Wegmans Data Scraping

Range breadth is the measurement that matters

This retailer carries a deeper assortment than most US grocers of comparable size, particularly in fresh, specialty, international and prepared categories.

That changes what a dataset is for:

• A price comparison against a mainstream chain runs on the overlapping subset, which in specialty categories is small.
• Range breadth per category is the variable competitors actually track.
• New listings are a leading signal, because this retailer ranges items ahead of mainstream chains in several categories.
• Delistings matter for the same reason.

We deliver range_breadth_category per batch and listing_event for new and delisted items, alongside price. And we report matchable_share_category before quoting, as on our Waitrose page, because the same problem applies.

Prepared food is a different product class

A large prepared-food and foodservice range sits alongside packaged grocery here, and pooling them produces nonsense.

• Prepared items are priced per portion or per pound, not per pack.
• They have no identifier — no UPC, no cross-retailer equivalent.
• They change frequently, on a kitchen cycle rather than a merchandising one.
• Unit price is not comparable against packaged equivalents.

product_class separates packaged from prepared on every record, and prepared items are excluded from packaged-grocery indices by default rather than quietly included.

Where you want prepared food tracked, it is delivered as its own series with its own basis — the same treatment our foodservice page gives to catering ranges.

Own label

Own-label penetration is high and spans tiers. Flagged with tier from range naming, matched within the retailer, and marked unmatched across retailers, as everywhere.

A small panel, and the honest consequence

Store count here is small relative to the retailer's influence on the category. That has two consequences worth stating.

• Full-estate coverage is achievable at a cost that would buy a fraction of a national chain.
• Store-level variation is limited, since the retailer prices consistently across a compact estate.

So a store-level panel here is cheap and adds less than it would at a chain with regional pricing zones. We say so rather than selling store-level collection that duplicates itself.

Online footprint

Online range is a subset of in-store range, and the gap is larger here than at chains with smaller assortments — because there is more range to omit.

online_only_flag and range_note record that the online catalogue is not the full assortment. We do not infer in-store range from online listings, which would understate a retailer whose depth is the point.