A High School Musical Was Once Inspired By Wegmans

With just 107 stores nationwide, Wegmans might be a smaller grocery store chain, but it has an outsized impact. It's been named the number one grocery store in the United States, even beating out the beloved Trader Joe's. The chain's legions of superfans are even called Wegmaniacs (via Syracuse.com). Like die-hard fans of any other piece of pop culture, the Wegamaniacs have even shared their appreciation for the store through art — specifically through a Wegmans-inspired musical. 

The story begins in 2012 when Wegmans opened a store in Northborough, Massachusetts, according to CNBC. The new location (which was the first in the state) was so hotly anticipated that 2,000 people queued up in the early morning on opening day; some even camped out overnight to be one of the first in line. The chaos in the store, which included a man proposing to his girlfriend in one of the aisles inspired the town's high school drama teacher Maura Morrison to create "Wegmans: The Musical."

When Maura Morrison, a teacher at Algonquin Regional High School, brought the idea to her drama class, the students began improvising lyrics to make song parodies, reports Bloomberg. Soon the class crafted a plot about sibling betrayal, featuring brothers who worked at competing grocery chains — one, of course, being a Wegmans. The news outlet reports that when Morrison brought the script to Wegmans' corporate office for their blessing, she expected the supermarket chain to pull the plug on the school's performance. Instead, Wegmans sent hats and t-shirts and catered the opening night cast party. According to the school's newspaper The Harbinger, when the high school revived the show in 2018, the musical once again had Wegmans' full support, with corporate executives in the audience, cheering on the teen actors (via Bloomberg).

This revival performance currently lives on via YouTube, but "Wegmans: The Musical" seems ripe for TikTok. A growing cadre of musical theater parodies, from "Ratatouille: The Musical" to "The Unofficial Bridgerton Musical" are finding wild success on the app, with the former getting a green light from Disney for a benefit performance (via Variety) and the latter winning a Grammy Award (via The Conversation). Since a grocery store musical — appropriately called "Grocery Store: A New Musical" — has already made the TikTok rounds, and the app maker has started commissioning musicals, maybe "Wegmans: The Musical" is next up to become a TikTok sensation.