Fresh and Easy Stores

Thank you for your reply. Fantastic to get someone who is actually involved in the location of their stores. I live in a town of 60,000 people where Tesco has two stores, one in town the other a hypermarket outside town, there are two other major supermarkets in town too. I have some issues with the way that Tesco and the others challenge smaller retailers and also the origins of some of it's foodstuffs, fresh poultry particularly, but competition is healthy and if they provide a service where there might otherwise there is nothing, South Central Los Angeles for example, then maybe it will attract other retailers into the area.

i know they are attempting to put them in lower income areas to increase the health of the habitants. i think most mom and pop shops in so cal are used to the invasion of big business, but they have their niche market and aren't that threatened..i didn't know tesco was so large though..

Tesco is the largest UK supermarket, Walmart trading as Asda here is the second. Walmart is the World's largest supermarket with Tesco third. Tesco are the World's fifth largest retailer. So they are pretty heavyweight. They have yet to break into the US market. Several UK large retailers have tried, and largely failed. Where Tesco is different is in it's decision to start a new business rather than buying existing businesses. Cynics in the UK see Tesco as an all pervasive malevolent force intent on replacing traditional retailing (i.e. family stores) with homogenous identikit stores. There is some evidence for this and the concern here is that they will slide quietly into US cities and towns, (which they have done successfully here) particularly where there is little or no Walmart threat, until their profile is such that the consumer loses choice because they will always end up shopping primarily with them. I am not sure that this is entirely fair to Tesco. Customers will vote with their purses. If Tesco is cheap and available, they are likely to go there rather than neighboring retailers. There is no doubt that Tesco create jobs ( which has to be a major attraction in So Cal). However, as I said in my earlier comment, I am not sure about the quality of some of their foods. I do not like intensive animal farming and Tesco are adept at squeezing the maximum from farmers. Tesco standard chicken retails at £1.99 ($3.98) each. In my view this leaves the farmer virtually giving the product away and does not incentivise him to provide anything but the minimum in poultry welfare. That, in my view, is a scandal.

I guess that the US can afford to lose a few fast food stores, I know that we could in the UK, but I struggle to use the words Organic and Tesco (Fresh & Easy) in the same sentence. They are organic in the sense that they are growing, but their list of genuinely organic foods is nowhere near comprehensive. Customers need to get more thoughtful and concerned about what they eat. That said, I do shop from time to time at Tesco and their genuine organic food is OK considering that it is usually sourced continents away from the their stores.