AISLE BE DAMNED: Selling everything from kosher foods to toilet paper, Wegmans is like 10 markets in one. : Michael T. Regan

I'll buy Wegmans Organic Soy Crisps before I'd buy that.

Do the first customers get free gifts? Are there big sales?

Nope. Nothing but the food sampling and sales that go on at all of their stores, all day, any day, says Natale.

Attending supermarket conventions for a decade-plus-old grocery foods column, I have long heard industry professionals praise Wegmans and its innovative sales methods. But the Rochester, N.Y.-based, family-owned, 71-store chain only became a local presence fairly recently: first with a store in Downingtown in April 2003, then in Mt. Laurel, and beginning last week, just 10 minutes over the Benjamin Franklin Bridge in Cherry Hill, as the ads on the sides of SEPTA buses around town point out.

I recently took the 25-minute drive to Wegmans' virtually identical Mt. Laurel store to find out what all the fuss is all about.

The first shopper I met there was so positive I thought she was a corporate plant—until others said similar things.

"It's like a dream come true," said Becky Suchin, who lives just a mile from the store. "It's really like two markets—one with excellent fresh vegetables, meats, gourmet and kosher foods—attached to a regular store where you can get your toilet paper."

I actually counted more like eight to 10 markets in Wegmans' 125,000 square-foot space (three to four times the size of other supermarkets).

The doors open into a farmer's market, albeit one that's impeccably clean and cooperatively run so that products are displayed together. Bananas take up an entire aisle and mushrooms run the eye-popping gamut: from $1.50 white sliced to $500 black truffles. The gourmet food "shop" behind produce includes large organic and nonorganic olive bars. Walk a few aisles to the left and you'll swear you were in Whole Foods; a few aisles more and it looks like Bed, Bath & Beyond, until you finally reach the "regular" grocery store of Tastykakes and frozen entrees. But on this Saturday afternoon most of the shoppers were concentrated in the store's flashier right side, where the coffee and Asian food bars, gourmet cafeteria, pizza and sub shop, bakery and meat and fish sections and delis (kosher and non) all are located, and where most of the food sampling takes place. While there I enjoyed free four-bite servings of an applewood bacon cheeseburger and grilled apricot salmon and a piece of brioche—or almost enough to skip buying anything in the restaurant area—if everything hadn't looked so great. These are not ordinary meat and bakery counters but a bakery with a 12-foot section devoted to nothing but giant cookies; and meat and fish cases with better lighting than Wilma productions.

Such quality, freshness and presentation do not come cheap. Lobster salad was almost $29 a pound; ready-to-cook wasabi tuna steak, $22. "The quality seems very good but some of the prices are high," said Phil Starkman of Cherry Hill, echoing at least half a dozen other shoppers. It's a rap the company fights in its advertising and policy of "consistent low prices" (Tropicana OJ and Breyers Ice Cream are always $2; Dannon yogurt, 40 cents). There are also lots of affordable Wegmans house items and some weekly sales.

The higher prices, where they exist, are probably helping to pay for the extraordinary level of customer service offered by a Wegmans store's 600 employees (more than eight times the average supermarket). I watched openmouthed as a butcher escorted a customer halfway across the store to the catering area where she needed to be, conversing pleasantly all the while. The coffee bar barista talked about the 53-cent coffee refill policy as she poured. One customer got a 46-page Meat Basics booklet along with her pork purchase.

Which brings up a point Cherry Hill Corkscrewed wine shop owner and Temple wine course instructor John McNulty of Moorestown, N.J., makes about his neighborhood Wegmans: "The help are very kind and courteous but they're not as knowledgeable as at a specialty store like Downtown Cheese or Di Bruno's." That's why he wouldn't recommend Wegmans to Philadelphians with access to the Reading Terminal or Italian markets. "This is for suburbanites who don't want the hassle of going back into the city on the weekend."

Industry studies say that people are typically only willing to drive about five miles to do their supermarket shopping. But Tom Cirino, general manager for the Mid-Atlantic edition of trade newspaper Food Industry Advisor, says Wegmans is not your typical supermarket destination. "With their size and in-store chefs, they're more of an attraction, an extravaganza," he noted.

Indeed, Mt. Laurel customer Stuart Chaifetz echoed McNulty's comments about Wegmans probably not being worth the travel time and $3 toll for Philadelphians with so many other food shopping options but then admitted one reason he shops there is because his preschooler loves to watch the model train that clickety-clacks above the dairy case. As far as we know, no Center City supermarket has that.

Wegmans, 6 a.m.-midnight, daily, 2100 Route 70 West, Cherry Hill, N.J., 856-488-2700, www.wegmans.com.