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from the happy-employees-make-happy-customers dept.
Wegmans is a family-owned grocery store chain. NYTimes noted it can actually claim a "cult following".
The Center for American Progress reports
It manages to have a huge selection while offering prices that can compete with Walmart, but that it does it while treating its employees well.
The perks start with pay, which for hourly store employees is a little more than $33,000 a year on average. By contrast, Walmart has admitted that more than half of its employees make less than $25,000 a year.
[...]but that's not what makes the company famous for employee satisfaction, landing it on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list every year since the list began. It also offers generous benefits. It pays about 85 percent of the costs of health care coverage, including dental, for its full-time employees and offers insurance to part-time workers who put in 30 hours a week. It offers 401(k) plans with a salary match of up to 3 percent of an employee's contribution.
And it has a scholarship program[...]
Wegmans also offers more work/life balance than most retail jobs.[...]
These benefits aren't just altruistic. The company generates $7.1 billion in revenue and is profitable. "When you think about employees first, the bottom line is better," the company's vice-president for human resources has said. The company boasts a 5 percent turnover rate among full-time employees, compared to a 27 percent[paywall] rate for the industry. That comes with a cost, as it often eats up about 20 percent of a worker's salary to replace him.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:29PM
Wegman's is a tourist attraction out here; always friendly staff, and Walmart struggles to complete with them.
It's a tourist attraction because in a lot of western NY you're lucky to have stores nearby at all, so finding a good one is like finding a goddamn unicorn. I have relatives in western NY that have to drive almost an hour to even see a Wal-Mart. All they have within a reasonable* driving distance is K-Mart (a particularly shitty one) and a couple crap grocery stores. Of the grocery stores, I noticed that one one regularly left months-outdated product on the shelves while overcharging because "haha you have no competition, suck it" more or less; the other had decent staff usually but the selection sucked. Sad to say, even Wal-Mart would be an improvement. Getting a Wegmans there would be a small miracle.
I have to agree about the Wegmans store quality. Been in them in several states and they've always been well-kept and had decent staff. Their store-brand stuff is usually decent, too. Haven't been to one recently so I can't think of anything specific, though, other than someone saying the store-brand pod coffee was really good. (I don't drink coffee so I can't verify their statement)
* for a very loose definition of "reasonable"