A while back I blogged about Tesco’s attempt to penetrate the US Market with their Fresh & Easy chain of environmentally green midi-marts. I also mentioned the slimy unions’ attempts to keep them from opening shop.
While the Fresh & Easy near my house remains an empty lot, and the next two nearest ones are nearing completion, but a long way behind the originally announced schedule, a few have opened around town. Mostly around the wrong side of town.
One has opened at 19th Ave and Baseline, about 8 miles from home. We decided we’ve take a look today. There’s a Lowes nearby and we needed some home improvement stuff, so it made for a neat package trip. In case we bought anything cold at Fresh & Easy, we went to Lowes first. While we were there, the slimy unions struck again, placing a heavy cardstock, professionally designed and printed, full color flyer on our car window.
It’s deceptively designed to look like a Fresh & Easy flyer, but it really says it’s “Produced by Fresh & Queasy, a project of the United Food and Commercial Workers.†(Emphasis mine.)
It says, “Don’t be fooled by Fresh & Easy†and goes on with a litany of complaints about Tesco. All of the complaints are aimed at Tesco in the UK, many are scare-mongering. “Pesticides found in baby food†reads one of the headlines. “Tesco clothes made by child labor in Asiaâ€, reads another.
Now, I’m not going to defend or condemn Tesco because I’m not in possession of the facts, nor, even if these allegations are 100% true and taken entirely in context, do they address the real issue. The grocery workers’ unions are always trying to close down any non-union grocery stores. They’ve been using this tactic for years because the real issue – that Arizona is a right-to-work state and that grocery stores that do not pay union wages are more competitive – is not one that anyone cares about.
And so they launch these well-funded hatchet campaigns designed to foster negative public opinion.
So, of course, we went shopping at Fresh & Easy.
It’s an interesting store. It’s not as big as a traditional supermarket, but it’s much larger than a convenience store. It’s stocked with a respectable selection of foods, meats, fruits, vegetables, fresh bread and a larger-than-average-sized selection of prepared sandwiches and heat-and-serve meals. Most of the merchandise is Fresh & Easy branded.
Everything in the store is packaged. Even the fresh vegetables come in containers. Why? Because they have no cashiers. The entire checkout system is self-serve, although, they bag the groceries for you and will, if you ask, scan the items for you. This is quite clever. Self-checkouts have been increasing, but they all suck.
The weight-and-transfer system used by the other stores is designed entirely to keep you from stealing merchandise. Th problem is that it’s so onerous and finicky that the system often goes wrong. (Just ask anyone who has children – one child placing a hand on either the incoming or outgoing scale results in an alarm and a visit from a store “assistantâ€.)
Fresh & Easy has eliminated that completely. Items are taken directly from your cart and scanned across the counter and placed on a conveyor belt which takes the merchandise to the bagger. They even have a scan gun for getting herd to scan items. There is no automated anti-theft device that I can see at all. Of course, the bagger is watching you and is a lot more intelligent than the weigh-and-transfer registers.
This system also allows you to do a full load of shopping, rather than just being relegated to the 10 Items or Less lane.
Fresh & Easy has lots of organic products and would appear to source their merchandise locally, where practical. (Bananas are still from Ecuador.)
They’ve gone to great lengths to position themselves as a “green†company, but I can’t help wondering about all the plastic containers their produce and meats come in so they can be scanned.
They have priority courtesy parking spots up front, not just handicapped parking, but also parking for adults with children and, I’m not sure because a car was parked in the spot and covering the pictogram on the asphalt, but I think they had a parking spot for “same-sex couples who think their dog is a child.†At least that’s what I concluded looking at the vehicle and its occupants.
Because the prepared meals are not frozen, they have a short shelf-life. I purchased a couple of them for my breakfast for the rest of the week. I’ll see if they’re any good. This store is too far away from home to be practical, but when they finally build the one by my house, I could see myself shopping there for small to medium to the grocery.
First, I’ll have to do a price comparison to the other stores in town. I find it hard to believe Fresh & Easy can position itself in the organic, green, upscale market without having upscale prices.
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