The Food Scout

Over the past several years, the grocery industry had been opening stores whose square footage rivaled that of Wal-Mart’s warehouse-style Supercenter format. But now the interest seems to have shifted to smaller “urban” formats, particularly since leading UK retailer Tesco introduced its Fresh & Easy corner store concept a year ago and started proliferating dozens of them (now totaling more than 70) in a few concentrated markets on the West Coast. In direct contrast to 80,000 to 120,000 sq. ft. stores that were the trend, now Safeway, Wal-Mart, Giant Eagle, Schnuck’s and even Whole Foods have since opened smaller grocery footprints in the 14,000 to 17,000 sq. ft. range, usually with a ...

Some people call Boston Market a failure. I call it an inspiration, because it got a lot of complacent grocery store chains to start building instore prepared foods programs in the mid-90s. Many of those programs weren't that great, but it was a step in the right direction. The same goes with Dream Dinners and all those struggling meal assembly stores out there today (435 units and shrinking, according to one source). Ultimately, they may go belly up, but they continue to point to a meal preparation need that is going unfulfilled with consumers that supermarkets need to address (witness Publix' Aprons concept). A year ago, Tesco's Fresh & Easy hit the ...

Forget all that money that’s been spent upgrading technology and increasing efficiency at drive thru lines at QSRs. That’s so 5 minutes ago in the world of convenience. Companies that want to REALLY be a convenient sandwich solution for consumers at lunch time are resorting to delivery services in urban areas.    New Yorkers can phone fresh sandwich-maker Pret A Manger from about anywhere in Manhattan, and within minutes, one of 19 roaming delivery trucks (electric, to be eco-friendly) will pull up to the curb and delivery a sandwich to someone holed up in their office or condo and too busy to run to a nearby street vendor or restaurant. I am ...

Okay, so Fresh & Easy doesn’t cut the mustard for me, and I don’t think it’s going to revolutionize grocery after all, perhaps because it’s too American (except for the major private label part). But it’s not just Tesco that’s evidently bringing British-style, fresh products to the American market. It’s America’s biggest coffeehouse chain.

On a recent trip to Los Angeles I had a chance to experience firsthand the British invasion on the West Coast that started last November in the form of Tesco’s Fresh & Easy grocery concept (See “The British are Coming”). I also had a chance to experience a quiet American-led counter-revolution being waged by Starbucks that actually, possibly unintentionally, is aimed right at the market that Tesco hopes to exploit.