meeting old friends at fresh & easy

Time's a funny thing.

With the pressure to get our first stores open, it's been hurtling towards us. But events of the last few months seem like a lifetime ago.

So it was last Friday, when I went round some of our first stores, which are due to open on November 8th. As I wandered around them, I came across a number of our private label products already sitting on the shelves. It was like being re-acquainted with old friends.

Why? Because every fresh&easy product on our shelves has been a labor of love, over the last 18 months.

We don't just buy products off the shelf.

First, we try and find out what customers want.

We then go and find suppliers who have a passion for food and the operating standards that we require. We work with them to develop products that both taste good, and are free of artificial colors and flavors, have no added transfats, nor (unless it's absolutely essential) preservatives.

We agonise over the packaging design, to ensure that the product rather than the packaging speaks for itself. We check it looks right on a shelf.

And we put every product through a taste panel, to ensure it tastes better than an equivalent product in the market.

It takes time.

So finally seeing them again, coming together on the shelves, was literally like a reunion.

However, the real reward comes when we open our doors, and find out what our customers think of them.

And that, of course, is how it should be.....