New grocery stores greet local shoppers
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.”
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.
