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Business
Nov. 15, 2007
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

New grocery stores greet local shoppers

Fresh & Easy markets tout variety

By BENJAMIN SPILLMAN
REVIEW-JOURNAL

Shoppers stroll through the produce aisle Wednesday at the new Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market at 6115 W. Tropicana Ave.
Photo by John Gurzinski.



Shoppers check out after shopping Wednesday at the Fresh & Easy Market. U.K.-based Tesco opened five of the markets in Las Vegas.
Photo by John Gurzinski.

Moments after 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Danielle Rodenkirchen spotted what was perhaps the most anticipated pasta salad in the history of Las Vegas.

"This," said Rodenkirchen, 31, "is kind of what I've been looking for."

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    • Rodenkirchen was one of the first shoppers in the doors of a new Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery store at Jones Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue. The store was one of five Fresh & Easy markets that opened Wednesday in Las Vegas.

    Rodenkirchen said she had been watching the Web site of Fresh & Easy parent Tesco for months in anticipation of a new grocery store opening near her southwest Las Vegas home of more than seven years.

    Rodenkirchen said she wanted a market that was cheaper than Whole Foods but that offered better food and less packaging than giant groceries like Sam's Club.

    "The less trash I can make, the better," said Rodenkirchen, who liked the new store's minimalist packaging and Spartan decor of a polished concrete floor, unfinished ceiling and few hanging signs.

    Tesco, the largest retailer in the United Kingdom, is making its first foray into the United States with about 100 markets planned in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix and San Diego.

    Although Tesco has more than 3,200 stores in 12 countries outside the United States, the Fresh & Easy markets are unique to America, said Simon Ewins, Fresh & Easy's chief marketing officer based in El Segundo, Calif.

    The stores have about 10,000 square feet of shopping space, about the same as a Trader Joe's. But Fresh & Easy stores have a product mix that is about 50 percent store brand while the other half is a selection of national brands.

    The stores also offer a large mix of prepared sandwiches, wraps and salads. Foot-long meat and cheese sandwiches are $3.99; 10-ounce wraps are $3.79.

    The idea, Ewins says, is to provide stores that are easier to navigate than supermarkets but offer enough products to be a shoppers' only stop.

    "What you won't find here are lots and lots of brands of the same thing," Ewins said, describing his company's strategy.

    A Fresh & Easy store, for instance, may have several varieties of its store brand pasta sauce complemented by just two national brands.

    "It is almost like a trend to mimic European shopping," said Georganne Bender, a Chicago-area retail expert.

    Bender said the most successful grocery stores are sacrificing quantity and brand variety for the sake of convenience and simplicity.

    "When there are too many choices, sometimes people can't make a decision," Bender said.

    Last week Tesco opened six stores in Southern California, drawing crowds of hundreds of people who clogged parking lots and checkout lines.

    The Las Vegas openings were more subdued, with sidewalk demonstrators protesting Tesco's nonunion hiring outnumbering customers at the opening of the Fresh & Easy at Jones Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue.

    "We don't want people to be fooled by Fresh & Easy," said Mike Gittings, secretary-treasurer of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 711 in Las Vegas. "They are claiming they are a good neighbor and it isn't true."

    Gittings used a bullhorn to rally passers-by and a couple of dozen demonstrators. The group distributed fliers with excerpts from news stories critical of Tesco's record on food purity, labor and the environment.

    Ewins said each Fresh & Easy will employ about 20 to 30 workers, with no one earning less than $10 an hour. Employees also get more than 20 hours weekly, making them eligible for the company's health care plan, which Ewins says pays at least 75 percent of the cost.

    Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or (702) 477-3861.



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    Just Some Guy wrote on December 08, 2007 10:28 PM: I like the Fresh & Easy so far. Nothing is really cheap but the quality is better. I was dissapointed though with how much stuff had HF-Corn Syrup in it when there are national brands that don't already available at Costco, Vons, etc.

    A corporation monopolizes physical resources and squeezes the owners of the labor (workers).

    A union monopolizes the labor and squeezes the owners of the physical resources.

    I fail to see how either one has the moral high ground. They're really just mirror images of eachother.


    mark wrote on November 15, 2007 07:10 PM: THe West Trop location is the same place Smiths was in until they moved across the street. That corner doesn't catch people coming home from work making it inconvenient and dangerous to try to get to the store. Its a good store, I visited,not nearly as much product as Smiths or Albertsons but OK. I doubt it makes it at Trop and Jones.


    Jim Gibbons wrote on November 15, 2007 03:30 PM:

    People suck! I love corporations and the money they give me!


    Harry Reid wrote on November 15, 2007 03:18 PM: UNIONS SUCK!!!
    Stinkin' lazy union people!


    Hart wrote on November 15, 2007 10:23 AM: Thanks for the story.
    It would have been nice if the story or
    a side box had all the Las Vegas locations listed. Thanks.


    old rocker wrote on November 15, 2007 10:21 AM: Vons and Smiths are union?! I just stopped shopping at their stores.


    ExUnionMember wrote on November 15, 2007 09:55 AM: The problem with unions

    Join Culinary and about 95 % will be an extra with no health care for over 5 years with no health coverage.

    Join Plumbers -
    The apreenctice prgtram will waste your time with a promise of $15 bukcs to start, then wehn you waste a few months try and bring you on as a pre apprentice apprenitce, What the hell is a pre apprecntice, its a way to screw over peopel who belive the Union is on their side.

    Join Teamsters-
    hahahah - yeah right , you will be on the back list for YEARS...

    Join Electrical-
    Only if you go and work for someone else first and can prove hours as they only take so many and usually someone that they know- kind of a way to get chepaer labor for years through non union workers before they become Union...

    I am sad to say but the UNIONS are a hoax in Las Vegas and only serve the COPntractors to save and exploit workers,,, so is TESCO ,,,cmon 2 hours a week for 10 bucks and hour,,, A bussboy that cant speak english makes more than that.


    Adam wrote on November 15, 2007 08:45 AM: Union grocery workers ... maybe that explains the lazy and rude "service" you get in most chain stores, Vons and Smiths being the worst in my opinion.


    Edward L. wrote on November 15, 2007 08:03 AM: The Wal Mart Neighborhood grocery store near my house still has daily pickets, more than 2 years after it opened. I don't know how the picketers do it day after day, in the torrid heat of our summers, let alone the cold breezy winters. God bless them.

    Oops, I forgot-the picketers aren't the Union members-just desperate souls getting minimum wage from day-labor places. Can't imagine our Union craftsmen getting out of bed for such paltry pay. Let alone holding those heavy signs...


    Union Buster wrote on November 15, 2007 07:46 AM: Unions are the enemy of the people and the economy. They breed a sense of entitlement and a lazy approach to growth. They may have had some purpose -- back in the early 20th century -- but their time is over.


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