Wegmans is expanding again, this time into the Pittsburgh area.
The Rochester-based supermarket chain already has a number of stores throughout Pennsylvania, but this will be its first store in the Pittsburgh region.
“We’ve received thousands of requests for a Wegmans in the Pittsburgh region since opening our first Pennsylvania store over 30 years ago,” said Dan Aken, vice president of real estate and store planning, in a written statement. “We’re excited to have finally found the right location to bring Wegmans to the Pittsburgh area.”
The new store will be located in Cranberry Township, and Wegmans expects to hire 400 to 500 employees to staff it.
Longtime supermarket analyst Burt Flickinger, Managing Director of Strategic Resource Group, thinks the new Wegmans store will do well, but he told WXXI News there is some tough competition in the Pittsburgh area.
“They’re going to be successful, but they’re not going to be as successful as they are in that whole quarter between Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, down (Interstate) 81 and into Binghamton State College and then across the way,” Flickinger said.
Flickinger sees a robust head-to-head competition in Pittsburgh with a locally-based chain, Giant Eagle.
“Wegmans will win in the most important departments where Wegmans is the best in the U.S.; meat, fresh fish, pork, poultry, lamb, veal, produce, prepared foods, scratch bakery. The issue is center store, grocery, dairy and frozen where Giant Eagle will win,” Flickinger said.
As far as the possibility of Wegmans, which has most of its 111 stores along the East Coast, moving even further west, perhaps into Ohio, Flickinger thinks that someday Cleveland may be a possibility, but at this point he doesn’t believe they will try to move into Ohio on a larger scale.
Wegmans said that a timetable for construction and the opening of that Pittsburgh store has not yet been determined.