"wegmans" news and stories

It's becoming harder and harder to believe the ubiquitous promises made by grocery stores everywhere: "Thousands of low prices!" or "Low prices every day!"

What with food prices hitting record levels around the world, what does "low" mean anyway?

But the surprise gambit by one regional grocery chain caught our attention: Wegmans has announced that it's freezing prices on 40 products through the end of the year.

The Food and Drug Administration has announced that Massachusetts-based State Garden Co. has issued a voluntary recall of fresh-cut salad products processed in its plant on January 4. The recall comes after samples of State Garden salad mixes were found to be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

State Garden distributes packaged salad products throughout the Northeast. The affected products include baby conventional and organic arugula, baby spinach, baby romaine, spring mix and organic herb salad. These products are marketed under the following names: Gold Quality, Hannaford, Natures Place, Natures Promise, Roche Bros, Northeast Fresh, Noreast Fresh, Olivia's Organics, Signature, Wegmans.

The products that are being recalled have trace-back codes of 45693 and 45703, which are typically found in the upper right corner of bag labels. The "best if used by" date should be no later than January 15, 2011. The FDA has provided a complete list for consumers.

This year, the owners of a local grocery-store chain in upstate New York got probably the best holiday gift ever, when an Oscar-nominated, Golden Globe-winning actor called up and offered to do some TV ads -- with his mom.

Alec Baldwin-star of, well, everything is pitching holiday desserts for Wegmans. which has stores in Maryland, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as well as New York.

Baldwin's 80-year-old mom, Carol Newcomb Baldwin, is a loyal Wegmans customer, as fans of the Late Show

Move over Asian carp, you're not the only pesky species to be eyed by the seafood industry as a potential food source. Officials in Virginia have set their sights on the homely cownose ray, whose population has exploded, in part because of a sharp decline in their natural predator, the inland coastal shark. The population boom is bad news for valuable Chesapeake oysters, clams and scallops. Hungry rays have been known to wipe out entire shellfish beds with their powerful crushing jaws.

Mike Hutt, executive director for the Virginia Marine Products Board has been working to develop a market for the red-fleshed cownose ray (renamed a more appealing Chesapeake Ray), but don't expect it to taste like its white-fleshed cousin, skate.

"It's not flaky, and it has a texture and tastes closer to veal or beef," says Hutt.

Back in the '80s and '90s, grabbing dinner at the prepared foods section of your neighborhood grocery store meant picking up a rotisserie chicken, some gloppy potato salad, and maybe -- if you were feeling ambitious -- a trip through the salad bar.

While those rotisserie chickens haven't gone anywhere, these days, new high-end prepared food offerings have turned sections of the supermarket into full-blown restaurants.

Wegman's, a small supermarket chain based in Rochester, N.Y., features a Market Café that offers shoppers more than your average neighborhood diner. Pizza, sushi, stir-frys to order, homemade soups, even something they call a "large fish fry dinner." Whole Foods, the granddaddy of luxe prepared foods, goes even further. Here, depending on the store, you might find a Parisian cafe, a pizza bar, a BBQ shack, a sushi bar, a raw foods bar, a taco bar, a sandwich bar, or a full-out wine bar.

So what's the motive behind this new ready-to-eat bonanza? Profit, of course. Company execs want to keep customers returning to the store, and more visits mean more shopping overall.