Shoprite

The ShopRite LPGA Classic will have a new home next year, and a larger purse. The tournament, scheduled for June 26 to 28, is moving from Greate Bay Resort and Country Club in Somers Point, N.J., where it has been for the last decade, to Marriott's Seaview Resort in nearby Galloway Township. Seaview was the site in 1986 and '87, the event's first two years. Back then, the purse was only $225,000. Next year it will be $1 million, a $100,000 increase from this season. Only one non-major on the LPGA tour has a larger pot. "This dramatically underscores the extent of the growth of our tournament," said event chairman Larry Harrison.

As families face cuts and other changes to the federal food-stamp program, Philadelphia-area residents are learning what it's like to live for a week on $5 a day, the average benefit for an individual. On Monday, elected officials and community members were to take up the Greater Philadelphia Food Stamp Challenge sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Allotted just $35 for a week of food, participants will learn firsthand the anxiety-driven calculus of finding nutrition with nearly no money.

The ShopRite supermarket at the Lawrence Park Shopping Center, a fixture to local food shoppers for 14 years, has been sold to Acme Markets Inc., and about 100 employees are temporarily - and possibly permanently - losing their jobs. The 30,000-square-foot ShopRite was scheduled to close yesterday, according to the disheartened employees. "It is like a family, the customers and the employees," said Patti Miller, 45, of Springfield, who has worked at the ShopRite since it opened in 1979.

Maurice Brown, 49, bought hoagies and soda yesterday at a corner store on Allegheny Avenue, down the road from where he lives. But for a full grocery trip, he has to travel about a half hour by bus to get to the nearest supermarket. It's no wonder, then, that Brown and other Tioga residents are excited by plans for a ShopRite in their neighborhood. "It's more convenient for the neighborhood," said Brown, 49, who works at a moving company. "We need a supermarket around here," said Franklin Cooper, 51, who worked for PepsiCola Bottling Co. "I bet everyone's saying they're glad.

After years of watching competitors cut into its local lead in supermarket sales, Acme Markets fell into second place over the last year, dethroned by ShopRite, according to an annual survey published by Food Trade News. ShopRite, ringing up $1.7 billion in sales across the eight-county Philadelphia region, grabbed the top spot from Acme, which has struggled to cut costs by shutting down underperforming stores and recently laid off 900 part-time employees. The survey studied the period from April 1, 2010, through March 31. During that time, Acme's sales were $1.6 billion, a drop from $1.8 billion a year earlier, according to data published this week in the trade publication's June editions.

Acme Markets remains the dominant supermarket chain in the region, according to the seventh annual market study by Food Trade News, a trade publication that follows the supermarket industry. Acme, with 204 stores in the region, posted nearly 25 percent of the $11.67 billion in total retail food sales for the 45-county area, the survey found. Acme is dominant in the city as well as the 45-county region encompassing Eastern Pennsylvania and 11 counties in New Jersey. It also leads the Food Trade News rankings for the eight-county Philadelphia metropolitan area.

Anyone with a competitive bone knows that there are times when being No. 1 is a blessing of achievement, and times when it is a burden to defend. For Acme Markets these days - top dog in the race for the $10 billion that Philadelphia-area shoppers spend in supermarkets each year - front-runner status has become a bit of a watch-your-back game. The massive supermarket chain, whose year-after-year dominance has made it as much a regional fixture as soft pretzels on a Philadelphia hot dog cart, lost market share in the last year as the competition picked up ground, according to an annual survey by Food Trade News.

Two companies that do business in the township have donated $60,000 to a local youth association - the first contributions to a capital campaign for improvements to Hartford Crossing Park. After heated debate over the summer, the Township Council reduced a bond proposal that had included money to complete the park. The council approved a $2 million version of the bond, a plan that reduced spending on the park by $300,000. The trim sent township officials looking for corporate donations to fund some items that were cut. Among them: new lighting for the fields, an announcer's booth, and storage and restroom facilities.

The good citizens of Brooklawn have taken some potshots for the decision last month to name the local elementary school's gym after a nearby ShopRite supermarket. After a while, they probably won't notice the barbs. They will be too busy using the gym and the library that now - thanks to the $100,000 that ShopRite pledged - will be open to the community after hours. While Brooklawn's deal is causing some fuss, it's important to remember that moves by schools to offer marketing exposure in exchange for cash are nothing new. In fact, public schools and corporations have been finding ways to cooperate for decades.

As families face cuts and other changes to the federal food-stamp program, Philadelphia-area residents are learning what it's like to live for a week on $5 a day, the average benefit for an individual. On Monday, elected officials and community members were to take up the Greater Philadelphia Food Stamp Challenge sponsored by the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia. Allotted just $35 for a week of food, participants will learn firsthand the anxiety-driven calculus of finding nutrition with nearly no money.

Philadelphia residents were to have a chance Saturday to turn in guns, no questions asked, in exchange for $100 worth of groceries. From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., anyone who handed in a gun at one of two sites was to get a $100 gift card from ShopRite. People who turned in more than one gun could get a maximum of two gift cards. The "Goods for Guns" swap, arranged by the community-action group Philadelphia Safety Net (PSN) with cooperation from the Police Department, ShopRite, other businesses, and State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams (D., Phila.)

This story by Eagles beat writer Les Bowen originally appeared on the Daily News' Eagles blog, Eagletarian, at www.eagletarian.com . DeSean Jackson was sitting around playing video games, as he tells it, with a couple of longtime friends from California who live here now, when the subject of giving back to the community came up. The friends, Khalid Rahim and Tracy Jones, had an idea - why not select a worthy family and take them...

Giant Food Stores, which has expanded fiercely with 47 locations across Southeastern Pennsylvania in recent years to become one of the most popular supermarket chains in the region, has broken the city barrier. The grocer will open its first Philadelphia store July 20 at the site of the decommissioned Penn Fruit bakery and commercial food-storage facility in the 2500 block of Grant Avenue near Roosevelt Boulevard in the Northeast. The 74,000-square-foot Giant is part of a 156,000-square-foot retail redevelopment project that came to fruition during the last two years despite opposition from the region's top grocery labor union - and despite ample competition in the area.

After years of watching competitors cut into its local lead in supermarket sales, Acme Markets fell into second place over the last year, dethroned by ShopRite, according to an annual survey published by Food Trade News. ShopRite, ringing up $1.7 billion in sales across the eight-county Philadelphia region, grabbed the top spot from Acme, which has struggled to cut costs by shutting down underperforming stores and recently laid off 900 part-time employees. The survey studied the period from April 1, 2010, through March 31. During that time, Acme's sales were $1.6 billion, a drop from $1.8 billion a year earlier, according to data published this week in the trade publication's June editions.

We've already told you how much money you'd save by ditching your car. Now it's time to spend that cash on must-haves for the carless lifestyle. A good pair of shoes: Karen McGovern, owner of Rittenhouse Sports Specialities (1717 Chestnut St., 215-569-9957, rittenhousesports.com) suggests Saucony, Brooks and Asic because they come in different widths. The latest apps: SEPTA just announced TransitView (septa.com/transitview), which uses GPS to track buses and trolleys in real time.

YOU ALWAYS remember your first. I was a wide-eyed 8-year-old, dining at Dome of the Sea, the only fancy seafood restaurant in the Las Vegas desert of my childhood. The taste of that first sweet morsel was a revelation, a toothsome bite shiny with drawn butter. It felt foreign and fancy, an ordeal complicated by claw crackers and a bib. But, wow, was it worth it. Even the Dome's harp-playing mermaid couldn't top that delicious experience. For most of us, a lobster dinner has long been associated with a special-occasion splurge, though it's common in Maine and Cape Cod as a summertime treat.

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Brittany Lincicome leads the LPGA Tour in driving distance. The 18th hole at Seaview Resort's Bay Course is a 500-yard par 5. She stood on the tee there late yesterday afternoon, needing to make a birdie to avoid a playoff. And she had, after all, played the three par 5s in 8-under par to that point (one eagle, six birdies and a par). Nonetheless, she wound up making things a lot more stressful than they maybe needed to be. After a fairway-splitting drive left her 230 yards to the pin, the 25-year-old Lincicome pulled a choked-down 3-wood into the fescue left of the green.

GALLOWAY TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Cristie Kerr had spent the first two days and the opening six holes of Sunday's round at the ShopRite LPGA Classic in control of her game before the unfortunate results of a couple of shots seemed to slow her momentum. Kerr, who held a 2-stroke lead early in the round, carded back-to-back bogeys at the seventh and eighth holes at Seaview's Bay Course to fall back. She couldn't quite grab a share of the lead after that, finishing in a tie for second behind the champion, Brittany Lincicome . "Nothing went my way today," said Kerr, the top-ranked American in the world rankings.