Tesco, the British retailing giant that many call that country’s Wal-Mart, has landed in the United States. The supermarket chain has watched the American market closely for years, and it saw an opening not in soccer field–size warehouses, but in corner neighborhood stores: Tesco calls the concept Fresh & Easy. A few opened this week in Southern California, and Tesco’s not stopping anytime soon: Plans call for 50 to open by the end of this year, 120 by the end of February, all in the Southwest.
To call the venture carefully planned is an understatement: According to a New York Times article on the company back in June, Tesco “sent executives to board with American families, watching what they eat and where they shop. The scouts have built a clandestine store inside a California warehouse to test the reactions of selected people, telling any busybodies who inquired that it was a movie set.”
This week, the Guardian sent a reporter to a new Fresh & Easy store, and the story’s an example of quietly bemused British journalism. The shoppers—“young Hispanic families and white retired people”—are described as stunned into silence by the Fresh & Easy offerings:
They stare blankly at the packaging with its tasteful coloured lettering. They look askance at the fish trapped in small plastic boxes set on crushed ice. They huddle around the individually wrapped croissants and the boxes of onion bhajis. This is not what they are used to, not in Hemet, not in the rest of southern California.
The horror! Meanwhile, an accompanying analysis of the store’s American competitors includes this ethnography-for-dummies description of Trader Joe’s: “Trader Joe’s is cleverly organised and fun. Its customers talk about it with real affection. A trip there is an adventure. You never know what you are going to find.”
Well, since you asked…. I would rather see Trader Joe’s invade my town (Houston) than another supermarket chain catering to the masses with individuallly wrapped croissants and “tastefully colored lettering” on their boxes. I visited Tesco during my last trip to England and was not impressed. Just another supermarket.
I was born and raised in Britain (Scotland) but I have lived in the US for the past 25 years. If Tesco plans to replicate their UK stores here in the US then I am with Cheflambo – don’t bother! It’s just another grocery store and all the fancy packaging in the world doesn’t mean a thing if the product isn’t any good.
Cheflambo, that was “tastefully COLOURED lettering”. Very different- LOL
We’ll just have to see, although not being able to smell the produce doesn’t appeal to me much. I’ve actually been to a couple of the WalMart grocery stores, wouldn’t make a habit of it but I did find some oddball things I didn’t expect to find, sort of high-end at a good price. And then there was the time I saw that they had Cuervo Classico for $9 and change… plus, I was the thinnest female customer there, and that doesn’t happen often these days.
In other words, we’ll see. I don’t want to make any rash decisions that go against my best interests, but JockY pulls my hopes down a notch with his/her personal experience.
The US supermarket business could use some new ideas and some competition. If they bring a new perspective and the right new ideas, it could be a very good thing. Such as …
- stores that are clean, bright and pleasant. unlike so many US stores that are badly lit, messy and sometimes dirty.
- a much stronger emphasis on healthy and fresh foods.