Wegmans Wilmington: Local Farm Fresh to Your Grocery Bag
Wander down the aisles of the new Wegmans opened last fall along Route 141 in Wilmington — the supermarket chain’s first store in Delmarva and one which is located practically in President Biden’s backyard – and you will see a cornucopia of foods that come canned, fresh and frozen from all corners of the world, truly a foodie’s delight.
But take a closer look, especially this spring, and the juicy strawberries and crunchy asparagus for your weekend lunch or picnic may have been picked yesterday in Kent County. And the packaged baby bella mushrooms that will go into the fancy duxelles for your chicken stuffing most likely were grown in the barns of Kennett Square, Avondale or Warwick. Need scrapple for breakfast? That Delmarva delicacy came from the kitchens of Bridgeville.
Just as restaurants a few years ago became serious about sourcing locally and listing suppliers on their farm-to-table menus — more recently supermarkets, even larger, gourmet-styled groceries such as Wegmans have taken up the practice, buying as much local produce and other foodstuffs as is available. Additionally, all of these local producers are supplying Wegmans stores in other states and have been doing so almost since the turn of this century.
Call it “farm fresh to grocery bag.”
“Being in the Middle Atlantic states, we source as much produce as we can from close to our stores,” says Charlie Gardner, manager in Wegmans corporate produce department at its Rochester, New York headquarters. “We work closely with our growers — sometimes on a daily basis — and have planning sessions with them on tracking what they are growing. I’ve inherited lots of growers who were working for Wegmans before I was.” Additionally, Gardner says, “We have divisional managers who live in their regions.”
Once new crops become available and orders are made, produce is harvested and delivered either to individual Wegmans stores or to regional delivery centers in New York and in Pottsville, PA, before being shipped by Wegmans to their stores.
“We normally get produce deliveries at 6 a.m. and 2 p.m. daily,” says Jamie Bray, produce manager at the new Wilmington store, where it will be unpacked and placed on display for sale. Sometimes, he says, growers are invited to the store to give educational demonstrations or provide sample tastings.
One of the largest and longest-serving of regional Wegmans suppliers is Fifer’s in Camden-Wyoming near Dover, which has operated as a Kent County family farming business since 1919. “We have been working with Wegmans since 2010,” says Curt Fifer, the member of the family’s fourth generation who heads marketing, “selling them mainly fruits and vegetables,” especially to Maryland stores in the Washington, D.C., area.
“We begin in spring with asparagus and strawberries,” Fifer says. “Then tomatoes start coming on during late June, then we get into sweet corn, which is our biggest volume crop, as well as peaches. Our primary fall crop is pumpkins.”
Most deliveries, he says, are made directly to the stores using Fifer’s trucks. “Typically, we pick in the morning, and then deliver to the stores the same day for them to stock for sale the day after it is picked,” Fifer says. The “Fifer” name is on all store displays, he says, either on individual cartons, such as strawberries, or on containers, such as pumpkins.
There is very little wasted packaging, Fifer notes, as most produce is packed in various sizes of sturdy bins. “They are black and have our name on them,” Fifer says. “When Wegmans is finished with them, they wash and return them to us to use for the next order.”
As northern Maryland and Delaware and especially southern Pennsylvania is mushroom country, Wegmans not surprisingly obtains all its fresh mushrooms, whether whole or sliced, from local producers. The two primary ones are To-Jo in Avondale and Phillips, which has facilities in Kennett Square and Warwick, Maryland.
“Oh gosh, we’ve been doing business with Wegmans for a long time – about 20 years,” says Sean Steller, a fourth-generation member of the Phillips Mushroom Farms family. “We do deliveries to the two Wegmans warehouses, and then they deliver to their stores, usually on a daily basis.” Except for portabella caps, which are mostly sold in bulk, everything else is packaged for display sale.
Steller says that there are around a dozen different packages or put-ups of various types of Phillips mushrooms – portabellas, “baby bellas,” white buttons, shitake – some whole and some sliced. “I think our mushrooms are in all Wegmans stores, and Wegmans is one of our best, most-stable customers,” he says. “We often are asked to do demonstrations in stores, sometimes with recipes for the exotics like shitakes and enokis.”
While almost all Wegmans local purchases are fresh farm produce, one exception is scrapple, the regionally popular meat product made with meat scraps, cornmeal and spices. “We’ve been working with Wegmans for 15 years,” says John Curtis, marketing manager of Rapa Scrapple in Bridgeville. “We started by selling our Harbbersett brand scrapple to their stores in New York and New Jersey. We also sell our Greensboro brand in some of the Maryland stores.” Although Rapa also makes sausages, it sells mainly scrapple to Wegmans, Curtis says, which is packaged in Bridgeville and delivered to the Wegmans distribution center in Pennsylvania on a weekly basis
These local producers also supply other supermarket chains in addition to Wegmans. Fifer’s, for example, sells to Giant markets in the area and even to accounts across the U.S. A few years ago, it even shipped Delaware sweet corn to Mexico when a regular supplier out west could not produce enough product to fulfill orders.
Of course, smaller, independent Delmarva food markets source produce and other foods from even more local suppliers than does Wegmans, if in smaller volumes. For example, Harvest Market in Hockessin offers its shoppers local cheeses from Birchrun Hills and meats from Buck Run Farm, both in nearby Chester County, Pennsylvania, eggs from Stolzfuz Farms in Rising Sun and vegetables from Coverdale Farms in Delaware.
So far, the farm to grocery bag business does not include any processed foods, such as the jams and preserves which are so commonly available at most local farm store outlets. “That would require a big capital expenditure because we would need to build a plant,” Fifer says, then adds, “I’ll leave that to the next generation of Fifers.”
Wegmans
371 Buckley Mill Road, Wilmington, 302-551-6100
