6 Rude Wegmans Habits That Annoy New Yorkers
Hundreds of people once lined up for nearly seven hours outside a Brooklyn Wegmans just to be first through the door.
That’s how much New Yorkers love Wegmans.
It’s also how the grocery chain can turn into blocked aisles and short tempers.
These are the rude Wegmans habits that annoy New Yorkers.
1. Camping Out in the Curbside Pickup Spots
Wegmans reserves a short row of parking spots by its café doors for shoppers who ordered curbside pickup. They’re closer to the entrance than anything else in the lot.
Many New York shoppers know exactly what those spots are for.
They take a spot anyway.
A Buffalo radio station has reported shoppers parking there to run in for a regular trip, leaving a pickup customer stuck watching an empty car sit in “their” spot.
2. Turning a New Wegmans Into a Photo Op
Wegmans turns into a photo backdrop on an ordinary Tuesday, not just a grand opening. That’s especially the case for tourists from a state without Wegmans.
Shoppers plant a cart sideways in the aisle, phone held up, filming the ceiling or the pizza oven while the people behind them wait to get past.
The habit traces back to enthusiasm.
Hundreds of shoppers once lined up nearly seven hours for the Brooklyn Navy Yard store’s 2019 opening.
A shopper reaching for a muffin has to ask a stranger to step aside so their photo can finish.
The picture isn’t of them.
3. Hogging the Produce Scale
Wegmans sets out self-serve scales in its produce section so shoppers can weigh and price their own fruit and vegetables before they ever reach a register.
It’s optional, not a rule.
Some shoppers don’t treat it that way.
They’ll park a full cart at the scale and price out onions, apples, potatoes, and three kinds of squash one bag at a time while a line forms behind them.
One Wegmans shopper pre-rang a bunch of bananas, then bagged them anyway just so the sticker had somewhere to go.
Bananas don’t need a bag, and that annoys the environmentally conscious.
Is Pre-Ringing Produce Required at Wegmans?
Wegmans never requires a shopper to weigh and sticker their own produce at those self-serve scales.
The store built them to keep the register accurate.
A cashier keying in the wrong code by hand is the exact mistake pre-ringing exists to prevent.
Skip the scale entirely, and the cashier still enters the same code at checkout, so your line doesn’t move any slower for it.
4. Cramming a Full Cart Into Self-Checkout
Wegmans self-checkout lanes back up fastest when the shopper ahead unloads a full week of groceries onto a belt built for a handful of items.
Anyone standing behind them already knows how that goes.
Many shoppers treat the lane as a shortcut around a longer register line anyway, scanning item after item while the wait behind them grows.
New York City lawmakers introduced a bill in March 2026 that would cap self-checkout at 15 items, proof enough that hardly any store enforces a limit today.
Wegmans hasn’t set a cap of its own, not yet.
That line pays for it.
Psst! How much do you know about Wegmans’ history? Take our quiz and see how many you can get right.
Quiz
Wegmans History IQ
Answer these questions on Wegmans’ company history and trivia. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
In 2010, Wegmans found itself in a trademark dispute with a well-known drugstore chain over its swirling script logo. Which chain sued?
5. Abandoning Carts Across the Lot
Wegmans stores in New York often sit behind lots wide enough to need their own row markers, especially at suburban locations built for a full field of cars on a Saturday morning.
Some shoppers wheel their cart to the car, load the trunk, and leave the cart wherever it stopped rolling.
Not in a corral.
Not against a curb.
Just parked in the empty spot next to them, waiting for a gust of wind or a slope in the pavement to send it into somebody's door.
New Yorkers gave this move a name of its own, the shopping cart theory.
It's an internet meme, not a study, but Wegmans lots test it every Saturday.
The corral sits a full row of spots away at many suburban stores, so returning a cart takes more than a couple of steps.
Whether someone bothers when nobody's watching is the whole test.
New Yorkers circling for a space already know an abandoned cart can claim a spot before they do.
6. Skipping the Checkout Divider
Wegmans checkout belts come with a small plastic bar sitting right there for splitting one order from the next.
Many people in line never touch it.
They unload their cart, and the shopper behind them unloads right on top, no bar, no gap, no warning.
The cashier stops scanning, holds up both carts, and asks who owns which pile of groceries.
That question shouldn't need asking.
Setting the bar down takes about two seconds and saves the whole line behind you.
Wegmans' Century-Long Wait for New York City
Wegmans was founded in Rochester in 1916, more than a hundred years before it opened a store anywhere in New York City proper.
The company grew across upstate New York, then Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and New Jersey first.
Its first Pennsylvania store opened in Erie back in 1993, decades before the company ever looked at Brooklyn.
Wegmans stores run as large as 140,000 square feet.
Not in New York City.
New York City real estate doesn't offer that kind of room, so the company waited until it found a workaround.
The Navy Yard store that finally opened in 2019 runs about 74,000 square feet, roughly half the usual size, with smaller carts to match the narrower aisles.
Manhattan's Astor Place location followed four years later, in October 2023.
A century of growth upstate, and the city waited until last.
Where Wegmans Wants You to Slow Down
Wegmans built its cheese counter for exactly the kind of lingering that gets shoppers side-eyed everywhere else in the store.
Employees there actively invite it.
"Any time someone wants to come into our stores and taste the cheese, all you have to do is ask," Wegmans merchandising category merchant Anne McFarland has said.
Ask for a taste before you buy, ask for a custom cut instead of a pre-wrapped wedge, ask which cheese pairs with the dinner you're planning.
Nobody's rushing you at that counter.
The cheese behind it ages in Wegmans' own climate-controlled caves near Rochester, built to copy the cellars of Europe for more than 300 varieties.
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