Wegmans Will Celebrate Earth Day with Free Samples

Wegmans on Saturday. That's when the store will be celebrating Earth Day with a bonzana of samples for customers.

Shoppers who stop by on April 20, from 11 am to 3 pm will be inundated with organic tidbits throughout the store. You can eat enough to make it lunch!

The store is touting its own organic foods and produce, and hoping to tempt shoppers with taste highlights.

Here are some of the food highlights:

• Organic Lemonade: There will be a guide to 'tasting stations' customers can pick up as they enter the store as well as grab a sample of organic lemonade.
• Produce: Try the organic strawberries and organic Super Yogurt. Kids can pick up a tattoo with a farm theme, like a tractor or ladybug.
• Bakery: Take a bite of a sandwich made from organic ciabatta rolls and organic roast beef.
• Prepared Foods: Taste organic chicken noodle soup – tastes as fresh as homemade.
• Seafood: Try a bite of cedar-plank E.U. Certified Organic salmon from Ireland. Check out the bronzini journey sign while you’re there.
• Meat:  Taste the organic lemon and garlic chicken breast with no antibiotics or growth hormones.
• Dairy:  Have a snack of organic cream cheese and organic celery.
• Frozen:  Sip a smoothie made from organic frozen strawberries, organic orange juice, organic bananas, and plain Super Yogurt.
• Grocery: Try a sample of Wegmans organic raw nuts.
• Nature’s Marketplace: Have a bite of PBJ & Jammin’ on organic bread. 
• General Merchandise: Get a $1.50-off coupon for an Epoca Ecolution 8” sauté pan with Hydrolon nonstick coating and no PFOA.

The kids aren't left out, either. There are recycling coloring sheets and a bingo card that shows organic products. Kids fill in the card when they see a matching item in the store, and when they strike bingo, they can redeem the card for a berry-flavored organic juice box in Nature’s Marketplace.

One other Earth Day-appropriate touch is that the first 300 customers at each store turning in a bag stuffed full of clean bags during the event will get a coupon for a reusable bag from Wegmans. The supermarket chain recycled 3.4 million pounds of plastic bags and wrapping and made the equivalent of 180,000,000 new bags for the stores in 2012. The plastic bags are made from 40% recycled material. 

“We’re always looking for new ways to reduce, reuse and recycle our resources,” said Jason Wadsworth, Wegmans’ sustainability coordinator, in a statement. “We have a responsibility toward future generations to take steps to protect our world today. We want to share with customers what we’re doing and invite them to join us on this journey, so we’ve created posters around the store to show the impact that some of our practices had in 2012.”

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