ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The Wegmans that will open in the Alexandria area in
late spring or early summer will be the first Wegmans in Virginia to feature a
full-service restaurant called The Pub.
The English-style pub will serve local beers, wine and mixed drinks as well as food.
“It’s a full-service pub with a mixed menu of seafood and burgers and really some comfort foods,” says store manager Mike Dempsey. “We’re excited about the opportunity to show our customers in Northern Virginia what having a small pub is like being at Wegmans.”
The restaurant will seat 80 to 100 people. Its executive chef will change
the menu four times a year to coincide with the seasons.
“Some of our recipes and some of our menus are driven by what we do within the store. However, I will tell you, you can’t necessarily get the same menu in prepared foods than you’d get at the English-style pub,” Dempsey says.
The new 126,000-square-foot store will anchor the Hilltop Village Center, a 350,000-square-foot retail and office complex at Telegraph Road and Beulah Street.
With a location just north of Fort Belvoir, Dempsey says he expects the pub will be busy.
“I expect us to have a good lunch crowd. All the more, anybody who wants to have dinner before shopping, it’s an easy opportunity to catch a quick meal before you go ahead and shop for the week, or for the day.”
Wegmans sent direct-mail pieces soliciting people to apply to work at the new store.
“We’re up over 1,600 applications. We’re very happy with the quality of the applicants,” says Dempsey, who has managed the other three Wegmans in Northern Virginia.
“We are going to hire over 500 people total.”
Interviews have been underway for the last four weeks.
The 500 positions will be hired locally; 200 will be full-time. Dempsey says the chain
is still accepting applications online.
In addition to Wegmans, the Hilltop Village Center will feature a Greene Turtle Sports Bar and Grille, a Moe’s Southwest Grill, an LA Fitness center, a PetValu store and a number of other smaller retail stores, according to Weingarten Realty.
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