At Wegmans I find if I stay completely away from prepared or semi prepared food (like precut fruit or veggies) and stay away from specialty items, then their prices are very competitive. I spend more for lower quality at Food Lion but is by far the closest store to me so I end up there a lot.

Why is this 2014 thread being dredged up? Presumably, the OP has been shopping somewhere for the past 3 years...

We have both in my town. I usually shop at Wegmans but if I'm at Walmart for something else like socks or party stuff I will pick up nonperishables or baking supplies there. The best nonorganic produce I have found is at Hmart.

I haven't found wegmans to be the best price on most items, but we tend to buy the more expensive cuts and prepared cook at home meals. Walmart is only worth it for the packaged goods and then it's quite a bit cheaper. Costco can beat them all if you know what to buy. Because everything is so close to my home I can do this and not be inconvenienced, but if you have to go further out it just may not be worth the savings.

Make sure you download the Wegmans app. They push out coupons regularly.

If you shop the interior of Wegmans, you can do quite well. Their store brands are very good and the savings is really in their bulk products esp meat. You can skip a Costco membership, truly. I like their bulk paper towels and purple TP (not the blue!).

Their produce is higher, but it is much better quality. I find it is easier to just shop there in terms of time. I cut coupons for toiletries and cereal, etc so it works out pretty well.

Anonymous wrote:I have done price comparisons with wegman's, Harris teeter, and Costco. Believe it or not wegman's is sometimes cheaper than costco. Can't speak to walmart, but give wegman's a try. If you stick to their store brand and get "family packs" of staples, their prices are insanely low. Plus you get $7 a week in coupons.

True -- this is where the prices are very good. Where they get you is the extras -- the pre-made meals, the desserts, the fresh breads... all so good... but they add up. I still love wegmans and drive 25 min. to use it all the time. But, I'm not saving a lot overall.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:While the package may say Colgate, the item at Walmart is likely lesser quality than the Colgate item at Wegmans.

This is the dumbest comment I've ever seen. And it shows just how uninformed, and uneducated, you are concerning how Walmart is able to sell trademarked products at a lower cost.

Walmart literally purchases millions of products and many grocery businesses have what are called LOSS LEADERS. Which means they will intentionally sell some products at ridiculously low prices simply to get you INTO THE STORE hoping you will then purchase other products which are much higher in price.

PP's claim was suspect, but you sound awfully defensive. Do you work for Walmart?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walmart gets manufacturers to make products specifically for them. The result is cheaper ingredients and lower quality packaging. Most everything is made in China with dedicated Walmart production facilities. While the package may say Colgate, the item at Walmart is likely lesser quality than the Colgate item at Wegmans.

how do you know tha? Source?

I don't believe this.

I wouldn't either. Especially when it isn't true, SOUNDS dumb, and their response to a request for a Verifiable source was "everybody knows this."

Which usually means it's something some lying soccer mom just made up to satisfy her own biases.

Anonymous wrote:While the package may say Colgate, the item at Walmart is likely lesser quality than the Colgate item at Wegmans.

This is the dumbest comment I've ever seen. And it shows just how uninformed, and uneducated, you are concerning how Walmart is able to sell trademarked products at a lower cost.

Walmart literally purchases millions of products and many grocery businesses have what are called LOSS LEADERS. Which means they will intentionally sell some products at ridiculously low prices simply to get you INTO THE STORE hoping you will then purchase other products which are much higher in price.

Consumer's Checkbook magazine recently did a comparison of DC area grocery stores and Wegmans compared quite favorably in terms of price and scored extremely high in quality. I personally think the quality is great, as long as you don't go crazy like I sometimes do and start buying gourmet cheese and cookies and stuff like that.

Unfortunately -- or maybe fortunately, for my waistline -- there's not a Wegman's very close to me. But I hear that there is talk of one opening in the Tysons area.

The other surprising part of that Checkbook article, for me, was that Shoppers Food Warehouse was not a low-price leader. Aldi was, but the variety of food available at Aldi does not compare to other stores.

http://www.checkbook.org/interactive/spmkt/other/w/article.cfm

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's an Aldi opening up in Fairfax soon. Right now my routine is Global Foods/Aldi/Wegmans in Woodbridge, but being able to do H-mart/Aldi/Wegmans will save me a ton of driving.

Oh man. Where at? Near the Wegmans or somewhere else? I'll have to add it to my regular grocery shopping routine.

It will be on Lee Highway where the old Office Depot used to be. It's in today's Patch online.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Walmart gets manufacturers to make products specifically for them. The result is cheaper ingredients and lower quality packaging. Most everything is made in China with dedicated Walmart production facilities. While the package may say Colgate, the item at Walmart is likely lesser quality than the Colgate item at Wegmans.

how do you know tha? Source?

I don't believe this.

For a while, Wegmans offered a prescription punch card that gave you $20 off groceries (purchase of $20 or more) every time you filled a new prescription. We saved a lot of money that way but I'm not sure if they offer it anymore. They do still include the generic $1 off/$5 produce purchase coupons (and the like) with prescription refills. I've done extensive comparison shopping and for what we buy, Wegmans is cheaper. 2nd the suggestion on their paper towels - they're as good as Bounty in my opinion and often on sale for ridiculously cheap. I have a short list of things that are cheaper at Trader Joes (mostly frozen foods and some produce), but other than that all groceries come from Wegs.

For toiletries and baby care items, Amazon subscribe and save is still the best deal going in my opinion. We rationalize the annual subscription fee based on the amount of Prime books and movies we watch/read and the free shipping on gifts for birthdays and holidays.

Anonymous wrote:There's an Aldi opening up in Fairfax soon. Right now my routine is Global Foods/Aldi/Wegmans in Woodbridge, but being able to do H-mart/Aldi/Wegmans will save me a ton of driving.

Oh man. Where at? Near the Wegmans or somewhere else? I'll have to add it to my regular grocery shopping routine.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The $7 a week in coupons is from wegmans? How am I missing this? The only coupons I ever got was the big booklet when I signed up for my shoppers club card several mo the ago.

If you have the club card, you should receive a thin magazine-type ad from Wegman's every month or so, and in the back are coupons for the coming 4 -6 weeks. I used a $5 off of $25 today.

As for the original question, I prefer Wegman's over Walmart. The atmosphere is so much nicer, the produce department is fantastic, and Wegman's selection of food is so much larger. We have also tried quite a few Wegman's brand food items and have been very satisfied with them.

This is only true of certain locations - the Columbia location did this up until a few weeks ago, because they have now been open for over a year and have permanently discontinued those coupons. They still send coupons for particular items, but no longer the generic "$5 off a $25 purchase" or "$1 off of any frozen food purchase", etc.