The new 88,000-square-foot Wegmans Food Market will open at 9 a.m. on Wednesday, March 20, company officials announced Thursday afternoon.
The new store, which will stock as many as 25,000 different items, is under construction and moving closer to completion, company officials told LevittownNow.com and NewtownPANow.com.
Wegmans officials took this news organization on a tour of the under-construction facility that sits in the new 30-acre mixed-use Prickett Preserve development nestled between Stony Hill Road and I-295 in Lower Makefield Township, which sits only a few hundred yards from the borders with Middletown and Newtown townships.
“We’ve been working hard to hire and train new employees, and we’re looking for more enthusiastic candidates to round out our team before opening day,” said Store Manager Bill Platt.
Platt said there will be 155 full-time employees and 260 part-time workers when the store opens in March. Dozens of those employees are training already at nearby stores.
Dave Hemmer, the service area manager for Wegmans, said the store will be fine-tuned to provide what customers want, including 16 self-checkout stations and 13 registers.
Credit: Tom Sofield/NewtownPANow.com
Wegmans offers flexible work hours, fair compensation, and a benefits package to employees. Workers at Wegmans also have access to numerous career advancement and development opportunities, and the company supports educational growth through its employee scholarship program, Hemmer said.
Workers were busy on Thursday getting the building ready for Wegmans by installing equipment across the store, including the fresh and prepared food section.
The new store will have the expected sections that Wegmans customers at nearby stores in Warringtown Township and Princeton, New Jersey appreciate, including restaurant-quality foods such as sushi, pizza, and chef-prepared salads and sandwiches, Platt said.
The new store boasts a vast produce section housing hundreds of fruit and vegetable varieties, alongside an extensive selection of seafood, meats, bakery items, fresh cookies, charcuteries, flowers, deli products, and cheeses, Platt explained.
The store will sell around 1,200 wine choices, including local and regional options, and 500 types of domestic, craft, and international beers and hard ciders, Platt said.
The wine section will feature a special area that will sell wines with price tags up to $800, but it will be separate from the wines that can cost as little as $7.
Hemmer explained that the store will have 156 seats in the in-store cafe and an outdoor seating for the warmer months.
When the new store opens, it will be ready to donate unsold or soon-to-expire food to the Bucks County Opportunity Council to help local food pantries, as it already does at the Central Bucks County store, according to Hemmer.
The company has committed to divert 95 percent of waste from landfills by 2025. The effort is buoyed by donations or composting, officials said.
Rochester, New York-based Wegmans Food Markets operates 110 stores on the East Coast. It is family-run and has more than 55,000 employees.
