Unwritten Rules To Know Before Visiting Wegmans

There's a lot to love about living in the Mid-Atlantic. We've got D.C. and NYC, the country's best pizza (sorry Chicago, but it's true), picturesque beaches, verdant forests, and most importantly, Wegmans. I pity those outside the only states where you can shop at Wegmans, because this grocery store is everything you wish your local supermarket was.

As soon as you walk inside a Wegmans, you're bathed in warm, soft lights (as opposed to the repulsive white fluorescent lights of most stores) and greeted by the smell of fresh-cut flowers. You'll see hot food being prepared by skilled chefs and samples given out like they're going out of style, not unlike the scene at one of NYC's famous food halls. You'll know immediately that this must be one of the best grocery stores in the U.S.

Since the store has a whole lot more to offer than most regional supermarkets — from restaurant-level prepared meals to excellent international items and high-quality private label goods — there are a few tips and tricks to follow to get the most out of a Wegmans experience (and it really is an experience). I'm a seasoned shopper here, and I've jotted down my top tips that took me years of visiting the bougie chain to really get down pat. So keep these unwritten rules in the back of your mind before heading to a Wegmans for the first time if you want to get the most out of this food lover's Disneyland.

You'll rarely ever find name-brand food items in my house. I can fill a book with all the reasons I always opt for store brand products, but the main reason is that the quality is usually comparable to the name brand, and at a fraction of the cost. However, Wegmans' eponymous house brand doesn't just compare to the big-name food brands — it often blows them out of the water.

One of my biggest money-saving tips at Wegmans is to always opt for the house brand. More often than not, the quality of these products is outstanding, and many of them come at a steep discount compared to their name-brand counterparts. For example, the store's own almond milk is a shining example of an all-purpose plant milk — delicious in smoothies, cereal, or coffee — at $2.49. Meanwhile, Almond Breeze is just as good, but for over a dollar more at Wegmans.

If you're new to Wegmans house brand, I suggest you dive into some sweet treats first. Its ice cream is a fan favorite, and I'm particularly fond of the packaged cookies. But I'd be hard pressed (pun intended) not to mention the juices. Wegmans' juices are one of the store's many claims to fame, especially the cold-pressed options. I'm partial to the cranberry-apple and the blackberry, apple, and black currant juice, known as the black-and-blue "stomp".

Whether you're running out on a quick lunch break or you're having a relaxing, chore-free night in, a fully-prepared grocery store meal can really hit the spot — depending on where you get it, that is. These heat-and-eat meals from the supermarket sometimes get a bad rep, which is fair; they can be soggy, low quality, and a little boring. But this doesn't hold true for Wegmans, the undisputed king of prepared meals.

You can pick up ready-to-eat foods at Wegmans as packaged meals, made-to-order subs, or at the store's hot bar, which is home to everything from vegetarian staples to buffalo wings. The microwavable heat-and-eat meals include chicken shawarma with quinoa (my personal favorite), salmon teriyaki, and black pepper steak with udon noodles. But, believe it or not, these aren't even the star of the hot foods show.

The chain is famous for its Gold pan meals, which are found in the refrigerated section as either mains or sides in oven-ready containers. These aren't your grandma's supermarket meals. They tend to be a little bougier than the microwavable meals, helping you put together a nice sit-down dinner for the family rather than something to eat in the office breakroom. Fan favorite mains include Old Bay shrimp skewers, chicken marsala, scallops in garlic pesto sauce, and lobster mac and cheese. Popular sides include things like truffle butter veggies and potato gratin.

My one and only qualm with Wegmans is that it's certainly not cheaper than other grocery stores. In fact, it can start to get pricey fast for those who don't know all the ins and outs of shopping here. The first step to becoming a seasoned Wegmans regular without dropping a ton of dough on groceries is to sign up for the Shoppers Club benefits.

Unlike a lot of other grocery chains around the U.S., Wegmans' Shoppers Club doesn't provide discounts in the form of points, where accumulated points can be redeemed for discounts on your grocery total at checkout. Instead, the Shoppers Club gives you access to a variety of coupons that non-members don't have access to. Wegmans will even send specific coupons that are likely to interest you based on your shopping habits, and these coupons are easily redeemed at checkout using the phone number associated with your account. According to Wegmans, Shoppers Club members receive "a value of over $1,000 in coupons per year."

There are more perks outside of just coupons and cost-saving that makes Wegmans Shoppers Club (which is free to join, I might add) worthwhile. You'll get access to easy pharmacy refills and home delivery for medications, up-to-date product recall information sent to your email, and the ability to create online shopping lists with bookmarked items that you buy often.

If you're in New York — where the majority of Wegmans are located and plastic bags are a thing of the past — you're probably already doing this without a second thought. However, the rest of us need to start bringing our own bags to shop at Wegmans. In general, shopping with reusable bags is a great way to reduce your impact on the environment. But even more importantly, it's nice to not have a kitchen crowded with piles and piles of single-use bags that you keep telling yourself you'll reuse soon.

By the end of 2022, Wegmans had done away with all plastic bags in its stores to make shopping more sustainable. In their stead, the store stocked up on paper bags, and I won't beat around the bush here — they're terrible. They don't have handles, so all they're really good for is keeping items mildly secure as you fumble your way to your car. You're better off purchasing some reusable bags from Wegmans for just $1.29 each. They come with fun regional designs, have a decent capacity, and they're inexpensive enough that you can stock up on plenty to keep in your trunk so you never have to worry about forgetting them.

Since prices at Wegmans aren't exactly dirt cheap, customers tend to flock to the advertised specials. Discounted products — which are displayed in front of the entrance and throughout the store — rotate, so it's always a good idea to see what's on sale every time you pop in. If you notice a sign for a discount on a product you're interested in, but the product is out of stock, don't walk away defeated — instead, head to the customer service desk.

If the store sells out of a sale product before the sale runs out, its policy is to replace the item with something similar and apply the sale to the substitute. If, however, there aren't any suitable substitutes, Wegmans will issue a raincheck on the sale for you via a purchase certificate. The raincheck extends the sale another 30 days, giving you a month to come back to see if the item has been restocked. This is one of those sneaky ways seasoned shoppers get a deal at Wegmans even after the sale runs out. However, you can't double-up on deals by applying a raincheck sale to a Shoppers Club coupon, and some items aren't eligible for this individually applied extended sale period.

A grocery store can have a completely different vibe depending on the day of the week or the time of day. Personally, I would rather wake up at the crack of dawn to avoid a crowded grocery store — trying to locate items and move a packed cart around crowds can turn a 30-minute grocery run into a 2-hour excursion. This holds true for almost every supermarket, but any Wegmans shopper will tell you that the store sees particularly huge crowds. So, to avoid Wegmans' famous swathes of shoppers, make sure you head out for your grocery run at the right time.

Weekends are, as my dad would say, "a madhouse" at Wegmans. Try to avoid Saturday and Sunday shopping as much as you can, except for quick one-or-two item runs. Instead, try to hit the store on Monday mornings. Monday is the best weekday to shop at Wegmans to avoid large crowds — plus, you're more likely to find what you're looking for. The store is usually restocked on Monday mornings, including the famously epic produce section, so items will be as fresh as possible at this time. If you can make it to the store as soon as it opens, you'll feel like Wegmans' food paradise was reserved just for you to sample, browse, and enjoy the vibes to your heart's content.

Along with the gold pan meals, house-brand products, and produce section that looks like a Renaissance-era fresco, Wegmans has another claim to fame: cheese. The store's cheese counter, adjacent to the produce department, is as close as you can get to a genuine French cheesemonger's shop inside an American grocery store. Here, you can pick up artisanal cheeses that Wegmans actually ages itself. The chain has its own facility in Rochester, New York, designed to mimic the iconic cheese caves of Europe. It sources cheeses from all over the globe and ripens them to perfection, so you know you're getting the good stuff when you stop at Wegmans for cheese board ingredients.

If you really want to make the most of Wegman's cheese counter, get the free samples. The cheeses offered here are superior to most grocery store cheeses, so don't assume you already know what something tastes like. The cheesemongers on staff are happy to hand out samples of everything you're interested in, and will even package up cheese at a specific weight for you if you don't see a package that's the size you're looking for.

Wegmans is your one-stop shop if you're looking to build a charcuterie board. Whether you're after Brie, Camembert, Manchego, or anything else you could fathom, you'll find it here. Don't shy away from asking the cheese experts any questions on pairings — whatever it is that would go best with a certain cheese, Wegmans probably has it in stock.

I cook a lot of international recipes at home, and whenever I go to a basic grocery store, I'm always pretty disappointed in the selection of Asian and Latin American foods offered — it's usually nothing but soy sauce and hard taco shells. But Wegmans pulls out all the stops for its international foods aisle, with items you'll rarely find at other grocery chains. It even has an entire aisle dedicated to international items, while most stores section off just a tiny sliver of an aisle for foods from around the world.

Sure, there's the standard stuff, like frozen samosas and empanadas or taco seasoning and hot sauce. But you'll also spot some items that you'd usually find in a specialty store in the U.S. Wegmans carries items like Sapporo Ichiban noodles from Japan, Kewpie mayo, red and green curry paste, and stroopwafels. Like most U.S. grocery stores' international sections, items lean towards either Japanese, Chinese, Indian, British, or Latin American, but the selection is still impressive. Wegmans even carries a wide assortment of global items under its generic label. I'm particularly fond of the store's sweet potato glass noodles, canned coconut milk, refried beans, butter chicken sauce, miso paste, toasted sesame oil, and stoneground corn tortillas.