Notes:

BIOGRAPHY: Guentner/Ireland/Cheney/Carrigan/Raschke/Kenning
Entries: 26121 Updated: 2006-03-21 11:57:18 UTC (Tue) Contact: David Guentner
dguenther@peoplepc.com

OBITUARY:
(June 16, 2002) ? He is, after all, 83 years old. Been with the company for 65 years. He could slow down, stop checking out the competition, stop worrying about getting the pizza just right in his stores. Away from the office, Robert B. Wegman, chairman and chief executive of Wegmans Food Markets Inc., might ease up a little. He might even stop playing golf as if the outcome mattered, really mattered. But golf is one of Wegman's passions. He was the driving force behind his company's becoming the name sponsor of the Wegmans Rochester LPGA, the tournament that starts this week at Locust Hill Country Club in Pittsford. He has played golf since he was a teenager, and even today he believes if he can be even going into the 18th hole, he's not going to lose. ''I am so competitive, you can't imagine,'' he says later for emphasis. This competitive nature has served Wegman well in the high-risk grocery business, where profit margins are notoriously thin and where household names -- remember Star and Bells -- come and go, are swallowed up, beaten down or edged out. As much as anyone else, Wegman has built the company that carries his family's name into a major national trendsetter. With 63 stores and counting, Wegmans has expanded well beyond its Rochester base. By any standard, it's doing well. Very well. ''Whether he is going up against Ahold or Wakefern, Wal-Mart or Walgreen's, he wins against every company and every type of retailer he faces,'' says Burt Flickinger III, managing director of Reach Marketing in Westport, Conn. Adds Michael O'Connor, a consultant for The Coca-Cola Co. and longtime president of the Supermarket Institute (now the Food Marketing Institute): ''Bob Wegman is the best merchant I have ever met anywhere in the world -- and I've met most of them. He is a most remarkable man.'' Wegman's competitive nature has also brought stability to the LPGA tournament at Locust Hill. In this case, Wegman would ''not actually'' be competing against another company, because no other company in Rochester or anywhere else really wanted to make the financial or time commitment to raise the tournament's status. ''He's not hands-on out here, but his people are,'' says Eleanor McLear, tournament office manager. ''He just wants everything to look good. I can't say enough about him.'' Since the company became the name sponsor in 1998, the tournament purse has doubled to $1.2 million. More important, in Wegman's opinion, is that tournament proceeds for charity have significantly risen as well. Four years ago, $250,000 was split between the Rotary's Sunshine Camp and Camp Haccamo. This year the camps, which serve disabled children, will each get $200,000. ''The LPGA is one of the best things we've ever done,'' says Wegman with pride. Learning the business It is safe to say that Robert Wegman and Wegmans Food Markets would not be involved in the tournament at all if fate had been kinder to Wegman when he was still a teenager. Wegman's father, Walter Wegman, died in 1936 at age 45. At the time, Walter Wegman was an officer in the family's six-store business in Rochester. The son was a student at Aquinas Institute, a young man far more interested in golf, baseball and other sports than the family business. ''I never worked in the stores when Dad was alive,'' Wegman says. After his father died, it was different. Wegman worked full time for the company while studying accounting at the Rochester division of Niagara University, graduating in 1941. After four years in the Marine Corps during World War II, he came back to Wegmans in 1946 as a meat cutter, learning everything there was to know about the business so he wouldn't be surprised. Early on, Wegman found himself doing different jobs, learning the whole business rather than just sitting behind a desk keeping the books. In 1950, he became president of the company upon his Uncle John's death. It was, by his admission, a rough transition, in part because he felt obligated to fire his mother. His mother Anna had been on the books as a vice president. Wegman, thinking he could only have one vice president at a time, wanted to put an uncle in the vice president's slot. ''So I go down to see my mother,'' he recalls. ''I said, 'Mother, they are going to make me president of the company, and I have to make Uncle Jim a vice president, so you have to resign.' She said, 'I'm not going to resign.' I said, 'Mother, I need this spot for a vice president.' 'No.' So I said, 'Well, Mother, then I have no recourse. I'm telling you, you are no longer a vice president.' She didn't talk to me for three solid years. ''If I only knew then what I know now. We now have 37 vice presidents. I could have solved that thing so easily -- and she'd have still been talking to me.'' As he recounts his career leading the company, Wegman tends to downplay the early years. He notes that the company really didn't expand beyond the cities of Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo until the late 1970s, when he was in his early 60s. But by that time, the company had put into place some of its trademark practices -- including an emphasis on customer service, a passion to try new technologies (Wegman would be a national champion for product code scanning) and a willingness to introduce new products to augment changing lifestyles. It's a company that will take chances, a luxury it can afford as long as it remains private. In fact, Wegman turned down what many would consider the opportunity of a lifetime -- chairing the largest supermarket chain in America -- in order to keep the company in family hands. Kroger Co., now a $50 billion business, once offered to buy Wegmans and make Wegman its chairman of the board. His response: ''After you've been an independent operator, running your own show for as long as I have, I'd never work in a public company. I wouldn't fit.'' ''I don't think you can go from a private company to a big company like that,'' he adds. ''Now I get up in the morning and decide what I want to do -- for that day and the future. And I liked Rochester, too.'' Looking for results There is also, Wegman says, a willingness by a private company to get out of businesses that aren't making a decent profit. Shortly after he took over as president, Wegman closed two cafeterias the company ran. ''And then, 10 years ago, I decided I wanted to get back in the restaurant business again,'' Wegman says with a laugh, referring to the company's in-store Market Cafes. ''And true to my first conclusion, we didn't make any money. ... It's taken us 10 years to figure out what kind of food preparation we should provide for our customers so that we have at least a chance of being profitable.'' During those 10 years, Wegman's son, Danny, by then president of the company, told him that they should get out of the restaurant business. The father prevailed, just as he did during those times that the company struggled with making pizza. Now the restaurants and the pizza -- both reflections of the transformation of the chain from stores that sell food that can be prepared to stores that also sell prepared food -- are doing well, especially in New Jersey, where Wegman says the restaurant business is ''phenomenal.''. Succession is in place to keep Wegmans private if Bob Wegman were to retire. Danny, 55, has been in the business for three decades; Danny's daughters, Colleen and Nicole, are actively involved. And all are constantly exposed to the competitive patriarch. ''You can't be around him if you don't like to compete in some way, shape or form, but I don't think you want to be exactly as competitive as he is,'' Danny says. ''You'd never get along. ''I would much prefer to make a customer happy than to beat a competitor. That's the way I look at the world.'' In 2000, Wegmans became the name sponsor of the Buffalo Bills training camp at St. Fisher College in Pittsford. The alliance -- which also featured in-store NFL merchandise and ticket sales -- carried through last year. But this year, Wegmans decided to part ways with the camp and the football team. ''It turned out to be a one-way street and it was all for the Bills,'' Wegman says. ''The culture of the Bills and our culture just didn't connect.'' While the companies didn't mesh, the heads of the companies did. Wegman developed a friendship with Bills owner Ralph Wilson, the owner of the Bills who is just three days younger than Wegman. ''He's a terrific guy,'' Wegman says. In everything he has done, Wegman has made no secret that he wants tangible results either for his company or for the community institutions he supports. Wegmans has awarded $48 million in college scholarships to employees as one way of retaining good workers. (From the start of his presidency, Wegman also increased other company benefits, hoping to attract and retain good workers. He was the first area grocer to offer comprehensive health care benefits to full-and part-time employees.) Over the years, Wegman and his wife, Peggy, have given more than $30 million to local Catholic elementary schools and millions to Aquinas Institute and St. John Fisher and Nazareth colleges. The Wegmans, who live both in Brighton and Canandaigua, have monitored the gifts closely. ''He's always looked for results in what he has done with money,'' says Peggy Wegman. ''It's harder to give money away than it is to make it,'' Robert Wegman says. Still, he works hard at doing both. He says he gave away 70 percent of his income last year. And he continues to check out new store sites, stopping at potential competitors while he is in town. Every Saturday he is in the area, he and his wife go to Wegmans stores or the stores of competitors just to look around. ''It's great fun,'' says Peggy Wegman. ''He'll walk around the house and say, 'My hip is killing me.' But put him in front of a store, and he's like a 16-year-old.'' Her husband doesn't deny that the visits give him energy. Though once in a while, they bring anger. ''I was in a store one Saturday,'' he says. ''I saw the pizza wasn't rising. I got so mad. If the dough doesn't rise, for some reason the sugar doesn't get absorbed properly. And it's just a totally different product.'' In the last eight years, Wegmans' revenue, including the Chase-Pitkin Home and Garden division, has increased from $1.8 billion to $2.92 billion. Those are the kinds of numbers that allow Wegman, a one-time 2-handicap golfer at Oak Hill Country Club in Pittsford, the luxury of a friendly bet on a round with friends. But he's strictly a $1 bettor, not a $10,000-a-hole wagerer such as Michael Jordan. ''He enjoys having a bet when he's on the golf course -- but not much of a bet,'' Danny says. ''But that is part of the competitive nature in him. He enjoys rising to the occasion, if you will. But he would never bet $10,000 on a match. That's not his style. He'd be glad to give it away, but he wouldn't bet it.''

BIOGRAPHY:
http://www.rbjdaily.com/PrivateBios04.htm
Robert WegmanChairman and CEO, Wegmans Food Markets Inc.
Wegman, 85, became a full-time employee of the family business in 1937. He became store manager in 1947 and president in 1950. He was named chairman and CEO in 1969.
Wegman has served as chairman of the board of regents of St. John Fisher College. He also has served on the executive committees of the Greater Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce Inc. and the United Community Chest of Greater Rochester. Wegman has served on the boards of CGR Inc. and Marine Midland Bank and has served as a board member and/or chairman of a number of industry associations.
He has been given a number of awards, including the 1994 Civic Medal Award from the Greater Rochester Metro Chamber of Commerce Inc. In 2004, he was inducted into the Junior Achievement National Business Hall of Fame.
Wegman received a bachelor's degree in accounting from Niagara University. He and his wife, Peggy, have four children: Daniel, Joan, Gail and Marie.

DEATH: Robert B. Wegman
October 14, 1918 - April 20, 2006
For Release: 04-20-2006
Contact Information:Jo Natale, director of media relations 585-429-3627

DEATH: Rochester, NY - With great sadness, we announce the passing of Robert B. Wegman, chairman of Wegmans Food Markets, Inc., who died this afternoon. Until recently, Mr. Wegman kept a full schedule working in the office and enjoying his favorite pastime of visiting Wegmans stores. His health had deteriorated in recent days, and he was admitted to Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester where he died peacefully.Robert Wegman transformed a small, family-owned company into one of the world?s most-admired supermarket chains. We will miss him terribly, but are comforted knowing he has left the company he so treasured in good hands.The Wegman family asks employees and customers to celebrate his life and remember his contributions to our company, to the industry, and to the community.

Robert married Mary E. Bemish on 19 May 1942 in Rochester, Monroe County, New York, USA. Mary was born in 1920 in Rochester, Monroe County, New York, USA; died on 23 May 1981 in Rochester, Monroe County, New York, USA. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Robert married Margaret F. Unknown [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Daniel married Joy S. Rause [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Joan married Paul V. Profeta [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Joan married Gary Goldman [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Mary married Patrick A. Tobin [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Unknown Zabkar. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Family/Spouse: Charlie Kenton. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]