Wegmans opens highly anticipated Manhattan store. Here's what makes the store distinct

Wegmans Food Markets opened its highly anticipated Manhattan store at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Oct. 18.

Located at 770 Broadway on a block in the East Village known as Astor Place, the 87,500-square-foot store covers two floors.

In a remote segment outside the store before dawn, WPIX-TV’s Kirsten Cole said shopping at Wegmans “is a very different experience. And they’re bringing tens of thousands of square feet of that experience to what used to be only for the SUV-driving crowd and putting it right in the heart of the village.”

In fact, the Astor Place Wegmans is the only location — the 110^th in the chain — without parking, but it has direct access to the Astor Place subway stop, served by the 6 and 4 trains.

The store is distinct in other ways, too.

At street level is a food hall offering sushi, salads, sandwiches, soups, pizza, wings, hot Asian cuisine and made-to-order and packaged Mediterranean options.

Traditional departments — bakery, produce, meat, seafood, grocery, dairy and frozen foods — are on the lower level.

Astor Place also is the only Wegmans store, and the only retailer in the country, offering seafood from Tokyo’s Toyosu Fish Market, flown in fresh several times a week, according to the company.

In a story for Forbes, investment banker Richard Kestenbaum observed that traditional grocery aisle-type shopping only occupies around 13% of the floor space.

“The rest of the store looks more like a food hall you’d see in London’s Harrod’s or Eataly. It’s a broad range of products with different stations of workers preparing cuisines from all over the world” — something that holds a lot of appeal for urban dwellers with "tiny kitchens," wrote Kestenbaum, a co-founder of and partner in Triangle Capital, LLC.

An on-site dining room with a sushi bar and a bar serving Champagne and oysters will open during the first half of 2024, the company said.

As is custom with Wegmans store openings, people lined up outside ahead of time.

X (formerly Twitter) user Josh Schafter spotted three guys in Bills jerseys “serving up pancakes” to people waiting.

Wegmans, which was founded in 1916 in Rochester, shares its Manhattan address with Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta, which leases several upper floors.

Six-hundred people staff the store in the historic 15-story Wanamaker building, which is about a six-minute walk from Washington Square Park and previously housed a Kmart.

Reporter Marcia Greenwood covers general assignments. Send story tips to mgreenwo@rocheste.gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @MarciaGreenwood.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Wegmans opens highly anticipated Astor Place store in Manhattan NY