Wegmans is facing pressure from some people in Virginia to stop selling Trump Winery products.
The Rochester-based supermarket chain cannot sell wine inside its supermarkets in New York, but in Virginia it does, and spokeswoman Jo Natale says the company offers a number of Virginia wines in stores there as part of a commitment to work with suppliers near their stores.
Wegmans has been carrying wines from Kluge Winery since 2008. That winery was sold to Donald Trump in 2011.
But according to the Washington Post, there is now a call for Wegmans to remove the Trump Winery products from its 10 Virginia stores. The pressure comes in part from a Virginia chapter of the National Organization for Women and a Facebook group calledStop Trump Wine.
That group says that events during the presidential campaign made it clear that Eric Trump, the president of Trump Winery in Charlottesville, Virginia “shares the views of his father,” and it called for economic action against the winery products.
According to Natale, Wegmans feels that its role as a retailer is to offer choice to its customers.
She says the company is sometimes asked to stop selling a product, and its response is that “How a product performs is our single measure for what stays on our shelves and what goes. Individual shoppers who feel strongly about an issue can demonstrate their convictions by refusing to buy a product. When enough people do the same, and sales of a product drop precipitously, we stop selling that product in favor of one that’s in greater demand. “
