Ok so this place is really a mixed bag.
It's a Supermarket, with a catering section complete with a buffet (BLEH!!! AVOID), Sushi rolled on site, a coffee bar, fresh Deli Sandwiches, Burritos and salads. There's also a dining room to enjoy the best sub in Bing (sad but true) before you drop 2 bills next door....
The selection is without question the best in the area; the Southern Tier is what Sociologists and Anthropologists studying the American "Fourth World" have termed a "Food Desert" . Wegmans really is the only game in town for anything more exotic than carrots and potatoes. Weiss (formerly Giant as well) competes in the city of Binghamton with better prices and a much more rudimentary, but no less relatively thorough selection. But if I want to buy Tahina, the sesame-paste "butter of the Middle East" that gives hummus its texture, giant is way too white bread for that. Only wegmans would carry that. Walmart tries to compete with a new Asian Aisle and Organic produce but its of poor quality. Again, aside from 25-lb sacks of rice, Wegmans wins again in the southern tier.
There's a refrigerated room full of Imported and Domestic Beer. There are half-aisles in the back organized Geographically for your Ethnic Goodies, so I can find Tahina, Kinder Bueno Bars or Mango Nectar, but at HIGH markups. I still can't find things like Ful (cooked fava bean), any sort of decent Sausage, String Cheese, Halloumi, Lebneh (a strained cultured yogurt-cheese spread, eaten with wild thyme and olive oil on toasted bread for breakfast.)...
And the reason why this pains me to say is that despite hitting as many bases as one could reasonably expect from a Supermarket, Wegmans is really expensive...
I'm from NYC. Produce is cheap apparently because its trucked in en masse fresh from Mid-Atlantic and Pacific farms daily. Here in Bing things come down from the Great Lakes or up from Philly so anything rare or exotic (and in Binghamton that means a LOT, even semi-Americanized things like Feta Cheese - I'll explain later) is twice the price I'd pay at home at least. Parsely, at home 2 bunches are $2. Here ONE bunch is $1.79. Ginger is $1.25 at HKS at home, here it's almost $4.30. Lemongrass is about $5 a lb, imported cheeses are almost twice NYC importer prices (Locatelli Parmaggiano Reggiano is $16 at home, $30/lb. here). I once saw Wegman's brand San Marzano tomatoes for FIVE DOLLARS A CAN!!!!.
I pay $1.30 for the same tomatoes from an Italian Cannery on the shores of a Volcano overlooking Naples...
Also the meat is un-thrilling, and I almost never find the Lamb cuts I need for traditional Middle Eastern dishes. Strangely Weiss is very good for that, I can find ground Lamb and all that... All the industrially processed meat is super cheap and plentiful but the non-GMO meat (Organic Chicken, Uruguayan Organic grass-fed Beef and Australian Organic Lamb) is expensive. The ground beef is $5.20 a lb, but I refuse to buy Industrially-processed meat on both Ethical and Health grounds. Plus it tastes much better. And I don't eat much meat so I can afford it once in a while.
The only other thing you need to know is that the bread is terrible. The water in Binghamton is contaminated, really, it tastes TERRIBLE and the bread tastes like its made with soft, dirty water.
The reason for all of this gouging is cultural isolation. I was once in the diner at about 5.30 am one morning and I overheard a local girl asking what feta cheese was...she decided she'd better not try it and went with American cheese product instead.
That's why Wegmans can charge what they do. Most of the Southern Tier are nice, hardworking simple working class folk with a HS diploma, they like their meat and potatoes and often buy them at Walmart anyway. Wegmans caters to the out-of-towners here for the University and the Engineering suburban caste that seems to be the only case of wealth in these upstate hellholes... read more