Supermarket pubs: Bar hopping meets grocery shopping - Philly.com

Supermarket pubs: Bar hopping meets grocery shopping - Philly.com

By Diane Mastrull

Inquirer Staff Writer

No karaoke nights are offered, and no happy hours. Pour-your-heart-out talks with the barkeep? None of those either.

"We don't ever really get any personal stuff, other than 'I'm going to change my grocery list,' " said Heather Reilly.

And though her job involves mixing cocktails and serving up brews, don't call her a bartender. Reilly's a "service team member."

At The Pub inside the Wegmans supermarket in Collegeville, a social experiment of sorts is in progress, at the point where one of life's most mundane chores intersects with something that could go a long way toward blunting its misery: alcohol.

There's even a chance at romance. So far, the store reports one engagement - which the happy couple toasted with champagne.

The Pub, the only one in the Wegmans chain of 75 stores in five states, opened when the market it sits in debuted Oct. 11 just off U.S. Route 422, in the massive but still largely unoccupied Providence Town Center.

A second Wegmans Pub is planned at a store scheduled to open in June in O'Neill Properties Group's Uptown Worthington, a planned mixed-use complex of homes, offices, and stores along Route 202 in Malvern.

If three stores make a trend, this region is well on its way. Front and center in the Whole Foods Market in Plymouth Meeting that opened Jan. 12 is the Cold Point Pub, a mini-model of the Wegmans watering hole.

At Cold Point, you serve yourself wine from preset taps after paying for an access card. Employees run the beer taps. If the munchies on the menu - such as a charcuterie plate, an olive sampler, and soft pretzels - don't satisfy your appetite, you're free to buy something in the store and bring it into the 30-seat pub.

With its soft lighting and easy chairs, the Whole Foods establishment looks more like a coffee lounge than Wegmans' 63-seat pub, where the bar top is Cambria natural quartz stone, surrounded by solid cherry and cherry veneers. Two flat-screen TVs offer patrons something to watch when they're not gazing into each other's eyes.

The food-service component has enabled Wegmans and Whole Foods to buy restaurant liquor licenses that allow them not only to dispense beer, wine, and - in Wegmans' case - spirits for consumption on the premises, but also to sell six-packs of beer for carryout.

Two per customer is the rule, said Nick Hays, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. Otherwise, state law generally limits six-pack sales to bars.

Cases (the equivalent of four six-packs) are the minimum at distributors. Sen. John C. Rafferty Jr. (R., Montgomery) is pushing for an overhaul of the state's beer laws to allow distributors, supermarkets, convenience stores, and bars and taverns to sell anything from a six-pack up to a case of beer.

There are no plans for pubs at the Wegmans stores in Cherry Hill and Mount Laurel - the law in New Jersey does not permit supermarkets to own restaurant liquor licenses.

The Mount Laurel store does have an agreement to sublease space to an independent operator that will sell wine, beer, and liquor, said spokeswoman Jeanne Colleluori.

For now, the company is learning from its Collegeville pub - and making adjustments as customers dictate or events warrant, said Kathy Haines, Wegmans' regional restaurant manager for Pennsylvania.

She said The Pub was intended to fill a gap in the store's Market Cafe complex, where shoppers can buy prepared foods either to take out or to eat at nearby tables. The Pub is a full-service restaurant "where you can enjoy a great meal and enjoy a drink with that meal," Haines said - though, she insisted, "our focus is really on the food."

That seems to go for the customers as well. Monthly Pub sales show just 20 percent of patrons ordering a beer, a glass of wine, or a cocktail with their food order, Haines said. This despite moderate prices: Domestic 12-ounce beers go for $3.75; 15-ounce drafts range from $3 to $4. Wine is $5 a glass. Cocktails - $5.25 to $10. And no tipping allowed! (You don't tip the guy at the deli counter for the pound of bologna he slices you, Haines said.)

Overall, the Collegeville Wegmans store registers 30,000 transactions a week, Haines said. That the bar tab isn't more significant might have a lot to do with the abundance of mothers pushing carts bearing young children, particularly in the daytime, customers suggested.

"I wouldn't want to get drunk in front of families and stuff," said John Riggs, 33, of Pottstown. He opted for a tame ginger ale with his crab cake sandwich on a recent lunch outing to The Pub with three colleagues from Canon in nearby Oaks.

Half-joking, Riggs suggested there is much marketing genius in serving alcohol where groceries are sold: "You come in and have a couple of cocktails, and then you buy all sorts of things you didn't come in for."

That lack of self-control is what Norma Hahn, 76, was trying to avoid.

"I have to cook dinner and help with homework tonight," said the Pittsburgh grandmother, in town with husband Adam, 75, to babysit four grandchildren. While the kids were at school, grandma and grandpa headed to Wegmans to do some grocery shopping - and then some.

She was having an iced green tea with her fried oyster sandwich. He was having a Heineken with his, rejoicing in the idea of a pub in a grocery store, and hoping the idea would soon reach his Giant Eagle store back home.

"My God," Adam Hahn said after taking another swig of beer. "Pennsylvania is finally coming into the new century."

Where does all this store-hours-only imbibing, just a short shopping-cart glide away from the produce and dairy cases, leave traditional pubs?

Confident of not losing customers, said Vincent Giancaterino, co-owner of DaVinci's Pub in Collegeville, just two miles from Wegmans.

Though the Wegmans pub is "nicely done," Giancaterino said, "it's more like a resting place. We have live music five days a week."