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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: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:35PM
Fuck those greedy bastards walmart! Fuck monsanto! Fuck microsoft! Fuck dow chemical! Fuck the IMF and world bank!
We need multiculturalism and socialism! Social justice! Fagging it up In each others' asses!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Dunbal on Saturday May 16 2015, @04:25PM
It's easy to blame Wal Mart, but capitalism is a race to the bottom. Whoever can provide something for less while making the most profit wins. And capitalism is driven by YOU the consumer. Why does Wal Mart get away with what it does? Because YOU flock to Wal Mart, attracted to the sales and rock bottom prices. In fact most people only care about price and don't care about the quality they are trading off. So a competitor with a slightly higher quality product at a slightly higher price gets eaten alive by Wal Mart. The competitor goes out of business and Wal Mart makes the money. And whose fault is that? Yours. So in fact, fuck YOU!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:00PM
Some pretty good points, but I think the OP was being sarcastic. Actually, he was kinda off the rails, and probably in the closet (Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, etc), so you did him a favor by responding.
(Score: 4, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:47PM
Unfortunately, I never chose to shop at Wal-Mart. I watched one store after another close down. Then Wal-Mart was about the only store left.
Wal-Mart first put the older chains out of business. These were mostly regional chains. They were so inefficient with their inventory and logistics that Bugs Bunny could have come up with a better system and put them out of business. They could have been Wal-Mart, but chose not to innovate. They stagnated as 1970s retailers well into the 1990s, until they went kaput. (These are stores young people have never heard of, like Kings, Roses, and so on.)
Then Wal-Mart gained enough power with their suppliers to force them to meet price targets. There's a LOT of info about this online, if you want to read about it. This resulted in less choice and shoddy products.
And this resulted in fewer brands. For most products right now, you have one name brand and the store brand. The name brand is whichever brand could meet Wal-Mart's price targets. The others are gone. Sometimes you have two brands. But more than one or two brands is inefficient for commodities, especially consumable ones. Some products carve out a niche, like specialty breads. Overall, there is little differentiation among products right now. It's inefficient for Wal-Mart to offer you much choice, when they can limit the number of SKUs.
Surviving stores suddenly found themselves in the position where they could not differentiate between themselves and Wal-Mart, because the brands disappeared. All stores basically have the same merchandise now. If it's not the exact same brands, it's the same quality level. Even the dollar stores (which have been in a merger frenzy recently!) can't compete on price. These stores sprang up to challenge the inefficient retailers of the 1990s, and can't compete with Wal-Mart. For that matter, even office supply stores are struggling as people don't buy many office supplies and Wal-Mart sells the few that people do still buy. (Guess who else is in a merger frenzy?)
People love Target, but it's a clone of Wal-Mart right now. If you don't like Wal-Mart, you don't like Target. The regional chain K-Mart is struggling. How do they differentiate themselves? They don't. Their stores are tragic.
Sears is the store everyone loves to hate, but they sealed their own fate when they got rid of their decent clothing and brought in el cheapo low quality clothes. Sears had one shining moment when it could have reversed its fortunes: It bought Land's End, one of the few places that has decent quality clothing these days. I thought they'd fill their stores with Land's End, which would make them unique and competitive. They didn't (they never seemed to know what to do with the brand!), and now they're in a death spiral. If you have Wal-Mart quality clothes, you might as well go out of business.
What we're seeing right now is a huge generational shakeout in retail. Any store that isn't Wal-Mart must (1) match Wal-Mart's sophisticated logistics and prices, (2) has to differentiate itself in some niche, or (3) goes kaput. You can tell which industries are going away soon by looking at mergers and outright collapses.
What's going to eventually happen is Wal-Mart and Amazon will be the last two retailers standing. Amazon is a logistics company which is trying to build out a physical presence with warehouses and faster delivery. Wal-Mart is a retailer which has become a logistics company. They're trying to build out all the new stuff Amazon already has. At some point, both will be the same company. Having two companies do the same thing will be so inefficient that Amazon will probably give up on retail and become an IT infrastructure supplier, probably with Wal-Mart as a customer.
When you say "fuck Wal-Mart" or fuck anything (except for my cat) you're ignoring these large trends in society. Wal-Mart in one way or another was inevitable as soon as the first computer was invented. It just took them about 20 years to go from a good idea to dismantling retail. If not Wal-Mart, then some other store would have played the same role. The "fuck you" reaction is basically saying change is bad and we should all be shopping at A&P and Roses like we did in the 1970s, paying higher prices because of extreme logistics and operational inefficiency. Why don't we go back to using a 286, too?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Saturday May 16 2015, @09:11PM
The "fuck you" reaction is basically saying change is bad and we should all be shopping at A&P and Roses like we did in the 1970s, paying higher prices because of extreme logistics and operational inefficiency. Why don't we go back to using a 286, too?
No, it's a reaction to people who bitch about Wal Mart and all the "evils" it represents, but continue to shop at Wal Mart. No one forces anyone to shop there instead of "A&P and Roses" except the idea of saving a few bucks. Well those few bucks of "logistical and operational inefficiency" happened to be supporting inefficient jobs. You can't insist on rock bottom retail and then wonder where all the retail jobs went. Tell me, in the near future when everything is made by robots who exactly do manufacturers plan on selling their products to if they don't have any actual employees? You'll have perfect efficiency and everyone will be broke except the factory owner and the guy who repairs/installs the robots. Inefficiency is not necessarily a bad thing if it keeps people employed. The alternative is when they come with pitchforks to smash your factory. How efficient is that?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:34PM
If our system holds back technology progress so people can keep doing jobs they are less efficient at than the technology, then our economical system is broken and needs to be replaced. Perhaps we should think about a basic income for everyone rather than slowing down innovation.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday May 16 2015, @10:03PM
They stagnated as 1970s retailers well into the 1990s, until they went kaput. (These are stores young people have never heard of, like Kings, Roses, and so on.)
Not exactly related to anything else you said, but I actually saw a Roses store a few years ago somewhere in the southeast US, so they aren't quite dead yet. Understandable to think they're gone, though; before that, it had been so long since I'd seen one that I thought they went out of business.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday May 17 2015, @10:22AM
Wow... something in the back of my mind ... yes, here it is: http://www.vwstores.com/ [vwstores.com] ... "Roses was purchased by Variety Wholesalers Inc. in 1997" ...
But I'm a little shocked that they're still around, but I guess they serve small communities other retailers won't go into or something. Yeah, a shocker that they're still in business. But it's not the same Roses we knew and loved in the 1970s, it's someone who bought the name.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:30AM
People love Target, but it's a clone of Wal-Mart right now. If you don't like Wal-Mart, you don't like Target.
Um, no. While the two chains are certainly competitors, Target is about a comfortable shopping experience. Wal-Mart is about low prices.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Saturday May 16 2015, @07:54PM
The thing is, what's smart for one company is really dumb if everybody does it.
The reason is that Peter's costs are Paul's sales. So if Peter manages to cut their costs, then Paul's just lost a bunch of revenue, and has to cut their costs too. But their costs are paying Peter, so now he's lost sales too, and so forth. And that in a nutshell is why businesspeople usually don't understand economics and macroeconomics in particular: they're only looking at their own role in the system, not the system itself.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:24PM
It's easy to blame Walmart when we see other operations that treat their employees better making a fair profit. Its the same pool of consumers. It's true that people should avoid the Walmarts of the world if they can afford to, but that's not the whole story.
For example, quality. It does make sense to pay a bit more for quality, but that presumes you have a reasonable basis to judge quality BEFORE you buy. Too often "quality" brands at some point pull a fast one and just re-brand the same crap that is also sold as a no-name product. Wityh that happening, many consumers must rely only on price. If you're going to be ripped with poor quality either way, you might as well get ripped off for a few dollars less.
TFA is showing us a company that was willing to accept a little less on this quarter's report in order to show better results next year through better employee loyalty.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by nitehawk214 on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:50AM
I think Wegmans is proving this isn't always the case. It is a rare thing for a company to compete and win against Wallmart, and nearly unheard of for a company to do this while being so loved by both customers and employees. Most markets have a Wegmans/Publix like chain because of this.
Though you are right, Wegmans is being anti-capitalist in providing this to people. They could simply focus on being slightly-less-shitty than Wallmart and still be successful. I fully expect if they were publicly owned, this is what they would be.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @04:52AM
We are between two Wegmans grocery stores and there is a Walmart (with grocery section) even closer. We rarely buy food at Walmart, in particular the produce quality at Walmart sucks while Wegmans produce is the best I've seen pretty much anywhere in the eastern USA.
Some of the earlier comments on Walmart pushing brands out of the market could be true. In the last few years, Wegmans seems to have less brand name packaged goods and more house branded stuff (which often isn't as good).
One pet peeve is that no one here in the east has consistently good avocados, they often have inedible black lines through the flesh. It's to the point that I suspect a conspiracy -- the California avocado growers keep all the good ones for local sale...!
(Score: 2) by kaganar on Monday May 18 2015, @02:11PM
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:22AM
Costco avocados are pretty decent usually. They get them super green, so you usually have to wait a couple days before you can eat any them, but once they are ripe and in the fridge they might last at least a week.
Or they would if avocados lasted that long at my house.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @03:36PM
That description sounds a lot like the New England supermarket chain Market Basket which recently went through a big fight between the forces of corporate greed and everybody else. [pbs.org] Corporate greed lost that round.
(Score: 3, Informative) by GungnirSniper on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:12PM
That's true. The two stores compete for different market segments though. Market Basket is the no-frills, no website, newsprint-only advertisement company. They're known for their low prices. Wegmans' does the typical advertising, including a website and social media presence, and is upmarket. They do have house-brand goods that compete with Market Basket on price, but most of their brand name stuff is more expensive by 25% or so. They also have full bakeries, sushi counters, and even pizza and sub shops inside.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @05:23PM
Market basket has full bakeries and the best supermarket sushi I've ever had. Better than whole foods (which actually has kind of gone in the crapper the last couple of years).
(Score: 3, Informative) by M. Baranczak on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:15PM
They do have house-brand goods that compete with Market Basket on price, but most of their brand name stuff is more expensive by 25% or so.
The brand-name items at Wegmans* are 25% more than generic items? That seems typical for a supermarket. Or did you mean that the same brand-name items cost 25% more in Wegmans than in Market Basket? That seems like an unrealistically wide margin.
Never been to Market Basket, but there's a Wegmans near my house. In my experience, people think that Wegmans is expensive because it looks expensive - the produce is fresh, the employees are friendly and the whole place doesn't smell like old meat - and also because they have some higher-end items that the competition doesn't. But if you compare prices for equivalent items, Wegmans is about the same as the competition.
- * Yes, the name is "Wegmans", no apostrophe.
(Score: 2) by GungnirSniper on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:14AM
The latter. It may not be 25% on all items but it is at least 15% typically.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Touché) by davester666 on Sunday May 17 2015, @06:19AM
This is absolutely crazy.
Obviously, some NY investment firm must buy this company immediately, slash salaries and benefits to increase profits, and then do an IPO.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @04:01PM
... If it takes 20% of a worker's salary to replace the employee, and the person is making $25,000 or less per year, then the tack-on replacement cost is $5,000 or less. (And in the case of WalMart, that doesn't ring true - it would surprise the daylights out of me if the checkout clerk or deli clerk - oh, excuse me, associate - takes $5,000 to recruit/hire/train by any measure.) So Wegman's loses compared to WalMart for every employee that does actually leave.
We've seen the same happen with a HyVee that just came to town - the cream of the crop in service jumped ship from WalMart/Meier/other local chains because they offer meaningful health.
Sadly, that probably means a couple of local concerns - just barely hanging on against WalMeier anyway, will end up folding because they'll no longer be able to compete.
Maybe the differential is made up, and maybe it isn't, by the reduced numbers. But, profits and "altruism" be damned, sometimes there's just the right thing to do. Too many businesses have forgotten that in this country.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @04:07PM
Wal-Mart is my employer, you insensitive clod!
Hello folks, Welcome to Wal-Mart...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Appalbarry on Saturday May 16 2015, @04:45PM
Sadly, that probably means a couple of local concerns - just barely hanging on against WalMeier anyway, will end up folding because they'll no longer be able to compete.
A business that can only survive by paying employees poverty wages has bigger problems than having people hired away.
If a couple of bucks an hour will shut you down your business is either very poorly managed, or more likely wasn't really viable to begin with.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:15PM
If a couple of bucks an hour will shut you down your business is either very poorly managed, or more likely wasn't really viable to begin with.
And when most job growth is in service industries that by nature are are barely viable it leads to an unstable economy. Most of them do not fare well with competition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:59PM
This is one of those invisible issues that managers have to deal with. It isn't just that person's pay that needs to be considered. HR and their expensive salaries need to be involved and their cost for advertising and screening. Insurance paperwork needs to be filled out by another expensive person. Tax forms, accounting, and so on also have costs associated. After that a low-level manager needs to take time out of their day, again making much more than the lowly checkout clerk, probably for several days at minimum to spend time with a new hire. After that the new hire is "apprenticed" out to an established employee for specific training. That established employee also costs more money than the new hire and their productivity takes a hit. The new hire themselves has to get up to par for output which will take some time adding on to the wasted revenue compared to just keeping a well-performing employee. Finally when that person quits there is a gap that needs to be filled in the work that needs to be done, thus is likely to cause employees that make more to have to fill in for the lost person. Worse case scenario some overtime might be needed.
So yes, in whole 20% or 5k is a reasonable cost to replace an unskilled* worker.
*a misnomer. There is no such thing as unskilled work or we could skip hiring a human and have a $40 goat do it for its entire life.
(Score: 2) by linuxrocks123 on Sunday May 17 2015, @12:43AM
Sweet! Where do they sell goats for $40?
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:43AM
I'm going to bet that a checker's job is actually quite a bit more complicated than any of us who've never done it imagine.
My basis for this assumption, comes from looking at what goes on in my small business. An assistant just quit last week. They just answer phones, enter info about calls/correspondence, file papers, scan papers, shred papers, mail and fax things, schedule things on the calendar, and run some errands. And yet, it isn't so simple. It takes about 6 months before a person gets competent at the job. I know that sounds crazy, and my knee jerk reaction is WTF, but I've been hiring assistants for more than a decade and that's the experience. And my knee jerk reaction is properly wrong because when I really start to think about it, there are things about the job that make it much more complicated than the job description would make it sound. Most of my assistants have been objectively very bright and I'm definitely not blaming on them the time it takes to become competent. Secondly, the task of hiring someone is ... I don't know how to explain it other than to say that I'd rather do really complicated tax forms in a foreign language I've never even heard of, and which doesn't use the Roman alphabet or Arabic numbers, than sort through a steaming pile of resumes. Fucking hell, this sucks. Again.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:24PM
A well known retail shop run by an asshole was in last place in sales for years, and at risk of being closed. District management kept getting the same excuse from the asshole running it, workers are idiots and lazy. They replaced only one person, the asshole, and the shop shot up to first place in sales every month for two years, until the new guy was transferred and replaced with another asshole, who was also a racist mexican, and it went to shit again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 16 2015, @06:33PM
Also, the entire crew ended up quitting or transferring, and the original asshole was fired after taking another shop to shit, and now runs his own get rich quick scheme. The kind that preys on others for his own benefit.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Saturday May 16 2015, @08:35PM
Wegman's is a tourist attraction out here; always friendly staff, and Walmart struggles to complete with them.
Still always moving
(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"
(Score: 2) by carguy on Sunday May 17 2015, @05:07AM
Hey, we might be neighbors in WNY? I live between two Wegmans and am very happy about that. There is a Tops grocery store that is even closer, but they only win for a few specific items (and often Wegmans has lower price on the same item).
My in-laws (from midwest) were amazed when we took them to our local Wegmans, nothing close in their area although they have plenty of choices of grocery stores. For just one example, if you like OJ, one of the Wegmans has a juicer right in the store and while it's not cheap, it is about as fresh as you can get.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Sunday May 17 2015, @06:44PM
If you're out here, sounds like you're between the two wegmans in Henrietta, NY. I was here when the superwegmans was being built, then left shortly afterward. I was a firefighter at the time and got a tour of the under-construction building and even saw the bell tower :)
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by carguy on Monday May 18 2015, @01:21AM
I'm near two Buffalo-area Wegmans -- there are plenty of them here, although there are probably even more near to you in their hometown of Rochester. Never noticed a bell tower, will take a look next time. One has a raised mezzanine with tables above the deli/prepared food section. A jazz band plays on the mezzanine on Friday evening.
Thanks for your work on this site! (and of course thanks to all the other volunteers too).
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Sunday May 17 2015, @03:29AM
While this seems like some kind of fluff price, it is absolutely true.
I worked at a company that is vendor for Wegmans many years ago. Still a family owned company, and seemed to be a delightful place to work, their employees seemed to be having too much fun, sometimes it was hard to get work done on a Friday when you needed something from the customer. Every exec level person was great to work with. Even when we made mistakes they were always patient with us. There are no Wegmans where I live, but we are in an adolescent market. The biggest regional grocery chain here (Giant Eagle) has been sending up stores that have basically grabbed their idea and is implementing it here. Though as I understand, not quite as good as the original.
Also, Wegmans, along with Giant Eagle and Sheetz are the three biggest movers in lobbying the PA government to pull its ass out of Prohibition. (currently unsuccessfully)
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 17 2015, @07:27AM
I worked for a company that was a vendor to walmart.
My boss went into meet with them. He sat in a lawn chair in some dudes office. The chair was left behind from some previous vendor.
They treat their whole supply chain like crap. It does not take much to beat walmart on service. The hard part is price.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday May 17 2015, @01:02PM
Also, Wegmans, along with Giant Eagle and Sheetz are the three biggest movers in lobbying the PA government to pull its ass out of Prohibition. (currently unsuccessfully)
One of my first trips to the US was to PA and I remember spending 10 minutes wandering around a GEagle trying to find the beer section. I thought my friends were joking - a supermarket that doesn't sell alcohol just seemed too weird. My next trip was to Salt Lake City though, and that helped put it in perspective...
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday May 19 2015, @12:28AM
Wow you visit all the fun places... :)
Though we are moving in the right direction now. Wegmans and Giant Eagles in PA are now technically "bar/pub/restaraunts". I mean, grocery stores always have ready to eat food anyhow; so they just put in some tables, an extra set of registers to get around the blue laws (no alcohol sales after midnight), and bam, complete end-run around the stupid laws. They even have taps and growlers to go. Best selection and prices on craft and belgian beer too.
Convenient too, there was a big storm passing through while I was shopping; so I had a seat and drank a Rodenbach while I waited for it to pass.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh