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LAS VEGAS — The new owners of Fresh & Easy grocery stores are celebrating the reopening of several outlets here this month as they test a new market strategy they hope will reinvigorate the brand.
The new owners of Fresh & Easy grocery stores are celebrating the reopening of several outlets here this month as they test a new market strategy they hope will reinvigorate the brand.
The remodeled stores feature fewer aisles and more space devoted to prepared food stations, including a hot food bar with soups, a fire-oven pizza station, a coffee bar, made-to-order sandwiches and a self-serve bar for draft sodas. Other beverage options include smoothies, fresh-pressed orange juice and kombucha, a fermented drink of sweetened black or green tea often presented as a functional food.
"We’ve evolved Fresh & Easy by constantly innovating to improve our stores and our products," says Mike Evans, the company’s vice president of marketing. "We are now using Las Vegas as a test market to implement even more new ideas and concepts."
Grand reopenings were celebrated at seven Las Vegas area stores over the first weekend of December, and company officials say they expect most of the 17 Fresh & Easy stores in Las Vegas will be converted to the new concept by year’s end.
One reopening was celebrated in Las Vegas in November.
Fresh & Easy, headquartered in El Segundo, Calif., filed for bankruptcy protection last year as part of a plan by British supermarket giant Tesco to sell the money-hemorrhaging chain of 167 supermarkets in California, Arizona and Nevada to Yucaipa Cos., owned by billionaire investor Ron Burkle.
Tesco lost about $2 billion over five years of running the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets chain it launched in 2007, just as the housing markets in the three Western states in which it was operating were imploding.
The new Fresh & Easy re-launched earlier this year with a new mission, described as creating a "smarter market:" that saves customers time by making fresh and natural food more available and affordable.
Additionally, the new stores feature sections dedicated to homeopathic and natural remedies, natural baby products and a wide selection of craft beers.
The Las Vegas test is one of several merchandising moves initiated after Yucaipa appointed Jim Keyes, the former chairman and chief executive officer of 7-Eleven, to oversee the Fresh & Easy transformation. Keyes jettisoned store coupons and brought back Wild Oats natural and organic food products.
"As with all changes we have made, we are going to constantly evaluate and fine-tune our ideas to bring our customers something exciting and new," says Evans.
