Fresh & Easy losing money, but officials satisfied
April 18th, 2008, 2:08 pm · 1 Comment · posted by davewoodfill
Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, a chain of small grocery stores that recently opened in the Valley, is exceeding sales expectations set by its parent company – United Kingdom’s Tesco grocery store chain.
However, company officials said Fresh & Easy, which so far only operates stores in Arizona, California and Nevada, is operating at a loss due to start up costs like real estate acquisition, construction and staff recruitment. However, a company spokesman, said officials expect those losses to dissipate as the chain reaches build-out and customers become more familiar with the Fresh & Easy brand.
A company press release, chock full of British verbiage and expressions, says customer response to the new stores has surprised them.
“Whilst it is still early days, the response of customers to our offer has surpassed our expectations – with our research regularly confirming that they like the quality and freshness of our ranges, as well as the prices and the convenient locations of the stores.”
Officials said sales per square foot are higher than the supermarket industry average in the United States, “with our best stores exceeding $20 per square foot per week.”
Shoppers arrive at a recently constructed Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market at the northwest corner of Alma School Road and University Drive in Mesa.
April 18th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
Tesco Ceo Terry Leahy didn’t actually say Fresh & Easy is exceeding sales forecasts. Rather, he said the chain’s “best performing” stores out of the 60 open are exceeding U.S. supermarket average sales per square foot.
He said “the best” performing of the 60 Fresh & Easy stores are doing “over $20 per swaure foot in sales, exceeding industry average.”
That’s a big difference than the chain exceeding sales. He didn’t mention whether there are two, 10 or 59 stores doing those sales numbers.
You might enjoy this blog I read, Fresh & Easy Buzz. It has lots of stuff on Tesco and Fresh & Easy.
Enjoy reading your blog.
Dominick