pausing for breath at fresh & easy

Phew!

We've opened 31 stores in 66 days so far this year...now we're pausing for breath.

We've been delighted with the openings. There's always been a line of customers waiting for each store to open. Indeed at some, such as Long Beach pictured above, the lines were almost too long, they took hours to clear - I'm sorry if anyone was inconvenienced.

And every week, we attract more customers in our existing stores.

However, after opening our first 50, we planned to have a 3 month break from openings, and other than a couple more in Phoenix, we're taking it (albeit, in our usual fashion, with 59 stores already open).

Why?

Quite simply, to allow the business we've created to settle down.

In 9 months, we've gone from a project team of 200 people to a business employing nearly 2500 people - and in another 9 months, it'll be over 5000.
In a little over 4 months, we've gone from a business with no stores to one with 59 - with hundreds more in the pipeline.

We've learnt a huge amount about running the operation, and talked to thousands of customers about what they like about fresh&easy, and where they'd like us to improve.

So we've given ourselves a little bit of time to kick the tires, smooth out any wrinkles, and make some improvements that customers have asked for.

Of course, improving the operation and the shopping trip is what we do every day. I've always been a believer in continuous and never-ending improvement - ever since listening to Tony Robbins on the subject many, many years ago (more than I care to remember!).

And today, our stores are better than they were last month, which were already better than the month before, and so on - our recent move to accept Amex as well as Visa & Mastercard is one small example of that.

But the next 3 months will allow us to accelerate this process, before we restart what's been described as an opening program on steroids.

Our customers now, and in the future, will be the beneficiaries of this, and that, of course, is how it should be.....