thrills, rumors and fresh & easy

19 days to our first store opening, you can feel the excitement amongst our people. After 30 months of development, it's an amazing time.

We were thrilled with the response we've had to recruiting around our first 6 stores. We filled all our positions, and it's enabled us to demonstrate that we deliver on our promises. Over 50% of our recruits come from the local neighborhoods, and everybody is working at least 20 hours and are eligible for full-time benefits (check it out).

Of course, not everything is going quite to plan. Doug, our IT man, and Mark, who heads up our supply chain, have a few (more) grey hairs, and everyone is extraordinarily busy.

But special moments just keep coming. For example, we ran our first life skills course for all our employees in one of our first stores this week, and the feedback was just remarkable, really quite moving. Real encouragement that a positive workplace is developing.

However, there does seem to be a number of rumors circulating, judging from emails we're getting in.

I'm happy to confirm that all our meat and poultry will be from the USA. Indeed, we try to source locally whenever we can. Over 60% of our produce, for example, will be from California, and another 10% from Arizona. After all, this is one of the great market gardens of the world. Why wouldn't we?

We will be accepting credit cards and food stamps, and there will be assistance at our checkouts.

And, we will only be playing music from Depeche Mode, Radiohead and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.....(that one's a joke!)

You've also given us quite a bit of feedback about the maps on our website being less than helpful. We will update them to be much more helpful, in time for the launch.

It's a thrilling time for us, but in the end that doesn't really matter. In 19 days our doors will open, and then everyone can vote with their feet....It's how it should be, and after 30 months, believe me, we can't wait....