Wegmans

WILLOW GROVE, Pa. - Just off the produce aisle in the newest supermarket here is a room with concert-like flat screens, rows of seats and a massive stove beneath video cameras. This is the cooking school at Super Giant. It is next to the dietitian's office. Which is next to the wireless cafe. Which is by the free day-care center and valet checkout. A sprawling wing upstairs is called the community center. Its meeting rooms resemble what you'd see at a hotel. Did we mention this is a grocery store?

Prints to plates Mounted over a buffet or as serving dishes on the buffet, these functional reproductions of original Marc Lacaze watercolors are an artful addition to any dining room. And the perfect hostess gift for your next weekend at a friend's Shore residence. (Dishwasher safe and microwaveable.) Soups and starters Shortcut your soup-making with a base of prepared stock or vegetable puree. Or enjoy these organic and natural broths and soups straight. Brands include Imagine Foods (a wide selection includes bisques and creamy vegetable purees)

Smokers, it seems, are going down like ducks in a shooting gallery, with 2008 emerging as the Year Of the Cigarette Ban. Capping a week in which smokers were booted to the curb in city after city across the globe, the Wegmans supermarket chain announced yesterday that it would stop selling cigarettes for the first time since its inception in 1916. The chain operates 71 stores, four of which are in the Philadelphia region. The decision, which takes effect Feb. 10, makes Wegmans Food Markets Inc. the highest-profile supermarket group known to have removed the beleaguered tobacco product from its shelves.

The Wegmans supermarket chain plans to open a liquor mart inside its Cherry Hill store, making it one of the few groceries in South Jersey to sell alcohol. Jason Wehle, a son-in-law of chief executive officer Danny Wegman's, paid $500,000 in October for the retail liquor license formerly held by Corkscrewed on Marlton Pike. Wegmans will carve out space in its Route 70 store to sell liquor, spokeswoman Jeanne Colleluori said yesterday. She said that planning was in the early stages, and that she did not know when liquor sales would begin.

The Internet offers some great resources for Thanksgiving planning. A few we liked: _ Oprah Winfrey's site, www.oprah.com , has thought-provoking stories on topics such as gratitude, gathering and relaxing, along with recipes. Type "Thanksgiving" into the site search engine. _ Better Homes & Gardens ( www.bhg.com ) has a great Thanksgiving countdown that started in early November. The catch is, you have to register on the site to find it. _ Blueprint magazine's site ( www.marthastewart.

As the Korean supermarket chain H Mart colonizes Philadelphia's middle-class suburbs - with stores in Elkins Park, Levittown and Upper Darby - a world of pan-Asian foraging has opened to intrepid foodies. It's a world where Wegmans meets Race Street, with wide aisles, alluring displays of produce, cooking demonstrations, free samples and an exotic selection of fresh and packaged ingredients for Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese recipes. "Our customers will try something in Chinatown and want to make it at home," says Bruce Lee, assistant manager of the Upper Darby store.

O'Neill Properties Group L.P. is expected to announce today the signing of Wegmans Food Markets Inc. as its first major retail tenant to anchor the $420 million Worthington Urban Town Center Project in Malvern. The signing of Wegmans, a high-end supermarket known for being extra choosy when it comes to adding locations, is a major coup for O'Neill, of King of Prussia, and its host, East Whiteland Township. "We had the right site and the right township," Brian O'Neill, founder and chairman of O'Neill Properties Group, said yesterday.

Beer and wine in Pennsylvania supermarkets? Unlikely as it seems, two Pennsylvania grocery chains are pushing in that direction. Wegmans Food Markets Inc. plans to buy liquor licenses for its 11 Pennsylvania stores, first selling beer for takeout and eventually beer, wine and spirits to drink in the stores' cafes. Wegmans' move is not the radical step many Pennsylvania shoppers wish for - namely having beer and wine on the supermarket shelf just like any other packaged good - but it edges closer and has potential to cause a shift in the state's tightly regulated market.

The Wegmans experience has come to Philadelphia. OK, to Cherry Hill. But that's as close as the showcase supermarket is likely to come considering its size - 125,000 square feet, compared with supermarket "superstores" that average 50,000 square feet. With Wegmans, which opened a week ago on Route 70 at Haddonfield Road, come more semi-prepared and prepared foods. It's the prevailing trend in markets - take-out, eat-in, ready-to-eat and ready-to-cook foods. Wegmans also brings what one exhausted opening-day shopper described as "sensory overload.

They're off! At Garden State Park in Cherry Hill, where thoroughbreds once thundered to the finish line, workers were racing to serve customers yesterday for the grand opening of a Wegmans supermarket. Every corner of the store buzzed with activity: employees making bread, preparing salmon, setting cafe tables, handing out food samples, and working cash registers. "We opened at 7 [a.m.], and it's been very busy," said Wegmans spokeswoman Jo Natale, as she walked through the crowded supermarket.