IGA TO HOLD HOMETOWN HOLIDAYS 2003 MARKETING EVENT

National Recipe Contest Returns For Third Straight Year

CHICAGO, IL - IGA today announced the IGA Hometown Holidays marketing event will be held in participating stores November 2-15. For the third straight year, the highlight of Hometown Holidays will be IGA’s National Hometown Holidays Recipe Challenge.

Between the weeks of November 2-December 19, IGA consumers around the country will be asked to submit original recipes featuring at least two Red Oval Sponsor products Sponsors include: Anheuser-Busch, Inc., Campbell Soup Company, The Coca-Cola Company, Hershey Foods Corporation, Kraft Foods and the Nabisco Biscuit Company, Lego Systems, Inc., The Minute Maid Company, Nestlé USA, Inc., The J.M. Smucker Company.

A panel of renowned chefs from the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (CHIC) will judge the entries and narrow down the recipes to 10 finalists. Each finalist will be flown to Chicago with a guest for a three-day prize package that includes a team-building exercise with chefs from CHIC and a visit to one of the city’s finest restaurants. While in Chicago, each of the 10 finalists’ will have his or her recipe prepared and evaluated by a panel of culinary masters from CHIC. The recipes will be judged on three criteria: taste, creativity and ability to reproduce the desired dish based on recipe directions.

“Each year participation grows for Hometown Holidays,” said Zorona Chapman, IGA marketing events coordinator. “We found that people are thrilled to have their recipes prepared and judged by chefs at a distinguished cooking school. Because of that, the recipes we receive seem to be of a higher quality than those in many other consumer recipe contests. We’re certainly looking forward to seeing yet another year of creative culinary masterpieces.”

The Grand Prize winner will receive $2,000.00 cash and the second place winners will receive a TIMEX watch.

Each of the finalists’ recipes will be featured in IGA’s Hometown Holidays Cookbook.

IGA, the only global supermarketer based in the United States , is the world’s largest voluntary supermarket network with aggregate worldwide retail sales of more than $21 billion per year. The Alliance includes more than 4,000 Hometown Proud Supermarkets worldwide, supported by 36 distribution companies and more the 55 major manufacturers, vendors and suppliers encompassing everything from grocery to equipment items. IGA ranks in the top 10 in world food supermarketing. IGA has operations in 48 of the United States and more than 40 countries, commonwealths and territories on all six inhabited continents.