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  • What makes someone love their grocery store? Ask the Philadelphians who are already missing their Amazon Fresh.

    What makes someone love their grocery store? Ask the Philadelphians who are already missing their Amazon Fresh.

    When Justin Burkhardt heard that his neighborhood grocery store was closing, just months after it had opened, he felt a pang of sadness.

    The emotion surprised him, he said, because that store was the Northern Liberties Amazon Fresh.

    “Amazon is a big corporation, but [with] the people that worked there [in Northern Liberties] and the fact that it was so affordable, it actually started to feel like a neighborhood grocery store,” said Burkhardt, 40, a public relations professional, who added that he is not a fan of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s billionaire owner.

    The e-commerce giant announced last month that it was closing all physical Amazon Fresh stores as it expands its Whole Foods footprint. In the Philadelphia area, the shuttering of six Amazon Fresh locations resulted in nearly 1,000 workers being laid off. Local customers said their stores closed days after the company’s announcement.

    Amazon to lay off nearly 1,000 Philly-area workers at shuttering Amazon Fresh stores

    “I don’t feel bad for Amazon,” said Burkhardt, who spent about $200 a week at Amazon Fresh. “I feel bad for the workers. … I feel bad for the community members.”

    Burkhardt said he and his wife have been forced to return to their old grocery routine: Driving 20 minutes to the Cherry Hill Wegmans, where they feel the prices are cheaper than their nearby options in the city.

    Last week, signs informed customers that the Northern Liberties Amazon Fresh was permanently closed.

    In Philadelphia and its suburbs, many former Amazon Fresh customers are similarly saddened by the closure of neighborhood stores where they had developed connections with helpful workers. Several said they are most upset about the effects on their budgets amid recent years’ rise in grocery prices.

    “I wasn’t happy about it closing for the simple fact that it was much cheaper to shop there,” said Brandon Girardi, a 30-year-old truck driver from Levittown (who quit a job delivering packages for Amazon a few years ago). Girardi said his family’s weekly $138 grocery haul from the Langhorne Amazon Fresh would have cost at least $200 at other local stores.

    At the Amazon Fresh in Broomall, “they had a lot of organic stuff for a quarter of the price of what Giant or Acme has,” said Nicoletta O’Rangers, a 58-year-old hairstylist who shopped there for the past couple years. “They were like the same things that were in Whole Foods but cheaper than Whole Foods.”

    She paused, then added: “Maybe that’s why they didn’t last.”

    In response to questions from The Inquirer, an Amazon spokesperson referred to the company’s original announcement. In that statement, executives wrote: “While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion.”

    Workers could be seen inside the closed Amazon Fresh in Northern Liberties last week.

    What makes a Philly shopper loyal to a grocery store?

    Former Amazon Fresh customers say they’re now shopping around for a new grocery store and assessing what makes them loyal to one supermarket over another.

    Last week, one of those customers, Andrea “Andy” Furlani, drove from her Newtown Square home to Aldi in King of Prussia. The drive is about an hour round trip, she said, but the prices are lower than at some other stores. Her five-person, three-dog household tries to stick to a $1,200 monthly grocery budget.

    As she drove to Aldi, she said, she’d already been alerted that the store was out of several items she had ordered for pickup. That’s an issue Furlani said she seldom encountered at the Amazon Fresh in Broomall, to which she had become “very loyal” in recent years.

    “It was small, well-stocked,” said Furlani, 43, who works in legal compliance. “I don’t like to go into like a Giant and have a billion options. Sometimes less is more. And the staff was awesome,” often actively stocking shelves and unafraid to make eye contact with customers.

    “Time is valuable to me,” Furlani said. At Amazon Fresh, “you could get in and out of there quickly.”

    Shoppers learned how to use the Amazon Dash Cart at an Amazon Fresh in Warrington in 2021.

    Girardi, in Levittown, said he is deciding between Giant and Redner’s now that Amazon Fresh is gone. The most cost-effective store would likely win out, he said, but product quality and convenience are important considerations, too.

    “We used to do Aldi, but Amazon Fresh had fresher produce,” Girardi said. “I used to have a real good connection with Walmart because my mom used to work there. But I don’t see myself going all the way to Tullytown just to go grocery shopping.”

    Susan and Michael Kitt, of Newtown Square, shopped at the Broomall Amazon Fresh for certain items, such as $1.19 gallons of distilled water for their humidifiers and Amy’s frozen dinners that were dollars cheaper than at other stores.

    But Giant is the couple’s mainstay. They said they like its wide selection, as well as its coupons and specials that save them money.

    “I got suckered by Giant on their marketing with the Giant-points-for-gas discounts. I figured if I’m going to a store I may as well get something out of it,” said Michael Kitt, a 70-year-old business owner who has saved as much as $2-per-gallon with his Giant rewards. “I really at the time didn’t see that much of a difference between the stores.”

    How Whole Foods might fare in Amazon Fresh shells

    The Whole Foods store on the Exton Square Mall property is shown in 2022.

    If any of these local Amazon Fresh stores were to become a Whole Foods, several customers said they’d be unlikely to return, at least not on a regular basis.

    Amazon said last month that it plans to turn some Amazon Fresh stores into Whole Foods Markets, but did not specify which locations might be converted.

    Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017. The organic grocer is sometimes referred to as “Whole Paycheck,” but the company has been working to shed that reputation for more than a decade.

    Some Philly-area consumers, however, said Whole Foods prices would likely be a deterrent.

    Philly shoppers have a ‘love/hate relationship’ with Amazon but can’t stop spending — as much as $2,000 a month

    Natoya Brown-Baker, 42, of Overbrook, said she found the Northern Liberties Amazon Fresh “soulless,” and she didn’t “want to give Jeff Bezos any more money.” But the prices at Amazon Fresh were so low, she said, that she couldn’t resist shopping there sometimes.

    Brown-Baker, who works in health equity, said she came to appreciate that it represented an affordable, walkable option for many in the neighborhood, including her parents, who are on a fixed income.

    If a Whole Foods replaces the store at Sixth and Spring Garden Streets, which was under construction for years, Brown-Baker said the area would be “back at square one.”

    Burkhardt, who also lives in the neighborhood, noted that Northern Liberties has a mix of fancy new apartment complexes and low-income housing.

    “The grocery store should be for everyone,” he said. Whole Foods “doesn’t feel like it’s for the neighborhood. It feels like it’s for a certain class of people.”

  • Many Philadelphians shelled out for shoveling help last week. What’s a fair price?

    Many Philadelphians shelled out for shoveling help last week. What’s a fair price?

    Denise Bruce paid a stranger $75 to shovel out her Hyundai Venue, which was encased in snow and ice outside her East Kensington rowhouse.

    “My car was really badly packed in on all sides,” said Bruce, 36, who works in marketing. “I just didn’t have the strength honestly to dig it out myself.”

    The West Coast native also didn’t have a shovel.

    So she was elated to find a woman on Facebook who agreed to dig out her compact SUV for between $40 and $60. After the endeavor took four hours on a frigid evening, Bruce thought it was only fair to pay more.

    After Bruce forked over the money — digitally via Cash App — she asked herself: What should one pay to outsource the onerous task of shoveling?

    Snow-covered cars lined Girard Avenue in Brewerytown on Monday.

    As the Philadelphia region shoveled out from the city’s biggest snowfall in a decade, many residents were asking the same question.

    While some shoveled themselves or hired professional snow removal companies with fixed rates, others turned to an ad hoc network of helpers who hawked shoveling services on neighborhood Facebook groups, the Nextdoor app, and the online handyman service TaskRabbit.

    On online forums, strangers agreed to dig out the cars of folks like Bruce, who didn’t have the strength, tools, or time to do so on their own. Others signed up to clear the driveways and sidewalks of older people, for whom shoveling such heavy snow can increase the risk of heart attacks.

    Prices per job vary from $20 to $100 or more. Some freelance shovelers are upfront about their rates, while others defer to what their customers can afford.

    Higher prices now for ‘trying to dig through concrete’

    Alex Wiles stands on North Second Street on Tuesday before taking the bus to another snow-shoveling job.

    On Monday, the day after the storm hit, Alex Wiles, 34, of Fishtown, shoveled out people’s cars, stoops, and walkways for between $30 and $40 per job. As the week went on, he increased his rate to about $50 because the work became more physically demanding.

    “At this point, it feels like trying to dig through concrete,” Wiles said. As of Thursday, he had shoveled for nearly 20 people across the city and broken three shovels trying to break up ice. He said most people tip him an additional $5 to $20.

    “I want it to be an accessible service,” he said, “but I also want to be able to make money doing it and remain competitive with other people,” including teenagers who often shovel for less.

    For Wiles, who works in filmmaking and photography, his shoveling earnings go toward paying rent.

    He said he sees his side hustle as essential service, especially since the city did “a terrible job,” in his opinion, with snow removal.

    “A lot of the city looks like a storm happened 10 minutes ago,” Wiles said Thursday.

    Shoveling is “necessary and people are just otherwise going to be stuck where there are,” he said. “They aren’t going to be able to get to work easily. They aren’t going to be able to walk down the street.”

    Philly threatened shoveling fines. Then it left its own parks and properties snowy and icy.

    Some adults see themselves filling in for ‘the young kids’

    When Max Davis was a kid in Hopewell, N.J., he’d compete with his neighbors to see who could shovel the most driveways during snowstorms.

    Now, the 28-year-old said he seldom sees or hears of kids going door to door when it snows.

    That was part of the reason Davis got off his Northern Liberties couch on Monday and started shoveling out cars for a few neighbors who posted on Facebook that they needed help.

    A snow shoveler on Waverly Street on Monday.

    Davis, a founding executive at an AI startup, said he didn’t need the money, so he accepted however much his neighbors thought was fair. He ended up making about $40 to $50 per car, money he said he’ll likely use for something “frivolous” like a nice dinner out in the city.

    If there is another snowstorm this winter, he said, he’d offer his shoveling services again.

    “Why not?” Davis said. “I’d love to see the young kids get out there and do it. I think they’re missing out.”

    A coastal ‘bomb’ and single-digit temperatures are expected this weekend in the Philly area

    In Broomall, Maggie Shevlin said she has never seen teenagers going door to door with shovels, but some of her neighbors have.

    During this most recent storm, the 31-year-old turned to Facebook to find someone to clear her mother’s driveway and walkway in neighboring Newtown Square. Shevlin connected with a man who showed up at 6:30 a.m. Monday, she said, and did a thorough job for a good price.

    “I figured it would be somewhere around $100. He charged me only $50,” said Shevlin, who works as a nanny and a singer. “Oh my god, [my mom] was so thankful.”

    How a professional company sets snow removal prices

    A snow removal contractor clears the sidewalk in front of an apartment building in Doylestown on Wednesday.

    Some Philadelphia-area residents, especially those with larger properties, use professional snow removal services. They often contract with these companies at the start of the winter, guaranteeing snow removal — at a price — if a certain amount falls.

    In Bristol, Bucks County, CJ Snow Removal charges $65 to $75 to remove two to four inches of snow from driveways, walkways, and sidewalks at a standard single-family home, said co-owner John Miraski.

    The cost increases to $95-$115 for a corner house, he said, and all rates rise about $25 for every additional two inches of snow.

    Last week, he said, several people called him asking for help shoveling out cars, but he was too busy to take on the extra customers. He passed those requests to other companies, he said, and recommended they charge “nothing less than $50 to $60, because you’re dealing with [nearly] a foot of snow plus a block of ice.”

    Miraski said he recommends professionals because they are insured. That’s especially important, he said, in storms that involve sleet or freezing rain, as Philly just experienced.

    “You start throwing ice, who knows where it is going and what it is hitting,” Miraski said.

    Professionals are more expensive, he acknowledged, but often more thorough. “Some of my properties we went back to two or three times to make sure they were cleared.”

    And sometimes, regardless of who shovels, a resident can find themselves unexpectedly stuck in the snow again.

    In Northeast Philadelphia, J’Niyah Brooks paid $50 for a stranger to dig out her car on Sunday night. But when she left for her job as a dialysis technician at 3 a.m. Monday, her car had been plowed in.

    “I was out there kicking snow,” said Brooks, who was eventually able to get to work.

  • Natasha Cloud thrilled that ‘Young Tash’ gets Philly hoops homecoming with Unrivaled: ‘I carry this city everywhere I go’

    Natasha Cloud thrilled that ‘Young Tash’ gets Philly hoops homecoming with Unrivaled: ‘I carry this city everywhere I go’

    Natasha Cloud will never forget Mr. Ross.

    The youth coach used to hold 6 a.m. workouts inside a Baptist church on City Avenue, where Cloud first learned how to be disciplined in basketball and in life.

    “I hope he sees this,” Cloud said Thursday afternoon, while facing a slew of television and phone cameras inside the Alan Horwitz “Sixth Man” Center. “… He set a standard. He set an expectation. And he set a work ethic for my skill set, my career.”

    Cloud brings all of that back to Philly on Friday night for the Unrivaled offseason league’s two games at Xfinity Mobile Arena. The 33-year-old Broomall native called it a “dream come true” to help lead the return of professional women’s basketball to her city ahead of the WNBA’s arrival in 2030. Yet Cloud is most elated for “Young Tash,” who has blossomed into a WNBA champion, an 11-year professional, a dynamic personality, and an activist on and off the court.

    “I carry this city everywhere I go,” Cloud said following practice for the Phantom, her Unrivaled team. “… I just never thought I would be here, so I think the most gratifying thing is just trusting God’s journey for my life. Doing it my way, too. Because I don’t think a lot of people get to do their careers their way.”

    Basketball star Paige Bueckers is not afraid to use the platform her fame has given her

    Before Mr. Ross, Cloud credits her Aunt Dawn as one of her first sports role models. A Delaware County basketball and softball star, she helped Cloud embrace being a tomboy — and a “powerful, badass woman.”

    So Cloud honed that athleticism on the basketball hoop on the side of her home, which became a neighborhood gathering spot on school half-days. She played King — nah, Queen — of the Court against the boys. They lowered the rim so they could dunk. They idolized Allen Iverson and Dawn Staley.

    When Linus McGinty, the legendary Cardinal O’Hara girls’ basketball coach, first watched Cloud play as an eighth grader, he believed she had WNBA potential because “she could do everything.” And Cloud wanted to play for that program because, in her words, “in Linus we trust.”

    Cloud also appreciated O’Hara’s structure, from the nuns on campus to McGinty’s “strict” practices. She became an immediate starter on a talented team immersed in the competitive Philadelphia Catholic League.

    New York Liberty player Natasha Cloud dances while standing with other officials during an announcement about the Unrivaled Women’s Basketball League 2026 Philly tour stop.

    McGinty’s one gripe about Cloud? She was almost too unselfish as the point guard.

    “She never tried to score first,” the coach told The Inquirer by phone last week.

    But Cloud made up for that in defensive prowess. The 5-foot-10 Cloud guarded the much more imposing Morgan Tuck and Elena Delle Donne, then elite recruits who became college and WNBA stars. Cloud preserved O’Hara’s 2008 PCL title victory by blocking a three-point attempt at the buzzer.

    Then when Cloud was the only starter who returned her senior year, she finally carried more of O’Hara’s offensive load. She was an All-State selection after averaging 12.3 points, 7.9 rebounds, 5.2 assists, and four steals, before beginning her college career at Maryland in 2010-11.

    Diane Richardson is an advocate for the WNBA. She says Unrivaled will get Philly ready for its franchise.

    After her freshman season, she transferred to St. Joseph’s to be closer to home. Her sister had been diagnosed with stomach cancer, and she was looking for a similar family atmosphere within her next college program.

    “Tash is a very compassionate person,” St. Joe’s coach Cindy Griffin recently told The Inquirer by phone. “So if there’s anything going on at home, she feels that. She would have to learn how to manage that, and she did an unbelievable job doing that.”

    While sitting out the 2011-12 season because of NCAA transfer rules at the time, Cloud worked on refining her jumper. Her energy filtered to teammates and staff, Griffin said, even when she was playing on the scout team. That perhaps was most evident on defense, where she consistently covered ground (and others’ mistakes) while understanding how to rotate sharply and when to take risks on the ball. She was the Atlantic 10 Defensive Player of the Year in 2014.

    “That just fueled fire for all of her teammates,” Griffin said, “and it just elevated everybody around her. … They really appreciated that, and they wanted to play hard for her and with her.”

    Then when the Hawks needed more scoring punch from Cloud as her career progressed, she delivered.

    Before her WNBA career, Natasha Cloud starred at St. Joe’s.

    She totaled 15 points, six assists, and six rebounds in a comeback win over Fordham in the 2013 A-10 tournament championship game, and “looked like a pro out there, finishing in transition, taking and making tough shots,” the coach said. That carried over to the next season, when Cloud hit timely buckets to propel the ninth-seeded Hawks’ to upset eighth-seeded Georgia in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

    “Came down to a 1-5 ball screen,” Griffin said, “and [Cloud] being able to put us on her shoulders and win the game for us. … The answer is yes she can, and yes she will.”

    Cloud’s impact has now stretched far beyond Philly.

    She won the 2019 WNBA championship with the Washington Mystics and led the league in assists in 2022. She has made a WNBA All-Defensive team three times. She has played overseas in Turkey and Australia. She opted out of the 2020 WNBA “bubble” season to focus on social justice issues and remains outspoken on such topics.

    But she has stayed connected to her roots.

    She still has a house in town, meaning one might catch her during the offseason at the local Wawa or driving her truck. She regularly visits St. Joe’s to work out and chat with the team, reminding them how special college bonds can be. Unprompted, she told The Inquirer last week that she hopes to have her jersey number retired by St. Joe’s and O’Hara — preferably while her parents are still around to celebrate with her.

    St. Joe’s women get it done down the stretch to beat La Salle, 69-65

    And now, she finally gets to play professional basketball in Philly. When she learned Unrivaled would be making a tour stop here, she knew fans would “show up and show out” for the showcase event. She stepped onstage wearing a Phillies cap for the October announcement at LOVE Park and pumped up the crowd. She hopes local kids getting to watch her play in person is a jolt of inspiration.

    Among those in attendance Friday will be the Hawks, “shouting as loud as we can for Natasha Cloud and the Phantom,” Griffin said. An intrigued McGinty said he also might need to get down to South Philly. Mr. Ross surely is welcome, too. And it will be the first time Cloud plays in front of her family here since 2015.

    They all helped develop “Young Tash.” And that is why she carries the city with her everywhere she goes — including back home.

    “I’ve stayed true to myself,” Cloud said. “True to my character, my morals, my values through all of it. And that’s just a testament to, I feel like, being from Philly. We stand on our [stuff]. We’re going to talk our [stuff]. You can’t tell us otherwise. We know who we are.

    “We’re confident in who we are, and a lot of people take it as arrogance. But it’s just, like, ‘Man, God has blessed me so abundantly. Who am I to not walk out in this light every single day?’”

  • Amazon to lay off nearly 1,000 Philly-area workers at shuttering Amazon Fresh stores 

    Amazon to lay off nearly 1,000 Philly-area workers at shuttering Amazon Fresh stores 

    Amazon plans to lay off nearly 1,000 Amazon Fresh employees in the Philadelphia region as it closes all of the grocery stores.

    The layoffs are planned for the end of April, according to a Thursday WARN Act filing with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. They include the employees of all six Philly-area Amazon Fresh locations — 205 at the Northern Liberties store, 189 in Broomall, 161 in Bensalem, 157 in Langhorne, 144 in Warrington, and 127 in Willow Grove, according to the filing.

    The e-commerce giant announced on Tuesday that it would be closing all of its physical Amazon Fresh stores. Some will be converted to Whole Foods Markets, according to Amazon, but the company has yet to say which.

    By the end of April, Amazon also plans to lay off nearly 900 New Jersey employees, the vast majority of whom work in northern counties where there are Amazon Fresh stores, according to a WARN Act filing with New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development.

    All Amazon Fresh stores, including six in the Philly area, are closing

    The day after announcing the Amazon Fresh closures, Amazon said 16,000 employees companywide would be losing their jobs as part of a broader reorganization.

    “We’ve been working to strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy,” Amazon said in a statement announcing the layoffs.

    The company said most U.S. employees will have 90 days to look for a new role internally. After that, those leaving the company will receive severance pay, “outplacement services,” and health insurance benefits, as applicable, according to Amazon.

    With its move to shutter the Fresh stores, Amazon has said it will “double down” on online grocery delivery and expand its Whole Foods footprint. Whole Foods, which Amazon bought in 2017, has more than a dozen locations in the Philadelphia area.

    The announcement of Amazon Fresh closures came a year after Philadelphia Whole Foods workers voted to form a union. The workers have since struggled to get the company to negotiate a contract.

    “Amazon Whole Foods, a trillion dollar entity, treats us like robots to be exploited and squeezed for maximum profits,” Jasmine Jones, a Philadelphia Whole Foods worker and member of Whole Foods Workers United, said Tuesday in a statement that noted the company’s Whole Foods expansion plans. “They are making billions of dollars off of our labor and we deserve better pay and benefits.”

  • All Amazon Fresh stores, including six in the Philly area, are closing

    All Amazon Fresh stores, including six in the Philly area, are closing

    Amazon will be closing all its physical Amazon Fresh stores, including six in the Philadelphia region, as it expands its Whole Foods footprint and grocery delivery services.

    The e-commerce giant made the announcement in a statement Tuesday, noting that it would convert some Amazon stores into Whole Foods Markets.

    “While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores, we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for large-scale expansion,” the company said.

    People shop inside the Amazon Fresh in Warrington in August 2021. The store and all other Amazon-branded grocers are closing.

    The statement did not specify which Amazon Fresh stores would become Whole Foods, and company spokespeople did not answer questions about whether any Philadelphia-area locations would be converted.

    Amazon Fresh has stores in Broomall, Bensalem, Langhorne, Northern Liberties, Warrington, and Willow Grove. The Northern Liberties location on Sixth and Spring Garden Streets opened this summer after years of construction.

    Two more potential Amazon Fresh stores seemed to be in the works in Havertown and Northeast Philadelphia as of the summer, according to PhillyVoice.

    Customers use the Amazon Dash Cart at the Amazon Fresh grocery store in Warrington in 2021.

    Smaller-format Amazon Go stores, the closest of which are in New York, will also be shuttered or converted.

    As the company winds down its Amazon-branded physical stores, it says it will “double down” on online grocery delivery, including by expanding its same-day services to more communities.

    Amazon’s same-day delivery has been available in the Philadelphia market since 2009. Since December, Amazon has been testing “Amazon Now” delivery — which aims to get groceries to customers in 30 minutes or less — in parts of Philadelphia and Seattle.

    Amazon also said it plans to invest more in physical Whole Foods stores, adding more than 100 stores nationwide in the coming years.

    The Whole Foods store in Exton, as pictured in 2022.

    Amazon said Tuesday that Whole Foods has seen a 40% growth in sales since Amazon purchased the organic-grocery chain in 2017.

    Whole Foods has 550 locations nationwide, including more than a dozen in the Philadelphia area. Amazon spokespeople did not answer questions about whether more Whole Foods stores were in the works in the Philly region.

    Amazon also expects to open at least five more smaller-format Whole Foods Market Daily Shop stores by the end of the year. The company said that decision was based on “strong performance” at the five existing shops in the New York City area and Arlington, Va.

    The Center City Whole Foods Market as pictured in February 2025.

    The online retailer said it plans to continue to experiment with new ways of shopping at its physical stores.

    In its statement, Amazon gave a shout-out to one such test in the Philadelphia area: “The store within a store” experience at the Whole Foods in Plymouth Meeting.

    Since November, customers at that store have been able to browse the physical aisles of Whole Foods, while digitally ordering unique products from Amazon and Whole Foods. The orders are then packaged in minutes in an automated micro-fulfillment center within the grocer’s back-of-house area.

  • S&P downgraded ChristianaCare’s credit rating

    S&P downgraded ChristianaCare’s credit rating

    ChristianaCare, Delaware’s largest health system, received a one-notch credit-rating downgrade from Standard & Poor’s, to “AA” from “AA+’.

    S&P attributed the downgrade of the nonprofit health system’s rating to inconsistent operating performance in recent years and the planned addition of $350 million in debt early this year through a bond offering, according to a report Tuesday.

    In the year ended June 30, 2025, ChristianaCare’s financial results were weaker than expected because of low surgical volume related to physician turnover, S&P said. Another factor was higher-than-anticipated medical malpractice reserves, S&P said.

    One of ChrisitianaCare’s financial strengths is that it typically gets half of its revenue from private insurers, which pay higher rates and are more profitable than Medicare and Medicaid, S&P noted.

    Despite its strong financial condition, ChristianaCare has a relatively small service area, given its concentration in northern Delaware, compared to other health systems with “AA” ratings, S&P said. If ChristianaCare’s expansion into Southeastern Pennsylvania is successful, it would help alleviate that problem, the agency said.

    ChristianaCare opened a micro-hospital in western Chester County last summer and is building a second one in Aston, Delaware County. It also has plans to put one in Springfield Township. In addition, ChristianaCare spent $50 million to step into the leases that the bankrupt Crozer Health had at five outpatient facilities in Broomall, Glen Mills, Media, and Havertown.

    S&P said ChristianaCare has no plans for significant acute-care hospital expansion.

    Last month, ChristianaCare and Virtua Health, South Jersey’s largest health system, ended negotiations on a possible merger.

  • How Philly-area grocery workers handle the holiday stress — and find joy along the way

    How Philly-area grocery workers handle the holiday stress — and find joy along the way

    Crowds of last-minute shoppers, customers looking for seasonal ingredients, sappy hands from tying Christmas trees to cars, and of course, hours and hours of cheery holiday music playing on a loop.

    Such is the life of a grocery worker during the holidays.

    “Everyone wants to get, like, the biggest tree on, like, the smallest car,” said Edward Dupree, who has worked at the Center City Whole Foods for over nine years.

    Working at a grocery store during the holiday season can be hectic and intense, requiring a lot of patience, he said.

    “It’s, I think, definitely under-appreciated,” said Dupree.

    Grocery employees from across the region say this time of year brings a surge of stressed shoppers making larger purchases, even in the age of DoorDash, grocery delivery, and curbside pickup.

    Customers rush into the store for their last-minute shopping, said Erika Keith, who works at the Fox Street ShopRite in Nicetown. And they’re often hurried as they fill their carts, said Charletta Brown, of the Acme in Trooper, juggling year-end demands at work and pressures at home as they prepare for the holidays.

    “Those three days moving into Thanksgiving are just insane,” said Dupree. He said the store starts getting busier in September as students return to the area, and it stays hectic through the end of the year.

    Customers aren’t just getting their regular groceries and Christmas trees. They’re looking for specialty seasonal items including cranberries, decorative gourds, chestnuts, eggnog, and black-eyed peas for the New Year.

    “Even in spite of the current economy — we do hear a lot that things are a little rougher than they have been in past years — people still want that tradition,” said Brown.

    Specific holiday wishes

    As the holidays approach, the Philadelphia Whole Foods bakery makes hundreds of pies and a slew of custom orders, said baker Jasmine Jones. During the holidays, they said, “the cakes get bigger.”

    Many are seeking out pie crusts and fillings, as well as phyllo dough to make hors d’oeuvres, said Brown, of Acme. These freezer items are hidden “way in the back” for most of the year, but they get the star treatment, “front and center” for the holidays.

    Keith, of ShopRite, said the holidays bring in more business for the store’s Western Union service, as people send money to loved ones as gifts.

    Union workers gather outside the Center City Whole Foods Market in January.

    At the Trooper Acme, Brown said, shoppers start looking for Ivins Famous Spiced Wafers starting around Halloween, and as the holiday season progresses, they’re looking for specific nostalgic sweets to fill their candy dishes — minty After Eight chocolates or the multicolored, straw-shaped Plantation hard candies, for example.

    “Some people say, ‘We don’t eat them, but we just want them to sit out in the candy dish, because I had that as a kid, and my mother and father always had it out,’” she said.

    Holiday gripes

    For Jones, Whole Foods is a second job on weekends. They said they’re “stretched kind of thin” during the holidays as they juggle another full-time job. Jones sometimes volunteers to work extra hours for the money during the holidays, but they don’t like losing the time with loved ones.

    And, Jones added, the holiday music is not a perk.

    “It kind of makes me angry,” said Jones, adding that they’re “still an overworked worker.”

    “It kind of just reminds me that I could be home if you paid me more.”

    Shoppers peruse the Save-a-Lot grocery store in Atlantic City in this Jan. 2024 file photo.

    Dupree, also of Whole Foods, isn’t a fan of the constant seasonal music either.

    “If I want to go listen [to the song] ‘This Christmas,’ I’ll listen to it on my own — don’t play it 82 times a day,” he said. “It’s a bit intrusive.”

    The customers

    Some customers, for their part, avoid the busiest times at the grocery store.

    In Wayne, Lisa Goldschmidt has become dependent on Instacart grocery deliveries most of the year. But when it’s time to shop for her holiday dinners, she makes a couple in-person trips to her local Acme. For her sanity, she keeps to a personal code, she said: “Avoid the weekends and the after-work times when it typically gets crazy.”

    Goldschmidt, a 58-year-old attorney who works from home, said she’s fortunate that she can run out midday on weekdays to buy her holiday essentials, which include an expansive antipasto assortment that her family eats on Christmas Eve and the prime rib they make on Christmas Day.

    April Beatty, 51, of Broomall, also tries to avoid peak shopping times at her go-to stores — Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, and Gentile’s produce market. She aims to pick up all her groceries at least a couple days before Christmas, and she also buys more this time of year with her two children home from college.

    But her job, too, keeps her busy during this season — she works in supply-chain logistics — so shopping the way she prefers, at “off times, just because it’s more efficient,” isn’t always an option.

    This year, her Wegmans trip for Thanksgiving happened during a shopping rush: “aisles packed, parking lot packed,” she said. During the holidays, she added, “at least people are polite.”

    Customers browse Iovine Brothers Produce at Reading Terminal Market in this 2022 file photo.

    Customers at Whole Foods are more outgoing during the holidays, said Dupree, part of a kind of jolly Christmas mentality around this time of year.

    The days leading up to Thanksgiving are usually the busiest — more so than Christmas — but he didn’t notice quite as much Thanksgiving hustle this year.

    “I wonder if this is because, you know, people’s pockets are hurting,” Dupree pondered aloud.

    At ShopRite, Keith said, some of the busiest shopping days she recalls are the day before Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.

    “We have our last-minute shoppers — and, you know, I get it. I get the busy life,” she said.

    A Save-a-Lot supermarket employee arranges pears at the chain’s Camden store in this January 2024 file photo.

    At Acme, Brown sees pressure and stress on some customers.

    “Being sympathetic to that, listening to them, is probably half the battle of dealing with any stresses or strain that I might be under — and also what they might be under,” she said.

    Brown said she tries to get a head start on her own holiday decorating and planning each year because there isn’t a lot of downtime once the store gets busy.

    “I have to manage that time effectively in order to be able to really decompress and enjoy the holidays myself,” she said.

    This year, for the first time in a while, she won’t be working on Christmas Eve because it‘s on a Wednesday, her usual day off.

    But Brown said she actually loves working Christmas Eve, “because it just seems to me like everybody’s just so happy.”

  • Middletown Township welcomes first full-service hotel ahead of major tourism events in Delco

    Middletown Township welcomes first full-service hotel ahead of major tourism events in Delco

    On a frigid Tuesday morning, stakeholders from across Delaware County toasted champagne and popped mini pastries under the roof of Middletown Township’s new Hilton Garden Inn.

    “We may be the only Hilton Garden Inn in the world that serves Wawa coffee and drinks it all the time,” quipped hotel owner Patrick J. Burns, standing before a sea of family members, hotel staffers, business associates, and elected officials.

    The 107-room, 67,000-square-foot Hilton, located off Baltimore Pike at the former Franklin Mint site, is open and welcoming guests. It’s the 42nd hotel in Delaware County and first full-service hotel in Middletown Township.

    The hotel features app-to-room device integration, mobile key and contactless check-in, meeting and banquet spaces, an outdoor patio with fire pits, a fitness center, and the Garden Grill, a restaurant serving “American cuisine with local flair” that will be open to the public.

    The hotel is long awaited, borne from a yearslong planning process and delayed by pandemic-era construction slowdowns. On Tuesday, attendees expressed gratitude that what was once an economic dream for the township was finally becoming reality.

    The Hilton marks an important expansion of the collar county’s tourism economy, according to Delaware County’s major economic stakeholders. And as far as tourism in Delco, they say, it’s only up from here.

    The bar area off of the lobby at the new Hilton Garden Inn of Middletown Township on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025.

    Delaware County hosted 4.5 million visitors in 2024, according to Steve Bryne, executive director of Visit Delco. Those visitors spent $860 million, generated $1.2 billion in economic impact, and sustained 13,000 jobs. In 2025, the county is on track to sell more than one million hotel room nights for the first time in its history.

    Representatives from the Hilton say it created 200 construction jobs and 40 new hospitality jobs.

    Bryne said tourism to Delaware County is a “combination of everything.” The county doesn’t have one major anchor (like Longwood Gardens in Chester County, for example). Rather, it’s home to 12 colleges and universities, major corporate employers like Wawa, and sports complexes like IceWorks and Subaru Park, home of the Philadelphia Union. That means regular tournaments, business conferences, parents weekends, homecomings, and graduations — events that, collectively, help power the county’s economy.

    Already, Penn State Brandywine, located down the road, has named the Hilton Garden Inn its host hotel.

    Delaware County also gets spillover from visitors to Philadelphia, especially those who want proximity to Philadelphia International Airport.

    The hotel is a property of Metro Philly Management, owned by Burns. Burns’ management company also owns the Courtyard by Marriott in Springfield, the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Broomall, and the Springfield Country Club, as well as numerous grocery stores and restaurants.

    Patrick J. Burns, pictured at Middletown Township’s new Hilton Garden Inn on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. The hotel is owned by Burns’ company, Metro Philly Management.

    Stakeholders lauded the hotel’s location in a central, and rapidly developing, part of Middletown Township.

    The former Franklin Mint complex, now home to the Hilton, has been a hotbed of development in Middletown Township since the mint shuttered in 2004. Two newer housing developments — Pond’s Edge and Franklin Station — have added over 450 units of housing to the site. Middletown Township outpaced its neighbors — Media, Nether Providence, and Upper Providence — in population growth in 2024.

    “Middletown Township is such a vital corridor of Delaware County,” Burns said.

    The hotel’s opening coincides with major events coming to the region in the coming months: semiquincentennial celebrations in Philadelphia and in Delco, the FIFA World Cup, the PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club, and the MLB All-Star Game. For the PGA Championship alone, Delaware County is expecting 200,000 visitors and $125 million in economic impact.

    This suburban content is produced with support from the Leslie Miller and Richard Worley Foundation and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism. Editorial content is created independently of the project donors. Gifts to support The Inquirer’s high-impact journalism can be made at inquirer.com/donate. A list of Lenfest Institute donors can be found at lenfestinstitute.org/supporters.

  • These professors say they’re part of a growing movement banning laptops from the classroom

    These professors say they’re part of a growing movement banning laptops from the classroom

    Biology professor Jody Hey was lecturing on human evolution one recent day at Temple University.

    His students vigorously took notes by hand in paper notebooks.

    There wasn’t a laptop in sight. Nor an iPhone. No student’s face was hidden by a screen.

    Hey said he stopped allowing them about a year and a half ago after seeing research that students are too often distracted when laptops are open in front of them and actually learn better when they have to distill lectures into handwritten notes.

    “The clearest sign that it’s making a difference is that students are paying attention more,” said Hey, who has taught at Temple for more than 12 years. “And they want to participate much more than before.”

    Hey is among a seemingly growing number of professors who have chosen to keep laptop and phone use out of class, with exceptions for students with disabilities who require accommodations. Several said they made the decision after seeing what some students were doing on their laptops during class.

    Temple University biology professor Jody Hey stopped allowing laptops to be used in class about a year and a half ago. He said he’s noticed improvement in student performance.

    Jessa Lingel, an associate professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and director of the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program there, stationed teaching assistants in the back of her room to observe.

    Students “were out there booking flights and Airbnbs,” Lingel said. “Fun fall cocktail recipes. They were online gambling in class. I thought, ‘This is not acceptable.’”

    She originally disallowed laptops in 2017, but decided to go easy in 2021 as students returned after the pandemic, she said. She reinforced the ban after her teaching assistants’ observations.

    As colleges grapple with AI’s pitfalls, U. of Delaware uses technology to transform faculty lectures into interactive study aides

    “It’s a movement,” Lingel said. “More and more people are headed in this direction.”

    In Hey’s class, students have warmed up to the laptop ban.

    “At first I didn’t like it,” said Jess Nguyen, 20, a junior genomic medicine major from Broomall, “because I kind of organize all my notes on my laptop. But I feel I’ve been learning better by writing my notes.”

    When she took notes on her iPad, she sometimes got distracted and played computer games, she said. In Hey’s class, that’s not an option.

    Students said it takes more time to write notes and sometimes their hands get tired.

    “After a couple classes, you kind of get used to it,” said Sara Tedla, 22, a senior natural sciences major from Philadelphia.

    She’s on the fence about which way she prefers to take notes.

    “It’s good that for an hour and 20 minutes you can just sit down and, without any technological distractions, focus because that’s a part of your brain you can work on,” said Quinn Johnson, 20, a senior ecology major from Philadelphia. “The more you do it, the easier it becomes to focus on something for a long period of time.”

    ‘Students learn better’

    Professors say laptops are pretty ubiquitous in the classroom when they are permitted.

    Hey conducted research on laptop use and presented it at a Temple department faculty meeting earlier this year.

    “As early as 2003, a study was done contrasting the retention of lecture material by two groups of students, one who had laptops and unrestrained internet access and a second who worked without laptops,” he said. “In that study, students with laptops scored 20% lower on average in the subsequent exam.”

    Four of every five students who used laptops in a general psychology class said they checked email during lectures, another study showed, while 68% used instant messaging, 43% surfed the net, 25% played games, and 35% said they did “other” activities.

    He also cited studies showing students who took notes by hand performed better on tests. Others cited that research, too.

    Penn President emerita Amy Gutmann co-teaches a class at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication with the dean Sarah Banet-Weiser. They don’t allow laptops or phones to be used in the classroom.

    “I read the literature on it and it really showed that students learn better when they’re taking notes rather than trying to type as fast as they can verbatim what you say,” said Amy Gutmann, Penn president emerita, who is co-teaching a class at the Annenberg School for Communication this fall.

    Amy Gutmann, once Penn president, is teaching again. Here’s what it’s like to be her student.

    Gutmann and co-teacher Sarah Banet-Weiser, dean of Annenberg, do not provide students with copies of their lecture slides, either.

    “We give them time to write down what’s on the slides,” Banet-Weiser said.

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    Benefits of technology

    Some professors say laptop use in class can be beneficial.

    Sudhir Kumar, a Temple biology professor, said he asks his class of 150 students to respond to questions on their laptops every 10 minutes. Their answers count toward their grades.

    “It’s constantly keeping them on their toes,” he said.

    He would not want to see everyone give up on laptop use in class.

    “We cannot fight technology,” he said. “Teachers have to embrace technology, whether it is artificial intelligence or computers. That is a standard mode of operation for most people today.”

    (Left to Right) Jess Nguyen, 20, a junior from Broomall, Allan Thomas, 22, a senior from Philly, and Sara Tedla, 22, a senior from Philly, in a class taught by Temple University biology professor Jody Hey last month.

    In Cathy Brant’s social studies methods class of 20 to 25 students at Rowan University, laptops are key. Brant, an associate professor of education, said there are lots of hands-on group projects, and she frequently asks students to check New Jersey standards online as they prepare their lessons. She also teaches them how to use AI appropriately in the classroom.

    One of her students, she said, recently handed in a paper with very detailed notes from Brant’s lecture that she probably got only because she was able to type quickly on her computer.

    “You’re responsible for paying attention in class,” she said. “Maybe it’s a little harsh, but I’m just like, ‘If you want to be on Facebook the entire time during class, that’s on you.’”

    Jordan Shapiro, an associate professor at Temple, more than a decade ago used to make a point of having his students post on Twitter, now X, during class and counted it toward classroom participation.

    Now, he tells students to put their laptops away during class.

    “I tell them I have no problem with tech or laptops,” he said. “I just think that none of us get enough time in our lives to just focus on ideas or to listen in a sustained way to the people around us.”

    He also became concerned about students doing homework during class, he said, and using artificial intelligence to supply them with questions and comments to ask in class. They were “outsourcing class participation to the robots,” he said.

    Mark Boudreau, a biology professor at Penn State Brandywine, disallowed laptops for the first time this semester.

    “I thought I would get real pushback … or people might even drop the class,” he said. “But … a lot of students have had other faculty who have this policy.”

    Exam scores in his three courses are better this year, he said.

    Hey noted student grades have gone up, too. But he can tell some students struggle with note-taking; some just listen and don’t take notes.

    “That’s better than sitting there and going on Facebook,” he said.

  • Medicare coverage for telehealth suspended as result of government shutdown

    Medicare coverage for telehealth suspended as result of government shutdown

    Steve Hirst relies on virtual visits with his urologist, whose office is an hour away from his Broomall home, to stay on top of his treatment plan and renew medications.

    But earlier this month Hirst, 70, got a notice from his doctor’s office informing him that it could no longer schedule telemedicine visits for patients like him who have Medicare because of new federal policy changes.

    Medicare began covering telemedicine services during the COVID-19 pandemic and has maintained the popular offering through temporary waivers approved by Congress since. But the most recent of those waivers expired at the end of September when Congress failed to reach a budget deal and the government shut down.

    The change specifically affects traditional Medicare, which is administered by the government for people 65 and older and some with disabilities. People with Medicare Advantage plans, which are administered by private insurers, should check with their plan.

    Medicare coverage for virtual visits for mental health was made permanent after the pandemic and are not affected by the shutdown.

    Some of the Philadelphia area’s leading health systems, including Temple Health and Penn Medicine, have said they are continuing to provide telehealth services to people with Medicare and temporarily suspending billing for those services, with hope that coverage will be reinstated when a budget deal is eventually reached.

    But smaller provider practices may not have the luxury of delaying payment for thousands of dollars in services for an indefinite period of time.

    With the government shutdown in its third week, Republicans and Democrats seem no closer to reaching a deal. The next vote is scheduled for Monday evening, though no deal is expected.

    Another health policy issue — tax credits for people who buy insurance through Affordable Care Act marketplaces, including Pennie in Pennsylvania — has been a major sticking point in the ongoing federal budget debate. Democrats want the enhanced subsidies extended permanently as part of the budget deal, and Republicans have refused, arguing that lawmakers could address the issue separately, before the subsidies expire at the end of the year.

    Meanwhile, the waiver’s expiration has left Hirst and others who are covered by Medicare unsure how they will access needed health services.

    Here’s what’s new for Medicare in 2026.

    Telehealth’s rise

    Telehealth rose in popularity during the COVID-19 pandemic, when people were urged to avoid hospitals unless they were having an emergency and when most routine procedures were canceled.

    The approach was especially helpful to older adults and people with disabilities, who needed to stay in contact with doctors for ongoing treatment and who were considered particularly vulnerable to severe illness from COVID-19.

    After the pandemic ended, many private insurers, Medicaid, and Medicare permanently adopted telehealth coverage for certain services, such as mental health, because of its popularity during the pandemic.

    Medicare has used temporary waivers to continue telehealth coverage for other types of doctors’ visits.

    Beyond patient popularity, research has found that telehealth visits can be as effective as in-person visits for certain types of care, such as palliative care for cancer patients, while improving access to patients with transportation challenges.

    Philadelphia health systems respond

    Philadelphia’s largest health systems said they are optimistic that coverage will be reinstated — either by a new temporary waiver or a permanent change — when Congress reaches a new budget agreement and the shutdown ends.

    Temple Health will continue to provide telehealth services to Medicare patients for the next three weeks, in anticipation of Congress reaching a deal.

    Penn Medicine has not billed Medicare patients for telehealth visits since the shutdown began and has paused its process for filing claims until the government reopens, a spokesperson said.

    “Congress has been vocal in its support of telehealth and its value, and we are hopeful that legislation will be passed to ensure permanent Medicare telehealth coverage and flexibilities once the government reopens,” Penn said in a statement.

    Main Line Health has been reaching out to affected patients to help them change previously scheduled virtual visits into in-person appointments or reschedule virtual visits that can be put off.

    Jefferson Health did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

    Patients in limbo

    Hirst drives into Philadelphia to see his urologist in person once a year. Every three months, he has a virtual visit to check in and renew prescriptions.

    Driving to Philadelphia for every appointment would be inconvenient, but Hirst will probably do it “for now,” he said.

    But he worries about older adults and people with disabilities who can’t safely drive to the doctor’s office, and for whom virtual care is a lifeline. They could end up putting themselves or others at risk being on the road when they shouldn’t be. Or they may end up skipping needed care because they don’t have a ride.

    “It makes no sense,” Hirst said.