I’ve been searching for the word that best encapsulates the change in Wegmans, pre- and post-coronavirus.
How have perceptions been altered by the company’s response to the pandemic?
The word trust comes to mind, certainly. Although Wegmans maintains a loyal and enthusiastic customer base, many of us trust the company less today than we did at the end of 2019.
Reliability is another. I’m surprised at the company’s resistance to masks, at its slowness to adopt safety measures such as limiting the number of shoppers.
And there’s uncommunicative. As a top-down operation with tiers of middle management and thousands of part-time workers, Wegmans has never been great at communication. In recent weeks, the trait has come to the fore in the failure to report the number and location of employees testing positive for COVID-19.
But none of these terms fully captures the shift in identity.
I consider the company’s profile before the world turned upside down. The colorful produce section, the video presentations on how to prepare healthful meals, the motto, “food you feel good about,” the company’s Wholesum brand of snack bars, launched in 2015.
That’s it.
Wholesome. I used to think of Wegmans as wholesome, not only in the food it sold but in its treatment of employees and customers, in its family ownership, in the frequency with which Danny Wegman and other family members strolled through the stores.
The corporate persona must have morphed even before the virus struck. It’s probably impossible for an enterprise that has grown to 101 stores in seven states to maintain the warm and caring culture it embraced when it was just a local operation.
If anything has become clear in recent weeks, it’s that the focus is now on profit.
Perhaps it is naive to expect otherwise. But that has been the drumbeat for decades. Internally, in videos, postings and signs, Wegmans still insists, “You remain our #1 priority!”
The company has taken many steps to enforce social distancing and heighten already strict standards of cleanliness.
It is giving workers what amounts to hazard pay of $2 extra per hour in March and April. But the sum isn’t a raise. It’s a temporary increase aimed at keeping people coming to work during difficult times.
And yes, the company decided recently to allow workers to wear masks. But this move followed weeks of banning the practice. And even after the change in policy, the message from on high discouraged mask use.
Why? I’ve no idea.
Is Wegmans actually concerned that masked employees will frighten the customers, most of whom are wearing masks? Maybe masks don’t fit the old wholesome image. Maybe masks might hurt the bottom line. Maybe the spelling of Wholesum was a Freudian slip.