Fresh and Easy corporate plan: sell small stores, develop e-commerce from megastores

Silicon Valley/Silicon Valley Tech news, reviews and insight, Pete Carey, 3/23/15."Fresh & Easy closing 7 stores in Bay Area."

Nope, we're closed
in Pacifica April 3, 2015.
Seriously, this time its not your fault!

Fresh & Easy market opened
in Pacifica, March, 9, 2011.
Corporate changed the "game plan".

"Fresh & Easy is closing 50 to 55 stores in three states, including seven in the Bay Area, and testing out a new e-commerce convenience store business model, the company announced Monday.Ten other Bay Area stores remain open, including two in San Jose, and one each in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Francisco, Hayward, Concord, Antioch, Brentwood and Napa.

The stores that the grocery chain is closing are in Hayward, San Francisco, Danville, Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, Pacifica and Vacaville.The move comes a year and a half after the chain was taken over by Los Angeles-based private equity firm Yucaipa, headed by investor Ron Burkle, from its British owner, Tesco.
Fresh & Easy is switching to a "new vision of modern convenience" and selling stores that don't fit with its new business model, the company said. An online grocery-ordering system called Click and Collect is being tested in Las Vegas. "You place your order online, it's pulled together and you pick it up at the store," said spokesman Brendan Wonnacott...  Fresh & Easy also partnered with San Francisco-based Instacart two months ago for home delivery in the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

....  Fresh & Easy said it will invest in new types of stores, including a 3,000- to 5,000-square-foot store that the company said will "provide a higher level of convenience and greater density." Fresh & Easy is working with ADMI, the firm that designed the Apple Store, to design new grocery stores for the chain. The closings represent about one-third of the chain's 167 stores. There will be 112 to 117 stores remaining after the closures."   Read article.

 Related, local.  Pacifica Tribune/Jane Northrop, 3/24/15, "Fresh & Easy closes next week." "Big changes afoot at the Pedro Point Shopping Center, where Fresh & Easy prepares to close its door in Pacifica. The store will close by April 3. Come by for deep discounts on everything while they last. Brendan Wonnacott, communications director, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, said in a statement. We're closing some stores, including Pacifica, to pursue the opportunity to sell them. Fresh & Easy has spent much of the past year and a half since transitioning to new ownership transforming into a new business focused on delivering a new vision of modern convenience."

Related, Corporate news.  Fresh and Easy News/Kathleen, 9/10/13, "A message to our customers: Fresh and Easy acquired by the Yucaipa Companies, LLC." "Today, 9/10/13, our parent company Tesco has announced it is selling the Fresh & Easy business to The Yucaipa Companies LLC. All along we have been hopeful that Fresh & Easy could be sold as an operating business, preserving jobs and the great shopping trip you’ve come to expect from Fresh & Easy.We are very pleased that this agreement with Yucaipa preserves more than 4,000 jobs and a vast majority of the business. Unfortunately, as a result of this agreement some stores will be closing."  Reference - Wikipedia/Fresh & Easy. 

Related, the market opened 3/9/11.  Fresh & Easy Blog, 3/15/11, "San Francisco, Antioch and Fairfield stores next up in Northern California for Fresh & Easy neighborhood market."  "The Fresh & Easy store in the Pedro Point shopping center in Pacifica, California (pictured above), which opened on March 9, 2011 continued it's grand opening activities over the weekend. On Saturday the store featured a guitar player and a balloon artist, who made various creations out of balloons. The store at 5550 Coast Highway in Pacifica also had a bit of excitement on Friday when it, along with other merchants along the coast in Pacifica, had to close for part of the day because of the tsunami warning triggered by the earthquake in Japan. The Fresh & Easy store was able to open later in the day after local authorities sounded the all clear. Meanwhile, the less-than-week-old Pacifica Fresh & Easy is thus far receiving mixed reviews on the popular review site yelp.com. Some love it; others hate it. A few are not sure. Read the reviews here. A number of the yelp reviewers express a dislike for aspects of Fresh & Easy that we've identified and pointed out since 2008 are problems for the chain, in our analysis. Those aspects include: its self-service-only checkout, non-acceptance of manufacturers cents off coupons, offering only free plastic grocery bags but not paper, mostly pre-packaged produce; and a couple others."

Note photographs: "Open" from Fresh & Easy Buzz blog.  Pedro Point shopping center when Fresh & Easy opened, 3/9/11, from the related store opening article.

Posted by Kathy Meeh