If you’ve never spent time in upstate New York or the mid-Atlantic, you probably don’t even know what Wegmans is. The One Day, One Job team is made up of Cornell kids, so we developed quite the obsession with the supermarket chain during what we call our “time on the hill.” For those of you who aren’t blessed with a Wegmans in your college town, we’ll fill you in. Wegmans is the best supermarket in the world. Wegmans is an acceptable place to take a date for dinner. Wegmans is the place to go when you decide to bake cookies at 3:00 A.M. Wegmans is the thing you miss most about college after you graduate. And in case you didn’t know, Wegmans is also one of the best places to work in America – Fortune Magazine has had them on their list of the 100 Best Places to Work for 11 straight years (#3 this year, top 10 the past 6 years).

From what we can tell, Wegmans doesn’t offer entry-level job opportunities in the sense that we usually talk about. They have a ton of jobs that require no prior experience, but they’re not jobs that require a college education either. Wegmans is a bottom-up type of company, so starting out as in a “customer service” role is probably necessary to future success in a leadership position at Wegmans. It might be possible for some to leap into some sort of management position based on education and internship experience, but we wouldn’t count on it. Considering that Wegmans has over 35,000 employees, we’d imagine that they also have corporate jobs at the their headquarters in Rochester, NY, but we can’t find much information about them. That’s because Wegmans fills most of those jobs with people who have succeeded at the store level. The only fast track at Wegmans is great performance and customer service while working in the trenches.

Wegmans offers both pay and benefits that are unparalleled in the grocery industry. In fact, they might even be competitive with other entry-level jobs that you’d be looking at. What really stands out, though, is Wegmans’ scholarship program. In the program’s 25 years, they’ve awarded $63 million in scholarships. This isn’t just for you to go to college, but also to extend your education in other ways. For instance, someone in the meat department might be able to get a scholarship to study charcuterie (sausage making) in France. How cool is that?

The types of jobs that Wegmans offers may not be exactly what you’re looking for after you graduate, but take some time to think them over. If you want to go into food merchandising or marketing, there are few better places to learn the ins and outs of the grocery business. The same can be said if you want to learn how companies can use customer service as a competitive advantage. Wegmans is also a great place to get started in a culinary career. So, before you write off Wegmans’ jobs because they won’t put your degree to use right away, consider your future aspirations and how Wegmans might be able to help you achieve them.

To get a job at Wegmans, use their store locator to find a location near where you want to live and then browse through their job listings.

P.S. While we were writing this post, Wegmans completely revamped their website. All the links we put together changed. We did our best to update them, but there might be a few things that we missed. That’s just more of a reason for you to head over to Wegmans.com and check it out for yourself. The new site is a big improvement in a lot of ways, and it has even more information than before.

Note: On April 24th we revisited entry-level jobs at Wegmans.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

• The Wegmans Home Page
• Employment at Wegmans
• Wegmans’ Job Listings
• The Wegmans Scholarship Program
• Leadership Positions at Wegmans
• Culinary Jobs at Wegmans
• Wegmans’ Profile in Forbes’ Magazine’s List of Largest Private Companies
• Fortune Magazine’s Profile of Wegmans in Their List of Best Places to Work

If you’re not going to apply for a job at Wegmans, at least figure out which of your friends go to school in a Wegmans town, so that you can make a road trip and go visit them.

We've identified Wegmans as having career opportunities in the following categories:

• all employers
• customer service
• food
• food merchandising
• grocery
• holiday
• nationwide
• New York

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2 responses to “Wegmans”

1. Daniel Shea says:

   July 17, 2008 at 9:43 pm

   I am very interested in a culinary position with Wegman’s. I am a recent graduate of the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute and am currently employed as a lead chef at an area country club. As much as I enjoy this position, and continue to learn from the executive and sous chefs, the postion does not offer the challenge I had hoped for.
   I live in the Buffalo, NY area and am very aware of Wegman’s great reputation. I am constanly impressed with what I see (especially from a culinary perspective) whenever I am in one of your stores.
   I sent a cover letter and resume in February (electronically and a hard copy)as per the directives of your on-line site. I am still hoping for an opportunity to work in a culinary position for Wegmans
   Sincerely,
   Daniel Shea

   Reply
2. Willy Franzen says:

   July 17, 2008 at 9:44 pm

   Hi Daniel,

   Good luck! I hope you realize that we’re not affiliated with Wegmans. If you want to contact them directly, you should use the links above to navigate to their site and seek out their contact information.

   Reply