Press release by Wegmans.
In his job as a store manager for Wegmans, Keith Grierson keeps his cool as he prepares to open the company’s newest 126,000 sq. ft. supermarket at Montgomery Mall on November 3 at 7 a.m. But, putting out fires is something Keith Grierson has been doing nearly all of his life, fighting blazes as a volunteer firefighter.
Helping others is part of the fabric of Grierson’s life. His father and grandfather were volunteer firefighters and Grierson followed in their footsteps. Over his 26-year career with Wegmans, even after moving to various locations, Grierson always found ways to give back to the communities where he and his family lived – as a firefighter, ambulance dispatcher, volunteer fire chief, Head Start volunteer, trained mediator, or board member for the United Way. He’s now on the roster as a firefighter for the Skippack Fire Company, the town where he and his family live.
But, at this moment, Grierson is focused on opening the new Montgomeryville store and learning as much as he can about the people, organizations, and other businesses in the community. Before the doors even open, he will have hired 500 people new to Wegmans and brought in another 100 people from other Wegmans stores. (More than 10,000 applicants applied for jobs at the new store.)
It’s a sizeable undertaking to transform a group of 600 people into a team ready to harmonize and deliver incredible customer service from day one, but Grierson seems undaunted. He has learned from managing Wegmans stores in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre that the company’s values are like wind in the sails.
What are those values? Caring about the success of every person. High standards. Making a difference in the community. Respect. And, empowering employees to make decisions that improve their work and benefit customers and the company.
“We need to show new employees that we really do want them to succeed, and we’ll give them the right tools and training so they can,” says Grierson. “We want them to know it’s not just words, but something we keep working at all the time.”
That feeling of everybody pulling together is what Grierson aims to put in place at the Montgomeryville store. “The sense of being part of the community, part of a family and team, mirrors our values at Wegmans, and it matters to me personally, so what I do on and off the job feels like a perfect fit,” he says.
Opportunities for personal development and career advancement are plentiful at Wegmans, Grierson believes. His own career path is a good example. He started 26 years ago in high school when he worked part-time at a Wegmans store in Rochester, NY as a “Helping Hand,” loading groceries into customers’ cars and pushing carts. He won a college scholarship from Wegmans and continued working part time during college, graduating with an associate’s degree from Genesee Community College in 1991, then a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Brockport in 1993. In 1994, he became the lead night manager at the Scranton, PA store and then worked in other store and human resources positions to broaden his experience before he became the Scranton store manager in 2002 and eventually the Wilkes-Barre store manager in 2006. In 2012 he was asked to open the new Montgomeryville location.
As a store manager in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Grierson always spent a good part of his day walking the aisles, chatting up customers and employees. “The part of your day when you’re getting to know employees or customers personally is what really makes the difference.”
He’s heard countless stories about people’s vacations, about how their kids’ sports teams did last week, about who’s sick and who’s getting better, or about what college a granddaughter wants to attend, and he’s shared some of his own. People don’t forget things like that. “It’s been seven years since I’ve worked at the Scranton store,” Grierson says, “but when I’m back in town for a visit and come by the store, people do come up to say hello.”
Montgomeryville will be Wegmans’ 16th store in Pennsylvania, having opened their first store in 1993 in Erie, and the 83rd store for the company. Today, Wegmans has nearly 8,500 employees in Pennsylvania, including those at their distribution hub, the Retail Service Center, in Schuylkill County.
Off the job, Keith Grierson has a family of his own, including his wife, Nancy, and three children. His eldest, a 17-year-old daughter named Sydney, is a cashier at the Wegmans store in Collegeville. Son Dylan, 14, is a high school freshman this fall, and his youngest, Dakota, age 8, just entered second grade.
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