When you’re picking out the food for a big meal, you go to the supermarket, the place with the largest variety of ingredients for whatever you’re planning to make.

Local entrepreneur Wesley Wilkinson and business partner Jeff Foster offer a similarly wide selection, but their shelves are stocked with something a little different — metal.

Wilkinson and his father opened their first Metal Supermarkets franchise in Cranberry in 2018, offering small-quantity metals for professionals, businesses and hobbyists. On May 5, they opened the 100th Metal Supermarkets store in the U.S. in Monroeville.

“Metal is metal, but we see ourselves as solutions providers,” Wilkinson said. “Each day brings opportunities to innovate and help our customers find the material they need to keep their business up and running, repair critical infrastructure, or just spend some time working on a hobby or home project.”

Foster has held steel industry positions in management, purchasing and sales.

“We take pride in being able to say ‘yes’ when our customers ask if something is possible,” he said. “Based on our successful track record, we are well-versed in the needs of customers purchasing metal.”

Metal Supermarkets offers 8,000 types, shapes and grades of metal, cut to customer specifications, and they specialize in a wide range of products including hot- and cold-rolled steel, aluminum, stainless steel, copper and brass.

Wilkinson said he was pleased to find a site in an area of Monroeville that is already populated with industrial and construction supply businesses.

“There just aren’t a ton of options like this out here,” he said. “We were getting a lot of calls at the Cranberry store from out this way, so we thought it would be worth seeing what the east suburbs have to offer.”

Clients are typically a mix of “fabricators, machine shops and do-it-yourself guys who just need six feet of metal tube to fix part of a trailer,” Foster said. “They can see what works for them and we can get it cut right here the same day.”

The company is celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2025, and has more than 130 stores across the U.S., Canada and the U.K.

Metal Supermarkets is at 205 Seco Road. For more, see MetalSupermarkets.com/pittsburgh-monroeville.

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