Wegman’s Food Market Opens Its First Manhattan Store in East Village, Replacing K-Mart
The upscale grocery store opened its first Manhattan location on October 18, at the site of a shut-down K-Mart in the East Village. Company chairman Danny Wegman told Straus News that he was “thrilled” about the new location. No local political leaders were there to greet the company, which will employ more than 600 people locally.
| 20 Oct 2023 | 02:00
Customers flock to Wegman’s, which opened its first store in Manhattan on Oct. 18. It has replaced a space–across from Astor Place–that was once home to big-box retailer K-Mart. (
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Chairman Danny Wegman and Paula Kerr Jarrett, his wife, attending the grand opening of Manhattan’s first Wegman’s. It has replaced a K-Mart at Astor Place. (
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The exterior of the new Wegman’s at 770 Broadway. (
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The sushi bar at the new Wegman’s. (
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Wegman’s has arrived in Manhattan. The upscale grocery store franchise–which was founded in Rochester in 1916, before growing to more than 100 retail outlets in the Northeast–finally opened on Oct. 18, occupying what was once a K-Mart in the East Village.
The new 87,500 sq. ft. location at 770 Broadway, which will employ more than 600 people, is already brimming with delighted customers who milled hither and thither between packed food aisles on the opening day.
The new grocery store will host an “onsite dining room, featuring a Sushi Bar and Champagne-Oyster Bar,” and will also feature a dedicated online-shopping portal at www.wegmans.com/Astor-Place-NYC.
Wegman’s claims that it derives its reputation from mixing typical grocery offerings with “an extensive array of Restaurant Foods including pre-packaged and made-to-order, sushi, pizza, soups, subs, and Mediterranean inspired mezze items.” The company also noted that its seafood department boasts “fish delivered daily from ports on the east coast, across the country, and most notable, from the Toyosu Fish Market in Japan, which will be flown in fresh several times a week.” A product section houses “hundreds of different fruits and vegetables,” and a cheese shop features “specialty and artisan cheeses produced domestically or imported from around the world.”
A customer with a bulky “Rochester, NY” sign hung around his neck told Straus News that he was delighted about opening day, since it cuts his commute to Wegman’s only other NYC outlet in Brooklyn. location anymore. “It’s just a really great store,” he said. (The Brooklyn shop, on Flushing Ave., the chain’s first within the five boroughs, opened in 2019).
A man wearing an ostentatiously studded belt buckle–and an equally bedazzled woman, his wife–would’ve blended into the milling crowd, if it weren’t for a few perceptive shoppers asking them for photos near the escalators on the lower floor. Sure enough, Danny Wegman was in town for the grand debut, and he appeared to have a captive audience.
Chairman Wegman told Straus that he was “thrilled” by his franchise’s arrival in Manhattan. “I’ll be here today, gone tomorrow, and back for the weekend,” he said.
The company has been ranked as one of the best places to work by Fortune, coming in at #4 in a recent ranking. “Workers laud the privately owned company for its intensive training program, commitment to flexible scheduling, and focus on providing employees the opportunity for advancement,” that publication claims.
Yet a step outside the store revealed that its arrival wouldn’t be a runaway celebration for everybody. Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) passed out fliers, hoping to let passerby and Wegman’s know that NYC is a “union town.”
Freddy, a UFCW delegate representing union shops at grocery stores such as Key Foods and Fairway, explained that “we’re really just trying to spread the word that a non-union employer is opening up in Manhattan. We have a number of employers in the city that, unfortunately, when a big shop like this opens up...it [takes] a whole lot of business from them. That, in turn, is going to cause a whole lot of issues for our membership.”
Indeed, Wegman’s may take the approach of competitors such as Trader Joe’s, which shut down its wine store on East 14th St. after employees voted to unionize there.
The ground floor at 770 Broadway, a building that hosts companies such as Meta and Yahoo! on its upper floors, had been vacant since K-Mart shut its branch there in 2021. Wegman’s signed a 30-year lease shortly thereafter. The building originally housed an annex of the Philadelphia-based retailer Wanamaker’s, one of the nation’s first department stores.
No politicians fêted the 9 a.m. opening on-site, as a Wegman’s spokesperson said that none were invited. No ribbon-cutting ceremony was held either, but a line of wannabe shoppers stretched down the block prior to the doors being unlocked.