By Tracy Zwick
Most nights, after stepping offstage at the Ambassador Theater – where she’s spent six months belting out “When You’re Good to Mama” as Mama Morton in ”Chicago” – Broadway veteran Rema Webb stops at the West Side Market at West 110th Street and Broadway. “It’s my ritual,” she said. “I can’t eat before the show, so every night after the show I go in there to grab something small.” When the cashier asked for her phone number, she gave it, thinking she was going to earn a few loyalty points.
Then, in July, she got a call. “A gentleman named Stephen” told her she’d won free groceries for a year. “I said, ‘Wait, what?’” Webb recalled earlier this week. “I figured maybe I’d get a discount, but I did not imagine this!”
She’s not the only one who’s gotten that call from Stephen Alcala, who oversees West Side Market’s loyalty program and sweepstakes, which has become one of the more whimsical local retail phenomena on the Upper West Side. The store launched the program last December in honor of its 65th anniversary. Since then, one shopper a month has received a call from Alcala and a check worth $400 a month in groceries – a “use it or lose it” allowance for nearly everything in the store (alcohol and catering are excluded). As of this summer, there are also weekly winners of smaller cash prizes and surprise items ranging from a case of drinks to spicy coffee to “Made with Love,” the cookbook authored by store co-founder Maria Zoitas.
“It all started modestly,” said Alcala, “as an effort to give something back to the community and our loyal customers.” At first, patrons were reluctant to give up their phone numbers and email addresses. But Alcala and his team cajoled and persisted. The program now has over 10,000 participants. “This is just Stage 1,” he explained. “It’s our rollout year.” Winners currently receive a “house account” to use when they check out, but a digital wallet and other online features are in beta-testing.
The inaugural winner, 85-year-old Georgia Wever, cried when Alcala called to give her the good news. She receives Meals on Wheels due to health issues stemming from a stroke. “I can’t cook,” she said, “but I can get my milk, olive oil, vegetables, even my personal care products at West Side Market, and I make a salad every night.” She loves the market’s heirloom tomatoes and sauerkraut in her nightly salads – “things I wouldn’t be able to afford otherwise.”
Wever, mother of Emmy-winning actress Merritt Wever who’s currently featured in HBO’s “The Gilded Age,” remembered meeting Alcala at the store. “He was trying to get people to sign up, but I said ‘no, no, I never win anything.’” Alcala encouraged her: “I have a good feeling,” he said. “So I signed up!” Wever chirped. “He made me!”
Other winners have included a barber, a student training to become a teacher, and, as of Thursday, UWS writer and translator Leslie Camhi, who was photographed in-store (at the Broadway and West 98th Street branch) holding a giant check, a complimentary bouquet of roses and hydrangea, and balloons. Camhi, a regular contributor to Vogue and The New Yorker, also writes for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets. Her first effort at book translation landed her on the International Booker Prize longlist in 2022.
“When Stephen called,” she remembered, “my first thought was: I’ll be able to feed a lot of people with this.” Camhi bakes cookies for holiday donation drives and pumpkin bread for a local homeless shelter. “Everyone deserves to eat well and eat healthy,” she said. “And a creative cook can always find a use.”
As for Webb, the sweepstakes win came “right on time.” Her run in “Chicago” ends this Sunday and her next project — “Bat Boy” at City Center – doesn’t open until October. The free groceries will help her and her college-age son through the interval. She can shop at any of the store’s seven locations, but she’s partial to the one around the corner from home, on the UWS.
According to Alcala, the sweepstakes was designed to run for one year, “but we have plans for continuing it.” The weekly drawings for other food items will continue, too, “working with vendors on getting items, including new items from emerging brands. The sky’s the limit.”
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Westside has been doing some great things! Keep it up!
My home health aide shops for me maybe twice a week. She was NEVER approached to sign up. Hmmm. Wonder why.
There were signs promoting it, and when you make a cc purchase the card reader gives you the option of linking that form of payment to your account. You can go on the website to register and there’s another sweepstakes coming up. : )
West Side market is a little expensive but the convenience is great.
Hope the winners who can afford it donate whatever portion they don’t use to someone who has need.
Does that apply to all winnings ?
Whatever the individual can afford if an individual can afford something.
Count your blessings.
Or evem to paychecks? Does Joey really need everything he has?
$400.00 is not that much for groceries these days, for 1 person for a month.
It’s a fortune if you don’t have $400
There’s always someone to say something negative! $4,800 is a generous gift.
I was replying to a writer who suggested the winner donate the excess. Yes it’s generous, West Side Market is a class act.
You’re kidding, right? If you found a $100 bill on the sidewalk every for 4 weeks in a row for 12 months, would you pick it up, use it for groceries — and whine about it not being enough? If you win, don’t use it for yourself since it’s not enough. Give it to one of the many organizations in the neighborhood that feed the needy. Thank you, West Side Market for your generosity.
Just curious, but why do you think some of the current winners aren’t in need of the full amount of their prizes?
Same reason why I might think some of the current winners are in need of the full amount of their prizes. I really don’t know. Just making a statement.
Great to get to know some of our UWS neighbors through stories like this! Congrats to the winners!
This is wonderful! Sign me up! ☺️
It’s so special and it makes this big city like a small intimate town in the best of ways while still maintaining one’s privacy that a big city offers.
Thank you Mr Alcala. What a wonderful and generous idea. We love West Side market. 💕
Westside is the great survivor of markets if the UWS. No sell out. No downgrade of products. Everything is just how you expect it to be. My favorite location is 100th St. Sadly, I live on 61st and it’s a hike for these old bones.
If they really want to “give something back to the community and our loyal customers.” to quote Mr. Alcala why don’t they offer senior discount days like Foodtown, Ctown, Fairway and virtually everyone else does???
Last week I shopped there and when i got home found that i’d been charged for 2 heads of lettuce when I only bought 1. $3.99 down the drain.
Take your receipt to the store and you’ll get a refund.
Two heads are better than one.
Leslie Camhi will hear about this and send you a lettuce.
Bravo to West Side Market! Their generosity encourages me to shop for my groceries there more often. My purchases clearly help WSM to continue supporting our neighbors . I wish small retailers could afford to do this kind of “reach out”. This not only helps those who “win” but the whole neighborhood!!
Love love love this story! Thank you to West Side Market (was just there the other day, actually, unaware of the good they do!) for sharing this story of community, kindness, and humanity. At this time, especially, we can use all we can get of those!
Very very nice offer. We shopped at WSM when they had a store on Bwdy in the 70s.
Wouldn’t it be nice if West Side Market opened a branch in one of the big empty spaces on Broadway between 86th and 90th? Just saying….