food for thought at fresh & easy

One of our core beliefs is that everyone deserves access to fresh, wholesome food that they can afford.

So we're always pleased to hear from our customers on how we’ve helped them with this.

For example, Kevin writes about his constant quest to find healthy foods for his family on Web Goonies. We’re delighted our stores could help, as he writes in Fresh & Easy Indeed. Incidentally, it’s also worth a look at Web Goonies’ healthy recipe for apple nachos …a snack that both parents and kids can probably agree on…

We simply think that food should be fresh, and not mucked around with - that's why all our own brand products have no artificial colors or flavors, and only use preservatives when absolutely necessary. Perfect for family cooks like Rookie Cookie, who enjoy making their own recipes and meals from high-quality items.

Of course, developing products and selecting assortments is all about listening to customers. So it’s really helpful when Moms like HazelEyesSue offer reviews of our products, or customers like Shelly give a top ten list of her favorite products and qualities about our stores.

Please keep letting us know what you think of our products and our stores. That way we can continue to make our shopping trip better and better for you.

And that, as ever, is how it should be.....

solar fixation at fresh & easy

Not a new album from Shakira (although there's only one extra letter!).

Rather, I've been completely blown away by the live solar link that we've added to our website.

In real time, you can see the amount of solar energy we're producing from the solar roof covering our depot at Riverside, and how much of the depot's power it's actually providing. It's really quite cool, check it out.

I've always believed that engaging, encouraging and informing people is the way to change behavior: after all, no-one gets out of bed with the intention of destroying the planet.

So things like this, and the way we packed groceries in our stores in reusable bags on Earth Day, are just little ways of trying to do this.

Judging by the response we got yesterday, it works.

And that, surely, is how it should be.....

where are the robots at fresh & easy?

Since opening, our customers have time and again commented on just how friendly and helpful our staff are. It's a really defining feature of our stores.

Yet, all our tills are supposedly automated. Indeed, Time magazine recently referenced us in an article about the end of customer service.

How can this paradox be explained?

The answer's simple.

We actually offer assisted service: if you want to check out yourself you can, if you want help we'll provide it, and if you want us to do it for you, we will.

In doing this, we've managed to create a whole new level of customer and staff interaction. The checkout operator is no longer a part of the machine. Rather, our customer assistants are there to help.

With the added benefit that all our checkouts are open all the time.

Of course, we don't always get it right. It's different to running a traditional full service checkout, putting a greater emphasis on people skills: it's one of the reasons why we provide 2 days life skills training for all our people. And getting scheduling right, as ever, is a challenge.

However, we do have one store with full service checkouts, to act as a control - it has the lowest rating for checkout service of all our stores!

So, our customers are overwhelmingly positive. We've managed to combine technology and people to enhance their experience.

And that, surely, is how it should be.....

green day(s) at fresh & easy

Not a reference to the punk(?) boys (have they been heard of since Springfield?).

Rather, Earth Day's around the corner, so I was pleased we're going to be bagging groceries that day in our reusable "Bag for Life". With so much disagreement around the merits of plastic or paper, encouraging reusable bags seems to me entirely sensible. And our "Bag for Life", though plastic, is replaceable for free, forever. Just think how many carrier bags that could save!

I hope Christy from Bring Me Up: Environment will be there. If nothing else, she can check out the hybrid parking spaces.

Of course, it's not just about taking action on Earth Day. We need to change the way we live everyday to make it more sustainable. And that's what we've tried to do in developing fresh&easy.

We've partnered with green-minded organizations such as the California Climate Action Registry and Resource Management Group to help with our efforts. We’re also working with LEED to build green wherever possible: we think our buildings already use about 30% less energy than a typical grocery store.

Transit packaging and display materials are always a potential source of waste in our kind of business. So we recycle or reuse all of them, and recently announced our new UV Sanitation process for cleaning the materials.

Now, I can't say such technical details normally rock my boat, but I found this fascinating. To read more about it, check out the Good Clean Tech blog.

Of course, I wouldn't claim we're perfect. But we do believe in being good neighbors, who care about the environment. We figure the more effort we put to such initiatives, the better it will be for everyone...

And that, in our view, is how it should be…

Tree time at Fresh & Easy

Every little helps...

talking ideas at fresh & easy

I've been watching with interest MyStarbucksIdeas.com.

In my experience, customers generally know what's what. By listening, engaging, and taking action, you can't go far wrong - it provides the heartbeat for your business.

In our own way, on much more limited resources, we've been trying to do the same thing.

fresh&easy itself of course came from talking to people about their needs and desires. And that dialogue has never stopped.

Every week through our website and our stores, we get hundreds of comments and suggestions, and we try to answer as many as we can.

They're providing us with a rich source of ideas about how to improve our shopping trip. For example, we had a number of questions about whether our fresh prepared meals from our own kitchen could be frozen. So we put a suitable for freezing label on the front of pack for those that can.

Similarly, the fact that we now accept American Express came from the number of comments we had about this.

And there's many more we're working on, as well as trying to find new ways for customers to talk to us.

So an initial hats off to Starbucks, I'll be continuing to watch with interest, and taking notes.

Now where's my coffee...

fresh & easy - weekly round-up

Well, this has certainly been an interesting week… but amidst the wild speculation, our customers are again talking about their fantastic shopping trips in our stores and urging their friends to pay us a visit.

Jen writes on jen’s site, how our product range fits her needs so she can complete a full shopping trip in our Chula Vista Store. Thanks for coming back each week Jen - enjoy your coupons and organic products!

Melissa, who would battle on a softball field before cooking in a kitchen, says fresh&easy makes it easy to prepare meals at home. I can identify with that, I had our Green Thai Chicken Curry last night, loved it...

Finally, seems like Joni Marie Newman knows her way around a grill. We are delighted our products worked out for your Agave Mustard Balsamic Vinaigrette Grilled Portobello Burgers and Sun Dried Tomato Aioli. It looks splendid, and with a glass of our Reflexion Rioja, what a great meal...

Seems like each week as we serve more and more customers, we see more and more positive reviews appear in the blogs. Thanks for that, we appreciate it and enjoy hearing what you think. Feel free to drop us a line anytime, as we're always looking to listen and learn from our customers…

chef mike at fresh & easy

As well as employing a Master of Wine, as I mentioned last week, we also employ our own chef, who goes by the name of Mike.

In the original research we did with families, many felt they were having to compromise the quality of food they ate in the interest of time.

So we built a kitchen capable of producing high quality prepared meals, without the need for artificial colors, flavors or preservatives.

And we found Mike.

He had been working for the last 13 years with award-winning restaurants and hotels on the West coast, and he immediately identified with what we were trying to do.

He has helped us develop recipes and fine-tune ingredients, to deliver the right balance of flavor and value for these families.

We now have an extensive range of chilled prepared meals, sandwiches & salads, which are receiving fantastic feedback from customers - my favorite is the Wild Mushroom Risotto, although I'm also very partial to the Thai dishes!

In fact, their sales have been so far ahead of what we thought, at times we've struggled to keep up with demand.

It's been a tremendous team effort at the kitchen - from a standing start last November, they've already produced over 2.5 million products.

More importantly, at fresh&easy, busy people no longer have to compromise.
And that's how it should be.....

Thank you Mike!