitutional rights and preserving their own health and that of their community.”
—Allison Robbins, president of the Voter Registrars Association of Virginia, in a letter urging the state to cancel in-person voting in favor of mail-in ballots for upcoming elections
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In Brief
Better late than never?
UVA announced on Monday that it will create a $2 million emergency fund for contract employees laid off during the university’s closure. The decision comes after student activists circulated a petition demanding action and C-VILLE Weekly published a cover story about workers laid off by Aramark, UVA’s dining services contractor. The article prompted two GoFundMe campaigns, which raised a combined $71,000 for the employees in a matter of days. UVA is also donating $1 million to the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation.
Booze news
The Virginia Alcoholic Beverage Control Authority has begun allowing Virginia-based distilleries to deliver their products directly to customers. The state claims the new rule is aimed at helping distilleries maintain some income during the current economic freeze. While the policy will surely help the distilleries, it’ll likely be even more beneficial for the thousands of Virginians currently trapped inside with their families.
Spring (break) into action
This week would have been spring break for Charlottesville City Schools, so the district didn’t plan to offer grab-and-go breakfast and lunch for its neediest students. But City Schoolyard Garden and The Chris Long Foundation have picked up the slack by partnering with local restaurants Pearl Island and Mochiko Cville to provide 4,000 meals throughout the week.
Moving out
UVA will clear out three student residential buildings to make space for temporary housing for health care workers, the university announced this week. Students who left belongings when they were told not to return to school will have their things shipped and stored off-site by UVA. Students objected to the plan because anyone who wants to retrieve items before the end of the Virginia-wide state of emergency will be charged up to $100.
Sicily Rose, which opens at IX Art Park in September, will feature made-to-order cannoli and a full-scale Italian coffee bar. Photo by Tom McGovern
Milli Joe owner Nick Leichtentritt has always had a special place in his heart for simple Italian cannoli, and he’s planning to bring his favorite dessert to Charlottesville at Sicily Rose, an Italian coffee and cannoli bar opening in September in the Studio IX space.
“Sicily Rose is a project I’ve actually been working on and thinking about for a couple years now,” he says. “I grew up in an Italian family in New York, so cannoli were always a go-to dessert for us, and now every time I find a good one I’m reminded of my childhood. The shop is named in honor of my Sicilian grandmother, Rose, who shared her love of Italian bakeries with all of her grandkids, and whose kitchen in New York was home to some of my earliest and fondest memories. She was in large part responsible for my lifelong love of food and the desire to share it with friends and family.”
Sicily Rose will feature a full-scale Italian coffee bar as well as American coffee favorites from Milli Joe. The made-to-order cannoli bar will stick to the traditional favorites.
“We’re not going to do a bunch of crazy flavors,” Leichtentritt says. “Instead we will have one style of fresh-made cannoli shells and a simple, authentic cannoli cream, which we will make in-house and fill to order. The cannoli will be topped with a choice of chocolate, pistachio, almond, or candied orange.”
Leichtentritt says he’ll also carry some unique Italian treats as well as local chocolates, local beer, and Italian wine.
Waffling around
There’s a new waffle kid in town: Good Waffles & Co. food truck has been making inroads over the past several months. The brainchild of newlyweds Steven and Danielle Stitz, Good Waffles combines their passions—he’s been cooking in the Charlottesville area for more than a decade, including a stint at the Clifton Inn, and she’s a graphic designer by training.
“We merged our love of both to start a business that we could do together,” Danielle says. “We love Charlottesville and being a part of this wonderful community. Owning our food trucks has allowed us the chance to meet so many great people here, and we hope to be around for a long time, serving up our waffles.”
The style they serve is the bubble waffle—the circular waffles are pocketed with bubbles to better hold accompanying sauces and ice cream, and they come in sweet and savory forms.
“A bubble waffle is basically a Hong Kong Egg Waffle,” Danielle says. “But we’ve adapted it with our recipe to fit our menu. It has beautiful round bubbles all over it. You can fork it, slice it, or my favorite: pull it apart with your hands.”
Steven recommends the classic chicken and waffles, with a mix of housemade Georgia mustard and North Carolina sauces with a homemade pickle. Danielle favors the lemon berry: a bubble waffle with vanilla ice cream, Meyer lemon curd and plenty of blueberries.
“We make what we love, and we love waffles with soul,” she says. “Add some fried chicken or some ice cream atop—you can’t go wrong. You could say that we picked the food, but really the bubble waffles picked us!”
Oakhart Social keeps growing
Oakhart Social has launched a private dining room above Public Fish & Oyster (in the former home of Opal Yoga, which has moved). The space seats up to 52 people, and boasts polished hardwoods and exposed brick, with wood paneling flanking a fully stocked bar.
Benjamin Clore, co-owner of Oakhart Social, says the private space that opened in April was used for overflow seating for graduation, and is now available for those seeking to host private functions.
Clore says the master plan involves a rooftop restaurant above Oakhart Social, in which the back half of the rooftop will be a building with an open kitchen and bar design similar in concept to that of Mas Tapas, with the kitchen on one side, and bar seating on the other. The front half will be open-air patio seating. Clore said all city approvals have been met but the project is on hold while they finalize the opening of their next venture, Little Star (across the street in the old Threepenny Café site).
“Little Star will feature American food with Spanish and Latin influences, and small plates like at Oakhart, largely wood-fired,” Clore says, adding it should open in October or November.
Get ’em while they’re hot
Wegmans will host its Hatch Chile Festival August 24-26. The festival, held over the next several weeks at select Wegmans locations throughout the country, has become a popular annual event, and originated as a way for the grocery store to promote a unique seasonal item, says the store’s media relations manager, Valerie Fox.
Fox says they’ll have a chile roaster set up near the entrance, and various departments at the grocery store will offer products that creatively incorporate Hatch chilies into their selections.
The chilies, grown in Hatch, New Mexico, the chile capital of the world, are a popular ingredient in Southwestern cooking, Fox says. Harvested four weeks each year, the chiles have a thicker wall than more common ones like the Anaheim, thus holding up nicely in recipes and freezing for year-round use.
That was Gwen Williams’ initial response when a manager at the local Wegmans approached her in hercar on May 2, said he’d received a complaint that an African-American woman in an orange top was panhandling in the grocery store’s parking lot, and asked if it was her.
Williams’ next response was to ask to speakto the complaining customer, and when themanager said the customer was already gone, she said, “So you just assumed it was me?”
As she sat in her truck in a coral-colored dress, with the employee peering at her through her driver’s side window, Williams showed him her brown shopping bag with the green Wegmans logo. She told him she often shops at his store on her lunch break, and said his inquisition was insulting.
When the initial shock wore off, “I said, ‘I’m just hurt,’ and I started crying,” recounts Williams. And when she got back to her job at Charlottesville Circuit Court, the tears were still in her eyes.
Williams is a deputy clerk at the courthouse, where she’s worked for 14 years. And while she’s seen racial profiling cases come through the circuit court, she’s never been a target.
“That was the hardest part for me to accept,” she says. “You hear it and you can see it out there, but you never think it will actually happen to you, and then when it does, it’s such a sting that you don’t even know how to describe it.”
After Chief Deputy Clerk David Schmidt called Wegmans on her behalf, the general manager requested to meet with Williams the following day, on May 3. He apologized, but Williams says she felt compelled to take the incident up the chain of command.
That’s when Bob Farr, the senior vice president and Virginia division manager of Wegmans, drove from Gainesville to meet with her on May 4.
“He said, ‘I don’t want to talk to you on the phone, I want to see you face to face,’” says Williams. “He told me what was done was absolutely wrong and should not have happened. He wanted to make it right with me.”
According to Williams, Farr said, “I can see the hurt in you,” and she says she’s continued to receive calls and emails from him checking up on her.
Jo Natale, vice president of Wegmans media relations, says, “What happened cannot be erased, but we are taking steps to help our people get it right in the future.”
She adds, “Our hope is that we will be able to restore her trust in Wegmans.”
On April 30, three black women leaving an Airbnb in Rialto, California, were detained when a neighbor called the police and reported a potential robbery next door. This came after two black men, who met at a Philadelphia Starbucks for a business meeting, were arrested on suspicion of trespassing, sparking the BoycottStarbucks hashtag.
Some locals have declared that they’ll no longer shop at Wegmans, and Williams says it’ll take time before she feels comfortable going back to the store.
“This whole ordeal has been really hard for me,” she says. “It was just hurtful. I was ashamed. I felt degraded. …As time goes on, I’m beginning to heal from this—to pick myself up and keep going.”
But she says it’s not about hard feelings—it’s about turning a negative into a positive.
“I’m feeling hopeful,” she adds. “We all make mistakes out there, but we can learn from them. You can educate these people, you can train them.”
She’s not only choosing to speak out for herself, but for her children and grandchildren, who she hopes will never have to have the same experience.
“Just speaking out about it makes me feel like I have a voice,” says Williams. “I’m a person that doesn’t let things stick on me or control my life, because if I did, that’s giving them all the power.”
The Barracks Road Harris Teeter’s bar was the hands-down winner of the night, with cheap prices and excellent service. Photo courtesy of Eze Amos.
As competition has grown among Charlottesville’s high-end grocery stores, a trend has emerged of adding bars. I’ve walked past these odd grocery store bars countless times but it has never occurred to me to pull up a stool and order a glass of beer before picking up milk and vegetables. Which invites the questions: Who in the heck goes to a grocery store bar—and why do they do it?
An investigation was needed. A Saturday night pub crawl, in which I was determined to drink beer at three area grocery store bars, ensued. I enlisted the help of a few friends: Jeff Diehm, Jeff’s girlfriend, Sierra Hammons, and Colleen Buchanan, our designated driver.
The bar at the Barracks Road Harris Teeter is tucked in along the wall behind the wine section, at the front end of the store. It’s easy to miss. Three patrons were perched atop bar stools as we approached. A baseball game was playing on a large TV and six taps stood near a wide selection of bottled beer. If you look straight ahead, it kind of feels like a normal bar. Turn around and you’ll see, well, a grocery store.
When we saw the prices, it started to feel less like a normal bar—in a good way. All six draft beers are $4 a pint, all the time. Bottles are $3—and that isn’t just Bud Light. Three bucks will get you a bottle of nearly any of the hundreds of 12-ounce bottled beers that Harris Teeter carries.
“We have really good prices and really good food here,” said Charles, our bartender.
Charles was right. It turns out that you can buy any prepared food from the deli section and bring it over to the bar to eat. Not only can you do this, but they encourage it: You get $1 off your beer with the purchase of a prepared food item.
There is no other bar in Charlottesville where you can eat and drink at these prices. The taps from Three Notch’d and Starr Hill cost less for a pint than at those breweries.
A woman walked over with, inexplicably, a basket of laundry and a dog. She ordered a beer and began chatting with another patron. Even at the grocery store, bars have colorful regulars.
Jeff got up, grabbed a bag of pretzels from the snack aisle and opened them on the bar. Charles scanned them and added them to our tab. In fact, your whole cart of groceries can be rung up while you sip a pint of beer or a glass of wine (the bar does not offer liquor).
“I just switched grocery stores,” Jeff declared.
Reluctantly, we pushed off to Whole Foods.
The bar at Whole Foods was built with better materials and décor than the one at Harris Teeter. And our bartender, Brenden, was knowledgeable and helpful. But it wasn’t the same kind of place.
“On Friday nights, you get a lot of single people with pizza for one who stop here for a drink before going home,” a woman seated at the bar told me. “It’s like their moment of feeling like they’ve interacted with the world.”
An eight-ounce pour of a beer called Dragon’s Milk cost $8. That set the tone for the rest of the tap list, which isn’t cheap. But Whole Foods does have a barroom edge most customers probably don’t know about: They’ll honor a growler from anyone.
We felt a sense of being physically in the way at the Whole Foods bar. Repeatedly, shoppers with carts and baskets mumbled a “pardon me” as they pushed past us. The traffic flow discouraged us from lingering, but Whole Foods does have its own set of regulars, some who stop by every day.
Duly restrained, we moved on to our final stop of the night: Wegmans.
The Charlottesville Wegmans dropped in last year like a fortress of food. You measure that place in acres, not square feet. And it set aside a corner of that acreage for a bar and restaurant called The Pub. The space feels luxurious compared with other grocery store bars.
“This is basically an airport bar with different things rolling by on wheels,” Jeff observed.
Wegmans went to lengths far beyond Harris Teeter or Whole Foods with a full-service restaurant and bar, including mixed drinks. Sometimes it even has live music.
Wegmans has nine taps, mostly between five and six bucks per pint. It has a happy hour from 4-6 pm, Monday through Friday, and $5 appetizers, including mussels and a barbecue-bacon burger. We snacked on perfect fresh, raw, salty Chesapeake Bay oysters.
Jeff was right. Wegmans bar does feel like an airport bar, but it doesn’t drain your wallet the way a typical airport bar does. I can see how someone who lives nearby might pick this as his neighborhood hangout, and stop by often for a few pints and a burger, or a dozen oysters.
“I enjoyed Harris Teeter the most,” Sierra says. “I felt like I was less in the way than at Whole Foods. …I would definitely go there again to pregame before going downtown where the more expensive beers are.”
The unanimous winner of the night was Harris Teeter, for selection, value, food and atmosphere. Charles’ service as bartender sealed the deal. But at any of Charlottesville’s grocery store bars, there is a deal waiting for the adventurous, the weird and the cheap.
Wrapped in a blue fleece blanket covered in pineapples, a sleepy Dori Mock has held her place as first in line at the supermarket’s November 6 grand opening since 4am.
“I’m buying into the hype,” she says, though she’s never been to a Wegmans and doesn’t quite know what to expect. A crew of six friends, young and old, joins her in line in front of the store’s glass sliding door, which is scheduled to open at 7am. They name the staples they are most anticipating: sushi, donuts, bagels, chocolate dome cake and, most of all in this moment, bathrooms.
By 6:30am, two lines of toboggan-hat- and glove-wearing grocery fanatics have formed on each side of the supermarket. Some clutch complimentary coffee that the store’s employees handed out, while others already have a tight grip on their cart, ready to get inside the store. In Mock’s line, the second group of patrons has its own story to tell.
“We were the real first people here,” says Connie Wallace, laughing. She and her coworker, Heather Waugh, who work at the Pantops Chick-fil-A, were so eager to be the first ones inside that they slept in a car in the parking lot.
It was “cold and uncomfortable,” but they kept the car running to stay warm and the shopping center’s security officers checked on them often. However, when they woke up at 5am, they were disheartened to see that people were already in line.
Bummer.
A few minutes before the store’s anticipated opening, both groups, plus a few more from their line, are led into the front of the grocery store, where they are greeted by every Wegmans employee scheduled to work that morning, as well as a number of other Wegmans employees who stopped by to welcome the eager “Weggies,” as one shopper fondly refers to himself.
Store Manager Chris DePumpo and executive chef Jason Voos were both on hand to greet customers on opening day. Photo by Tom McGovern
Among the Wegmans staff at the storefront is store manager Chris DePumpo, elevated on a few stacked pallets, and giving his workers the pep talk of a lifetime.
“It’s going to be a busy day. Make sure you take your breaks, keep hydrated, and if it gets a little bit chaotic, the back room is a beautiful place,” he tells the mass of cheering employees. “Love yourself and love each other and there’s nothing you can’t do together.”
All at once, the Wegmans employees and their leaders begin clapping their hands slowly and in sync, gradually speeding up the beat until there is no rest in between their rhythm.
“Give me a W!” DePumpo calls, and the crowd responds by shouting out the letter and forming it with their arms, “Y-M-C-A” style. Then comes the E, the G…and so on.
At the end of the cheer, DePumpo’s pallet throne is dismantled and cleared, and the Wegmans floodgates are opened. It’s time to shop.
“I’m a Weggie!” can still be heard from one member in the crowd, who holds up his Shoppers Club card for a photo.
Customers are first introduced to the produce section, the “crown jewel” of the store, according to Wegmans spokesperson Valerie Fox. Of the 700 items offered, 140 are organic and some are regional, such as the selection of meats brought in from Senterfitt Farms in Madison County and Huntley Farm in Broad Run.
Wegmans has its own organic farm and orchard in Canandaigua, New York, near its Rochester home base, where it has produced a good deal of the supermarket’s produce since 2007. It’s quite a stretch from the company’s inception as a small grocery cart, called the Rochester Fruit and Vegetable Company, launched in 1916 by the Wegman family.
The Charlottesville location at 5th Street Station is Wegmans’ 92nd in the country. According to the store’s special formula—which they declined to share—it was calculated that about 23,000 people visited Wegmans on opening day.
Photo by Tom McGovern
“One comment a customer left was that he’d never been before and wondered what all the hype was about,” DePumpo says, but at the end of the visit, that customer said the experience lived up to its reputation.
So what is it? The vast selection of prepared foods that you can eat in the supermarket’s 250-seat dining room or grab to-go? The sushi that you can watch being prepared? Or is it the pizza shop, the sandwich station or the sit-down restaurant? The 56 cookies baked daily or the fresh fish market? The cave-ripened cheese? Family-pack deals?
John Emerson, a “recovering executive chef,” is now in charge of sushi at all Wegmans stores across the board. He’s excited to give the people of Charlottesville a taste of the supermarket’s famous wild sockeye salmon oshi-zushi, a sushi recipe created by Wegmans’ Takahiro Hachiya, who says the square sushi dish, pressed into a plastic mold, garnished and flamed with a torch, was actually invented in Japan in the 15th century and seldom seen in America.
At Wegmans, however, it flies off the shelves.
“Get it before the bears do,” Emerson says.
Wegmans by the numbers
120,000 square feet
23,000 shoppers attended the grand opening
65,000 products on the shelves, compared with 40,000 in most grocery stores
1,000 different SKUs of beer for sale
$800 for the most expensive bottle of wine, Penfolds Grange
800 parking spaces
700 different produce items (140 organic)
550 employees
92nd Wegmans to open in the country
56 varieties of cookies baked daily
27 registers
The executive chef in Charlottesville, Jason Voos, manages a culinary team of 150 employees assigned specifically to his store. He does a little bit of cooking and a lot of developing the food interests of the people on his team.
DePumpo says that in his 23 years with the company, he’s noticed that, while those things are popular, they’re not what keep the people coming back. He attributes that to the welcoming atmosphere.
“People get a true sense of family,” he says, when they enter the store. “They know [employees] are here because they’re doing what they love.”
Wegmans’ employees are called family members, he explains. And though 6,000 people applied for the chance to work at his store, he could only hire 550 (200 full-time and 350 part-time), with about 50 of them coming from leadership positions in other Wegmans locations.
Put simply, “a lot of planning” goes into opening a store, but the most exciting, and perhaps most important part, he says, is training the new team.
The first employee orientation was held April 28. During that training they identified the store in which each team member would train and observe, and 95 percent of them were sent to locations in Richmond or Northern Virginia.
The training takes place over four days during which employees work for 10 hours a day and stay overnight in their locations—Wegmans pays for their hotels, accommodations and meals.
This gives them enough time to prepare for the big day, DePumpo says, without having to spend too much time away from their families.
For someone who arrived at the store around 3:45am to start prepping for opening day, the best part for DePumpo was that initial Wegmans cheer.
“It was like coming home,” he says.
Neighborhood reactions
While thousands of people rush to take in the newly opened Wegmans at 5th Street Station, some residents in the areas surrounding the shopping center look at the complex with a mixture of disdain and disappointment—and it has little to do with the upscale grocery chain.
“There are both positive and negative effects when a retailer opens a store of this size,” Eugenio Schettini, president of the Belmont Carlton Neighborhood Association, writes in an e-mail to C-VILLE. “The creation of new jobs and opportunities for our citizens—to the impact of increased traffic and the mounting pressures on the local mom-and-pop stores and businesses. It’s not just Wegmans, but the whole shopping center.”
Evan Terrell has lived at Lakeside Apartments on Avon Street Extended for the past six months. Construction on the new shopping center was underway when he moved in—and he isn’t happy about seeing so much of the natural land cleared.
“I understand that Charlottesville is a growing community with growing needs and the ability to spend money,” Terrell says, as he looks down Avon, toward the new traffic light signaling the 5th Street Station entrance. “However, this new complex is representative of a broader, more universal issue regarding the need for growth—trying to balance that with more sustainable behaviors and consuming patterns.”
Terrell says he has already noticed a high increase in traffic coming and going from the area, as well as light pollution and construction. But that isn’t his main worry.
“My concern is that the desire for profits weighed much more heavily than the need to conserve tens of acres of forest land that were there before,” Terrell says. “The atmosphere of Charlottesville—the pride the city has in its small-town community feel, its proximity to the mountains, the forest and the natural areas is not being preserved due to this endless emphasis on growth and development.”
The making of 5th Street Station
Wegmans might be the star of the show, but it’s not the only attraction in the 470,000-square-foot shopping center on 73 acres.
The total investment has been $200 million, according to Jeff Garrison, a partner with the developer, 5th Street Station Ventures LLC, which now owns the property.
“The site was never truly developed before this,” he says, adding that a landfill and storage facility previously sat on the property.
The land was bought before Wegmans, 5th Street Station’s anchor store, signed on, and now the retail occupancy is 90 percent filled—with 21 shops lined up—and some, like the supermarket, already in business.
Joan Albiston lives on the opposite side of the shopping complex, on Royer Drive in the Willoughby neighborhood.
Albiston, a resident there since 2008, says the creation of the new shopping center has had lasting effects on her home: Glowing lights from the shopping center illuminate rooms in her home throughout the night and the sound of nearby highways roars louder—especially during rush hour.
“It just makes me sad, and I see it all the time,” Albiston says, as she looks out her window onto 5th Street Station. “I mean, I’m sitting here looking at people come and go out of the shopping center right now.”
She also says the loss of wildlife habitat is a visible issue, noting that more animals are trying to find homes and food in their neighborhood and are found dead on 5th Street and Harris Road when they meet the increased traffic. A tally of animals struck by traffic includes a bear cub, many deer, a possum, raccoon and fox.
But it’s not all bad news; Albiston admits there are some benefits to the new shopping center.
“People like it,” she concedes. “You could argue and say, ‘Well, less energy gets used because people don’t have to drive all the way to Walmart or to 29 North’ and that has some value.”
Albiston says she is lucky to live in a neighborhood that is still surrounded largely by woodland, as she has seen other areas in town where this is not the case, but says she still wants to voice her concern.
“It really isn’t egregious by many people’s standards,” Albiston says. “We have a really great deal. But, if I don’t say something, how do people know, how do people be careful when the next development comes along? And it will. …In fact, it already has.”—Additional reporting by Rebecca Bowyer
Why C’ville?
In May 2012, the Wegmans team announced its plans to expand into Charlottesville. Though two store locations opened in Richmond earlier this year, supermarket spokesperson Jo Natale says they didn’t affect the decision to bring one here.
She does say, however, that Charlottesville is similar to the New York town of Ithaca, where Wegmans has existed since 1988.
“What’s similar about the two is that both are home to major universities and both have downtown pedestrian malls, but I would hesitate to say that the demographics are comparable,” she says, adding that the Charlottesville store wasn’t studied in comparison to Ithaca’s. “Each site must stand on its own.”
The most important criteria Wegmans looks for in new sites, she says, is a site large enough to accommodate the store and adequate parking, accessibility of the site, population density in proximity to the site and its location to other Wegmans stores.
“If all of these criteria are met, we look at other demographics, like income,” she says.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income in Charlottesville in 2014 dollars was $47,218; Albemarle County was $67,958. (Ithaca, New York, by comparison was $30,318.)
Just the facts
The chain began as a modest food cart called the Rochester Fruit and Vegetable Company in 1916 and is basking in its centennial celebration.
The store offers regional products, like beef from Senterfitt Farms in Madison County.
Five local beers are on tap at the supermarket’s full-service restaurant, The Pub. This includes Evelyn, a session IPA made by Hardywood Brewery exclusively for Wegmans.
Ranked No. 5 on Forbes’ list of America’s Best Employers this year.
Wegmans built and opened its first cheese cave in New York in 2014 to mimic conditions in European cheese-ripening caves. Freshly ripened cheese is then shipped to localities.
For opening week, off-duty Albemarle County Police Department officers were hired to make sure there was a safe and orderly flow of traffic. Up to seven officers were working at a time.
Shelf life
Charlottesville and Albemarle County have never shied away from top grocery chains—in fact, they already have three Krogers, three Food Lions, three Harris Teeters, one Giant, one Trader Joe’s, one Whole Foods and one Fresh Market. So how will the new guy in town compete?
If you ask them, they say it’s their prices.
Red seedless grapes, per lb.
Wegmans: $0.99, Food Lion: $1.99, Kroger: $1.99
80 percent ground beef family pack, per lb.
Wegmans: $1.99, Food Lion: $3.29, Kroger: $3.99
Store brand all-purpose enriched flour, 5 lbs.
Wegmans: $0.89, Food Lion: $1.87, Kroger: $1.79
Store brand macaroni and cheese, 6-7.25 oz.
Wegmans: $0.33, Food Lion: $0.72, Kroger: $0.79
Store brand butter sticks, 1 lb.
Wegmans: $1.99, Food Lion: $3.59, Kroger: $3.49
Colgate Total toothpaste, 6 oz.
Wegmans: $1.49, Food Lion: $1.97, Kroger: $1.89
Photo by Tom McGovern
Top 10 list
According to a Wegmans spokesperson, these items are some of the store’s most sought-after items.
Wegmans Basting Oil: 8 oz. for $6.99, 16 oz. for $8.99 or a family pack of two 16-oz. bottles for $15.99
Wegmans Family Pack Tilapia Fillets: $4.99/lb., sold in a two-pound package for $9.98
Wegmans Greek Yogurt: $.69 each or a family pack of 12 for $7.80
Wegmans Ready-to-Cook Chicken Cacciatore: package price varies by weight; $4.99/lb. for a large pack with an average size of 2.9 pounds, $6.99/lb. for a small pack with an average size of 1.3 pounds
You don’t even have to get out of your car to satiate your Panera craving. Photo by Tom McGovern
Loosen your belts, Charlottesville. We’re getting more food, food that we didn’t even know we needed. Here’s a quick roundup of what’s open—or will be open soon—at 5th Street Station.
Wegmans A chain that feels less like a grocery store and more like a marketplace, Wegmans boasts a host of specialty items: organic produce and meats, fresh bakery breads, sushi, a market café with a self-serve bar, made-to-order pizzas, sandwiches, a pub with bacon burgers and fish ’n’ chips, a cheese counter, a large wine and beer selection and more. Open now.
Timberwood Tap House The sister restaurant of Timberwood Grill located across from Hollymead Town Center on the north side of town, Timberwood Tap House has an approachable (and cleverly written) menu full of American classics like wings, calamari, burgers, salads, spare ribs, New York strip, s’mores baked Alaska and more, plus sizable beer and wine lists. The bar side of the restaurant is filled with TVs, but the dining side has nary a screen in sight if you’d rather have a side of conversation with your entrée, says owner Adam Gregory. Open now.
Panera Bread The time has come, Charlottesville. You no longer have to leave the comfort of your vehicle to get your broccoli-cheddar soup and asiago cheese bagel fix, because this Panera has a drive-thru. Wear your pajamas, if you like. We won’t judge. Open now.
Fuzzy’s Taco Shop This is the first Virginia franchise for the Texas-based, fast-casual, Baja-style taco chain that has built a cult following throughout the South. Franchise owner Pranav Shah plans to open the restaurant early in the morning so that third- shift workers can come in for happy hour margaritas after work. Opening in February.
Other food and drink spots slated to open at 5th Street are: Jersey Mike’s Subs, Red Mango frozen yogurt and Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. There will be a Virginia ABC store there, too.
Rock Barn to close
According to an e-mail sent to its restaurant partners on November 1, “The Rock Barn will be wrapping up this chapter of its life at the end of the year.” As of last week, the field-to-fork butcher was in the middle of its final production run and will continue to sell its remaining inventory through December. “I have been lucky to work with so many talented people both at The Rock Barn as well as all of our restaurant partners,” says founder Ben Thompson. “I will always be grateful for the knowledge (the late) Richard (Bean) and Ara Avagyan imparted on myself and the team. Double H, under Ara’s guidance, is still doing a spectacular job and continues to be an inspiration for me as we plan the next steps,” Thompson says. As to what those next steps are, we’ll have to wait and see.
Mea culpa: Dabney oversights
In last week’s Small Bites column, we wrote about two Michelin-rated D.C. restaurants that boast local ties (The Inn at Little Washington and The Dabney). We regrettably neglected to mention that Ben Louquet, formerly of Zocalo and Tavola, and Brad Langdon, former bar manager at Public Fish & Oyster on West Main Street, are current members of the The Dabney bar staff.
Residents in Louisa have reported phone calls in which the caller asks who they are voting for in the presidential election, and depending on which candidate they indicate, might tell them their polling place has been moved. It is unclear whether the voters are hoping to sway Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump backers, but the registrar said no voting precincts have changed.
Crystal ball
UVA Center for Politics’ Larry Sabato announced Monday his final Crystal Ball predictions, which called for a victory for Hillary Clinton with 322 electoral college votes, followed by 216 for Trump. Sabato also predicted a 50-50 Senate with a GOP-led House of Representatives.
UVA student charged with false report
According to the Cav Daily, first-year Thomas Shaw’s report of an October 29 robbery by a knife-wielding, white plastic Halloween mask-wearing mugger who took his wallet and ring led to a University Police charge for filing a false report, and could bring an Honor Committee investigation.
In the ‘what were they thinking?’ category
The News Leader
Robert E. Lee High School principal Mark Rowicki and secretary Stephanie Corbett dressed as Donald Trump and an orange prison jump-suited Hillary Clinton, respectively, in Staunton on Halloween. Parental outrage ensued and the photos on the school website were replaced with anotice from school superintendent Linda Reviea that called the choice of costumes “in poor judgment.”
Ike’s reopens
The vintage clothing store on the Downtown Mall that was damaged by an electrical fire June 29 opened for business again last week.
Wegmans wonderland
A new day dawns in the parking lot of Wegmans at 5th Street Station. Matteus frankovich/skyclad AP
Ranked No. 5 on Forbes’ list of America’s Best Employers this year, the 120,000-square-foot supermarket opened its doors to a long line of grocery fanatics at 7am on Sunday, November 6, and 23,000 people flocked there that day. With a giant rooster cuckoo clock that cock-a-doodle-doos on the hour and a train set chugging along a track suspended from the ceiling, the Wegmans at 5th Street Station is the company’s 92nd to open in the U.S.
We bet you didn’t know:
The chain began as a modest food cart called the Rochester Fruit and Vegetable Company in 1916 and is basking in its centennial celebration.
Carrying some products from its own farm in Rochester, New York, the store also sells regional products, such as beef from Senterfitt Farms in Madison County.
The Pub, a sit-down restaurant, has a full menu with five local beers on tap, and the grab-and-go Market Café offers indoor and outdoor seating for 250 people.
About 65,000 products are available, including 1,000 different SKUs of beers, 700 fresh produce items, hundreds of imported and domestic cheeses and a seafood market with whole fish delivered from around the world daily. Lest we forget, 56 varieties of cookies are baked daily.
PEARLS OF WISDOM
First Lady Dorothy McAuliffe celebrates the second annual Virginia Oyster Month at Public Fish & Oyster. Photo: Rammelkamp Foto
“R” months don’t mean much anymore for oyster consumption, but November is officially Virginia Oyster Month, and that means all you can eat from the commonwealth’s eight oyster regions. Salty? Buttery? Sweet? Virginia apparently has ’em all. The state launched an Oyster Trail in 2015, which has spurred agritourism, and now shore-to-table is a thing. In fact, Governor Terry McAuliffe has proclaimed Virginia the “oyster capital of the East Coast.”
Oysters are a nearly $34 million industry in Virginia
More than 135 million were planted in 2015
Quote of the week
“We’re experiencing history here. It’s awesome.”—30-year poll worker JoAnn Perkins says about the unprecedented turnout at Crozet Elementary on Election Day.
Massive 5th Street Station, future home of Wegmans, is underway.
Photo Stephen Barling
Eramo v. Jackie
Former UVA dean Nicole Eramo fought for months to get discredited “A Rape on Campus” source Jackie deposed for her defamation suit against Rolling Stone. That finally happened April 7, and now Eramo wants the court to throw out “personal attacks” Jackie allegedly made during the deposition, according to April 12 court filings.
Kevin Eisenfrats and gel. Photo Dan Addison, UVA university communications
Keeping those sperm from fertilizing
UVA looks like the male contraceptive leader with two different approaches. John Herr is on track to create a birth control drug for men after discovering and isolating a key enzyme and seeking to design a drug that can stop the sperm from swimming to the egg. Kevin Eisenfrats has created and is currently testing Contraline, a non-surgical gel injected into the testes.
Still increased, only less so
Albemarle supes voted to raise the county tax rate 2 cents instead of 2.5 cents April 13, and UVA upped in-state tuition 1.5 percent instead of 3 percent for continuing students, thanks to higher funding from the state.
More rewards waiting
After the disbursement of $150K for information leading to the conviction of Jesse Matthew in the death of Morgan Harrington, Crime Stoppers still has rewards waiting in unsolved crimes: missing persons Jesse Hicks, last seen in 2004, and Sage Smith, missing since 2012; the second perp involved in the 2007 brutal beating death of William Godsey at the Wood Grill Buffet and the 2006 shooting of a UVA student on Wertland Street.
Dogwood Festival’s porno website
People who Google and click on Charlottesville Dogwood Festival find a different type of carnival: Instabang, which warns “the site contains nude pics of people you may know.”
Quote of the week
“I am reminded of this history every time that I’m running—because I like to jog—through the city and people lock their doors, or when they look at me with a face of terror even though I’m vice-mayor. …I’m reminded of this history of our country and our past when I’m called names like after the Lee Park press conference, when I was called ‘nigger-loving bastard.’” Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy, City Council, April 18
The upscale grocery store is on schedule to open this fall. Courtesy of Wegmans
Wegmans, though still under construction at 5th Street Station, a retail center with almost half a million square feet of space, is currently hiring and training full-time employees.
The upscale grocery chain is on schedule to open this fall and will employ about 550 people, with current openings for 200 full-time employees. Part-time jobs will be available later this month, according to a release.
Available jobs range from entry-level management, customer service and culinary jobs, such as line cooks and restaurant servers. Apply online at or call 1-877-WEGMANS. Interviews will begin in March.
