Listening to our Customers

2010-04-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

If you have been following us on Twitter or Facebook lately, you’ve probably seen us asking for your input on many different aspects of the store, including vegetarian and vegan products you love and would like to see in our stores. Since we first opened, vegetarian options have been one of the most common dietary requests we receive from customers, second only to gluten-free products.

In January, based on customer input, we added new gluten-free products to our range and made them easier to find in our stores. To kick off the discussion about improving our vegetarian options, we invited a group of customers over to our home office to share with us what kinds of food they look for in our stores as well as their ideas for fresh&easy vegetarian/vegan items.

We had a really great and informative conversation and we want to thank all of these bloggers for spending their evening talking about food with us! We learned a lot from you, as always.

A big thank you to:

Nhershoes
Newlywife
Sweatpantsmom
All things food

We still would love more feedback on what vegetarians or vegans would like to see in our stores, so please leave us a comment here on the blog and let us know what items you would like to be able to get at your local Fresh & Easy!

Cheers!

~Sallie

Free bag for Earth Day, reusable bags for everyday

2010-04-19T07:00:00.000-07:00

At Fresh & Easy, green is more than just our color, it’s our way of life. We’ve worked hard to make our stores and our products eco-friendly and we want to help you be green too!

So instead of Earth Day, we’re celebrating Earth Week this year with a free reusable bag for our customers who spend $20 or more through April 22. All you have to do is visit our Facebook fan page get the free canvas bag coupon.

We want you to love the bag you use, so we are giving you the chance to design it! We would like to invite you to enter our Design-A-Bag Contest by submitting your original bag design by May 31st.

In June, our “friends of fresh&easy” will have the chance to vote for their favorite designs to pick the winner. If you haven’t already, you can sign up to be a friend of fresh&easy at freshandeasy.com/friends to be able to vote and to get our latest news and exclusive discounts.

Did we mention the winner will get free groceries for a year? To get more details on our Design-A-Bag contest, and to enter, visit freshandeasy.com/designabag. Good luck!

Using reusable bags is only one way to help the earth. You can read about some of the other eco-friendly things we do in the Green Architecture and Building Report or you can visit freshandeasy.com/greenbuilding. By being green, we not only get to help the environment, we also keep our business costs low, which helps our customers save some green as well!

Happy Earth Day,
Sallie

Eat well at Fresh & Easy with our new meals

2010-04-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

Our customers told us they love our prepared meals, but wished we offered some with less calories, sodium and fat. We’re happy to report that we have been hard at work creating nutritionally balanced meals - called "eatwell" - and you can now find them in our stores! Eatwell gives you more nutritious options without having to compromise on quality or flavor.

The eatwell products you can now find on our shelves include ready-made meals, soups, salads sandwiches and sushi. We've displayed some of the nutritional information on the front of the package, and each product in the line has no more than 25 percent of the total daily values for calories, fat, saturated fat and sodium. And of course, since they’re fresh&easy brand, they’re only made with ingredients you can pronounce. Make sure to keep an eye out, since soon we’ll be introducing even more eatwell items!

Before launching these new products in stores, we asked local bloggers to join us at our home office to find out what they thought of them. A big thank you to all our blogger friends who came out for the tasting!

We could go on and on about how excited we are about these products, but it’s probably more interesting to see what our customers think:

SueBob's Snackish Blog
Bern Baby Bern
Random Walk Down Mommy Street
Rockin Mama
Funny Yellow Mom
Newly Wife
Temple of Fresh & Easy
N Her Shoes
Greenery in Mommyhood
Dine 909
The Frugal Diva
Traded my BMW for a Minivan
NEW! Sweatpants Mama

We are thrilled the eatwell products have received such a positive response so far and we’re eager to find out what you think too! Leave us a comment and let us know if you enjoyed eating well :)

Cheers,
Sallie

Fresh & Easy team gets moving!

2010-03-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

From our home office to our stores, we’re an active group here at Fresh & Easy. A week and a half ago, a number of the Fresh & Easy team participated in the grueling Solvang Century & Half-Century Bike Ride and this past weekend in the world-famous Los Angeles Marathon!

A dozen Fresh & Easy bikers set out in Solvang, choosing either a half-century or a century ride. Of course most of our team biked the full 100 miles! Despite windy conditions, everyone finished.

On Sunday, members of the Fresh & Easy team joined the roughly 25,000 runners in the L.A. Marathon. The 26.2 mile course started at Dodger’s Stadium and finished at the Santa Monica Pier. Happy to report everyone made it into work on Monday, despite the sore legs!

We think it’s important to live a healthy lifestyle from eating right to getting out there and exercising. Congratulations to our team members on these accomplishments!

Cheers!
~ Sallie

Your receipts made a big difference!

2010-03-15T15:08:00.000-07:00

We are happy to announce that this school year’s Shop for Schools program raised over $670,000 for schools in Arizona, California and Nevada. The school that raised the most money in each state was awarded a $5,000 bonus and we had fun presenting them with checks at their school celebrations today.

Congratulations to the below winning schools!

Our Lady of Sorrows Academy, Phoenix AZ raised over $7,000
Arizona schools together raised over $90,000

Sunset View Elementary, Point Loma CA raised over $10,000
California schools together raised over $450,000

Bunker Elementary, Las Vegas NV raised over $10,000
Nevada schools together raised over $130,000

Nearly 1,000 local schools participated and for every $20 in fresh&easy receipts they collected from September 15th – December 31st, we made a $1 donation for them to use as they see fit.

Participating schools also had the option of having their own Shopping Night, and we’re excited to share this video to show you what they’re all about.

Congratulations to all the participating schools on their fundraising efforts and we look forward to partnering with you again next Fall!

For more info visit freshandeasy.com/shopforschools.

the culinary art of coffee

2010-03-08T12:30:00.000-08:00

It takes a lot of people and passion to put great products on our shelves. Part of Fresh & Easy’s commitment to you is that we put the best products on our shelves that we know are created with care. Behind each Fresh & Easy product is a story and group of passionate people who strive to make the highest quality, fresh products possible – and keep them all at a reasonable price.

So when we met the owners of Caffe Calabria, a local café and artisanal coffee roaster in San Diego, we knew we had to partner with them to produce some of the most amazing, rich and delicious coffee for our shelves – the fresh&easy artisanal coffee. The company’s passion for the culinary art of coffee-making is apparent in the incredible care they put into each step of the coffee roasting process – from raw bean to finished product, each batch goes through rigorous testing and tastings to make sure it is perfect.

We took a camera down to Caffe Calabria to capture the care and passion the roasters of Caffe Calabria put into every single batch of fresh&easy artisanal coffee.

The coffee is carefully packaged in tins, preserving the freshness and aroma so when you open the canister in your home the result is a perfect cup of fresh, handcrafted coffee made with care. I don’t know about you, but I can practically smell the coffee through the screen…

For another “story behind the product” – check out our trip to the Il Fornaio bakery to see the bakers of fresh&easy breads!

Cheers!
~SallieB

Fresh food in South LA

2010-02-24T16:38:00.000-08:00

We were thrilled today to partner with Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry to open our South Los Angeles store – one of the first store locations we identified over two years ago!

This store is part of a broader redevelopment program to revitalize the Central Avenue corridor. We’re excited to be a part of the effort and hope to encourage even more business and growth as a result.

Providing food access and healthier foods to underserved communities has been getting national attention with First Lady Michelle Obama taking up the torch to try to get Americans to eat better and tackle childhood obesity by encouraging better eating habits. We continue to open stores in all types of neighborhoods because we fundamentally believe everyone – regardless of where they live – deserves access to quality, fresh food at affordable prices. In reviewing our the best selling items across all Fresh & Easy stores – from Hollywood to Pasadena to Compton, we have found that fresh fruits and vegetables and quality meats and poultry are consistently best sellers, regardless of the neighborhood.

The opening was quite the neighborhood event – lots of local leaders, friends from the City of LA and neighbors showed up to see the new store. We even had the Jefferson High School marching band perform outside the store!

We presented Councilmember Perry today with a Fresh & Easy Superstar Shirt. Each week, at our company team meeting, we award Superstar Shirts to employees who have gone above and beyond the call of duty to do something extraordinary for our customers or their neighborhoods. This is the first time we’ve ever awarded a Superstar Shirt to someone outside our Fresh & Easy family, but we certainly feel Councilwoman Perry deserves one for her work in revitalizing the area and bring fresh, quality food to residents in the neighborhood.

We also had a team of Fresh & Easy volunteers in the neighborhood to help beautify 28th Street Elementary School by painting murals later this afternoon. One mural of the U.S. Map and the other one reminding kids to eat their fruit and veggies!

For more pictures and stories of the South LA opening, visit here, here and here!

Cheers!
~Sallie

Listening to you – it’s a piece of cake!

2010-02-17T09:41:00.000-08:00

We really love hearing from you. We love getting your comments about what you like and what you think we should improve. When we first set out to design and build Fresh & Easy, we went out and asked people what they wanted from a grocery store. Now, just a few short years later listening is still a huge part of how we run our company and we’re happy to report we have many ways to connect with you – through our website, Twitter, Customer Favorites and Kitchen Table polls, and now Facebook.

But it’s not just about taking the time to listen to your comments – it’s about figuring out a way to respond. Take for example the case of the fresh&easy Gourmet Chocolate Cupcakes.

Oakley, creator of the independent fan blog Temple of Fresh & Easy, bites into the sweet success of bringing back the fan favorite.

When we discontinued these cupcakes due to shipping and distribution issues, our in-boxes were immediately flooded with feedback from customers who missed their chocolaty goodness. We heard everything from “I cannot live without my chocolate cupcakes” to “I am devastated the cupcakes are no longer in the stores.” So we quickly figured out a way to get the cupcakes back on our shelves in just three weeks.

We also recently launched several more gluten free products and you might have noticed that we brought back and added new fresh&easy baking mixes, all as a direct response to customer feedback.

So as you bite into that chocolate cupcake or bake that vanilla bean cake, go right ahead and thank yourself and your neighbors. And keep the feedback and ideas coming, because we’re listening.

Cheers!
~Sallie

fresh&easy is now on facebook!

2010-02-10T10:04:00.000-08:00

Status update: We just launched our official fresh&easy Facebook fan page!

Though it’s still early, we’ll be adding more features and content based on your input on the fan page. If you’d like another way to stay connected, fan us at www.facebook.com/freshandeasy. And be sure to tell us what you think!

We’re also on
•Twitter @fresh_and_easy
•Youtube
•Flickr

Cheers!
Gary

Twitter Tasting with @Fresh_and_Easy

2010-02-02T08:30:00.000-08:00

We’d like to invite all wine enthusiasts, who are 21 years age or older, to participate in our upcoming Twitter Tasting! We thought it’d be fun to kick off the Valentine’s Day celebrations by giving you a taste our fresh&easy wines.

On Tuesday, February 9th at 7pm (PST), we’ll taste three exclusive fresh&easy wines that are perfect for whether you’re celebrating Valentine’s Day with that special someone or with friends. Karen Fletcher, our Fresh & Easy Wine Manager, will be your host and can give you the inside scoop on the uniqueness our wines. She’s excited to get your feedback and happy to answer your questions.

To join:
1. Sign up at Taste Live using Twitter, Facebook or creating a new account on the top right corner
2. Let us know you’ll be joining us by RSVPing here
3. Pick up a bottle at your local Fresh & Easy store
4. Log in to Taste Live and tweet with us on February 9th at 7:00PM (PT)– Hashtag: #FandEWine

We will be tasting the following Fresh & Easy exclusive wines:

Montcadi Cava Rose – under $6

Boro Hills Sauvignon Blanc – under $11

Matuco Malbec 2007 - under $10

Gluten-Free at Fresh & Easy

2010-01-27T08:00:00.000-08:00

We’re excited to report that we are introducing more gluten-free products to our range over the next few months and are currently offering hundreds of items in our stores that are made without gluten-containing ingredients!

Customers told us they wanted more gluten-free products to choose from and to easily identify which ones were gluten-free; and we listened. Just look for the maroon and green icon next to notable gluten-free products in our stores. Next time you’re in, ask your Kitchen Table attendant for a full list or just download it from our website at www.freshandeasy.com/glutenfree.

We hope you enjoy the new tasty gluten-free items in our stores and as always, we would love your feedback as we continue expanding the range!

Cheers!

Sallie

Fresh & Easy now in Fresno!

2010-01-14T22:01:00.000-08:00

We’re excited to share that yesterday we opened our first stores in Fresno, CA with the help of Mayor Ashley Swearengin, Councilmembers Mike Dages, Andreas Borgeas, Larry Westerlund and Blong Xiong, Congressman Jim Costa and Marlene Murphey from the Fresno Redevelopment Agency. We opened our doors in Fresno at Cedar & Nees, downtown at Tulare & R, and in Clovis at Shaw & Willow and were happy to meet our new neighbors. Thank you to everyone who came out to celebrate with us!

Check out a video of the Mayor’s speech at the grand opening of the downtown Fresno location.

There was such a great positive response from our new neighbors in Fresno that we thought we’d pass along what they’re saying about their new neighborhood market.

Blog Posts:

Fresno Famous
Central Valley Moms
Fres-Know
Fresno Beehive
Fresno Biz Journal
The Fresnan
Lyndsay Lou
The Lulu
Vida en el valle blogs

Some Twit-Pics from tweeter @SmokeyBehr here and here

If you have a blog post, tweet, twit-pic or video you would like to share with us, please be sure to leave a link in the comment section!

Cheers!
SallieB

fresh&easy is the solution to your resolution!

2010-01-05T11:05:00.000-08:00

It’s easy to achieve your New Year’s resolutions to eat more healthy foods and save more money. Our fresh&easy brand products have no artificial colors, flavors or added trans fats; and because we’ve designed our stores to save you money, you get these high-quality products at honest low prices everyday!

So, how do we do it? It’s all about keeping things simple. Check out our video to learn more and let us know what you think!

Happy New Year!
Gary

Turning old cards into new trees at fresh&easy

2009-12-28T13:23:00.000-08:00

In the spirit of holiday giving, we’re asking our customers to help us give back to the environment. All of our stores will be collecting your used greeting cards through January 15th and recycling them.

All the proceeds will be donated to American Forests, a nonprofit organization we’ve partnered with that will use the money to plant trees in neighborhoods that need them, including those that have been affected by wildfires.

So remember to save those cards and bring them to your local fresh&easy to help turn them into new trees for a greener new year!

Happy Holidays!
-Gary

Celebrating the Holidays Latino Style

2009-12-18T13:43:00.000-08:00

We joined bloggers and journalists for a holiday fiesta at Sur La Table in Los Angeles last week. We indulged in Latin-inspired dishes created by our Chef Cynthia Perez and delectable desserts, all paired with our exclusive wines to toast the upcoming holidays and new year.

Everyone helped Chef Cynthia cook and eat the great tasting food including Maple Ham & Brie Crostini, Sweet Corn Tamales with Roasted Garlic & Rosemary, Homemade Roasted Poblano Guacamole with Grilled Shrimp, and Mini Black Bean & Goat Cheese Quesadillas.

(For full recipes click here)

Chef Cynthia also shared simple tips on how to take the stress out of the kitchen and turning staple Latin items, like chorizo, into unique concepts – Mini Chorizo Salad, yum!

Getting to know our neighbors was the best part of the night. We’re grateful for our new friends and had a great time celebrating this holiday season with them!

A special thanks to our friends who joined us:

Soy Fashionista
Thought of a Mommy
8 Years old and Babies
Day Tripping Mom
Spanglish Baby
My Fat Big Cuban Family
Rockin Mama
Greenery in Mommyhood
Nuestra Vida Con Adrian

Bringing authentic Italian bread to the neighborhood

2009-12-12T22:17:00.000-08:00

Ever wonder how Fresh & Easy gets fresh baked bread to your neighborhood store daily? This is made possible thanks to our partnership with Il Fornaio, who are locally based in La Mirada, CA.

Il Fornaio got their start by opening a baking school in Barlassina (Lombardia), Italy and they make their bread the same way they have for centuries. Luckily for us, they made it to our side of the Atlantic and now bake their baguettes, kalamata olive loaves, sourdough boules, and ciabattas (to name a few) for us to make available right in your neighborhood.

In this video Jan Schat, Vice President of Bakeries for Il Fornaio, spoke to us about the love and care that goes into baking these breads.

We're proud to work with the great team at Il Fornaio and are happy to offer their artisan breads that have all been made, in the words of Jan, with no mysterious ingredients for you to enjoy.

Buon appetito!

~SallieB

Keeping the green in fresh&easy (and your wallets)

2009-12-03T09:53:00.000-08:00

We received some exciting news this week from our partner Verisae, who helps us lower our environmental impact – our energy consumption is 32 percent lower than the industry average for energy usage per square foot.

This is good news not just for the environment... Through the energy saving innovations in our stores, like LED lighting, skylights and energy efficient refrigeration units, we have achieved recurring energy-related cost savings of millions of dollars per year. Savings like this allow us to keep our prices low, everyday for our customers.

See what Environmental Leader had to say here.

Take a look at the Green Building page on our website for more info and check out the amount of energy our 500,000 sq ft solar panel on our Riverside distribution center is producing.

Cheers,
Gary

We’re thankful for good friends and good food

2009-11-25T09:21:00.000-08:00

In an early celebration of the season of connecting with friends and family, last week the Fresh & Easy team traveled to Phoenix and Las Vegas to reconnect with some of our blogging friends, make some new ones and of course enjoy some great fresh&easy holiday food.

With Chef Cindy’s expert guidance, we all pitched in to help prepare a complete Thanksgiving dinner with all the fixings, including some different takes on the classics – such as an easy, healthy and very tasty sweet-potato-spinach-salad.

(For the full recipe check out Noshtopia’s post)

Chef Cindy also wowed us with her simple tips to make fresh&easy readymade meals unique, such as the mashed potatoes, by adding your own spin to them. She incorporated garlic and parmesan cheese into her recipe and someone mentioned even adding bacon or chives to the potatoes. Not only is it simple and time saving, but because our fresh&easy prepared meals only use ingredients you can pronounce, the potatoes tasted just like homemade.

The no fuss fresh&easy dip trays and vegetable platters make a delicious and simple starter that will keep your dinner guests at bay and out of the kitchen until the turkey is done. And you won’t have to deal with prep or cleanup. As for the desserts and wines, well all I can say is they were a hit!

We had a great time with all of our lovely friends in Phoenix and Las Vegas. By the end there were full stomachs, empty glasses and lots of laughter.

For more pics of the event check out our Flickr page.

Very special thanks to our friends who joined us :
Loosing It in AZ
Noshtopia
Mom Memos
The Crepes of Wrath
Vivian Nelson Melle
Tim Swearingen
The Traveling Rose
Megan
Concoctions of a Wanna be Chef
Fresh & Easy Wine Review Blog
Chef Mona
Steve, Sam, Steve and Andy from UKLV.org
Carlo and Alex from Recession Recipes
Sparkle Power
The Deal Fanatic
Coupon Chic

From our team, to you – we wish you a happy Thanksgiving full of great food and great friends!

Cheers!
~SallieB

Fresno bound at fresh&easy

2009-11-19T16:31:00.000-08:00

Last week, we held an event at our Downtown Fresno store to announce the opening dates for our first few stores in the Fresno area.

-- Lemoore & Cinnamon, Lemoore: December 2nd
-- Tulare & R, Fresno: January 13th
-- Cedar & Nees, Fresno: January 13th
-- Shaw & Willow, Clovis: January 13th

The outpouring of support from the community and city government in Fresno was a great indication of what lies ahead for Fresh & Easy. A big thank you to Fresno City Council President Cynthia Sterling, City Council Member Lee Brand and Redevelopment Agency Exec Director Marlene Murphey who were on hand to speak.

With these six stores we are proud to be creating 125 more good paying, quality jobs with comprehensive benefits. If you are interested in joining our team, job listings and the application process are posted here.

For more on the Fresno story check out what Fresno bloggers like The Fresnan, Fresno Fusion and the Fresno Bee News Blog have to say about it.

AIDS Walk 2009 With fresh&easy

2009-11-02T16:36:00.000-08:00

On Sunday October 18th, a large group of us met up in West Hollywood decked out in our fresh&easy green for the 25th Annual AIDS Walk.

Friends and family joined our fresh&easy team and together we raised about $10,000 for this great cause. It was our third year participating and we look forward to doing it again next year!

Cheers,
Gary

Gift cards worth giving

2009-10-21T21:12:00.000-07:00

You told us you wanted gift cards and we listened!

Fresh&Easy gift cards are now available in $25 or $50 denominations just in time for the gift-giving season. Now giving the gift of wholesome products to your friends and family is even easier.

These convenient gift cards are the perfect gift - we wouldn't blame you for putting them on your own wish list!

You can find the fresh&easy gift cards at the front of our stores.

Cheers!
~SallieB

LEEDing the way to gold certification

2009-10-15T13:18:00.000-07:00

Last month we took another big step in our commitment to being a green retailer – we opened our first LEED® Gold Certified store! LEED is the nation’s preeminent program for the design, construction and operation of high performance green buildings.

Our Cathedral City store achieved LEED certification for energy use, lighting, water use and incorporating a variety of other sustainable strategies, such as using 90 percent recycled steel for the building’s structure. On average, all of Fresh & Easy stores use 30% less energy than a typical supermarket and utilize technologies like solar tracking skylights, automatically dimming lights, and LED lighting.

We are also pilot members of the LEED Volume Certification Program which allows companies building multiple buildings with similar formats to streamline the certification process. Because of our membership, we look forward to several future LEED certified stores to come.

Of course, we do this not just because it’s the right thing to do for the environment – it also helps keep our costs (and your grocery bill) down!

Take a look at what these blogs had to say about our opening:

Mother Nature Network
Greenandsave.com
Green Retailing News

You can visit the Green Building section of our web site for more info!

Shop for Schools

2009-09-17T14:23:00.001-07:00

Two weeks ago we launched our Shop for Schools program at the opening of our 126th location in Long Beach.

Earlier this year we piloted the program to raise money for K-8th grade schools in the neighborhoods around our stores. We saw an incredible response as schools raised more than $130,000 for whatever they need the funds for. Our store employees, parents and customers all pitched in with ways to enhance the program for this year’s version, so we are hopeful that even more schools will participate!

We have also added a Shopping Night to the program, which allows all registered schools to receive 5% of a store’s sales on a particular evening. One of our Las Vegas team members – Jackie Urban –came up with the idea, which we tried out with such success we decided to roll it out for all of our participating schools.

Check out a video on Shop for Schools from earlier this year.

Be sure to check with your local school to see if they are participating – it is not too late to participate! Schools have until October 1st (THURSDAY!) to sign-up at our website

squaring the circle at fresh & easy

2009-09-13T20:52:00.000-07:00

Right from the start, we've been delighted by the customer response to our stores - they see us offering better/fresher products, cheaper prices, and just taking that bit extra care in everything we do.

For some, we've become their main shop. They've found that we help them eat better and save money on all their weekly shopping. And they've realized we can do it because we've kept things really simple.

But from others, there's one recurring point we hear - you can't be both better and cheaper, as you're only a small store. And small stores are either more expensive (specialty), or lesser quality (dollar). Since your quality is really good, you must be expensive if I tried to do all my shopping with you. It's just not possible to be both.

Now that we've got 125 stores open, we can tackle this point head on, with our first advertising campaign.

We sat down with customers, to explore ways of doing this, and as ever what emerged was refreshingly straightforward - show how keeping things simple lets you be both better and cheaper; and let your loyal customers tell the story for you.

So from this Wednesday, billboards and posters will be springing up around our stores, and banner ads on the internet, as well as a new treatment in-store - all pointing out in different ways how we keep things simple, to save you money.

While on the radio, you'll be hearing ads featuring some of our loyal customers, telling the story for us...

We may have set out to square a particular circle, by showing that it is possible for us to be both better and cheaper, through keeping things simple.

But the fact that a business that simply tries to listen to customers, and then give them what they want, has been rewarded by its customers wanting to tell its story for it, speaks to a deeper circle of trust.

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

1000 ways to show we listened at fresh & easy

2009-09-11T19:44:00.000-07:00

Next Wednesday, we finish a 5 month programme, which has seen us add over 1000 products to our stores.

We've always taken a simple approach to business - listen to what your customers are asking for, then deliver it. By doing this year-in, year-out, you're always making the shopping trip better.

So when we heard our customers say they really liked our stores, we also heard them ask for more help in stretching their budget, in these difficult times - by providing more family packs, and low price alternatives to their favorite brands.

They also wanted more fresh&easy brand products, since they have ingredient lists you can actually pronounce, as well as a few more favorite brands, so they didn't have to go elsewhere.

And, there was little that they wanted taken away.

Of course, the walls of our stores aren't made of rubber - you can't just expand them - , but we worked out a way of accomodating all these products, by increasing the height of some of our fixtures, adding extra freezers and chillers, and refining our use of space. Naturally, we tested it with customers, and they preferred the changes we proposed.

However, to make this all happen across our 125 stores was a bit like a jigsaw puzzle - you had to put one piece in place before you could do another -, which is why it's been a 5 month programme. It's been a huge amount of work for everyone, but the end result is impressive.

There's now more family packs in key areas across the store, just have a look at our meat aisle, household and pet aisles, or cereals.

There's over 200 new amazingly low priced alternatives to national brands, but of the same quality, such as our Mothers Joy cereals, Riot Cola, Bistro frozen meals, Allegro bathroom tissue, or Steel Kettle beer.

There's a few brands we didn't have before, like Dreyers ice cream or Orowheat bread, and a much extended selection of Frozen, Household, Pet and Health&Beauty products.

And of course, more fresh&easy brand products, such as our microsteamer meals, family size meals, or breakfast bowls (all fresh from our own Kitchen), Goodness lunchables for kids, Black Angus beef, Pita chips, baby toiletries, or our Retreat natural spa range.

Finally, next Wednesday, we redo produce, which will add more fresh&easy products, more 98c produce packs, and a greater selection of loose fruit.

Has all this changed the original vision for fresh&easy?

Not at all.

It was always designed to offer fresh, wholesome food, as well your favorite brands, all at amazingly low prices, so you didn't have to go elsewhere.

By listening to our customers, and then doing something about it, we're simply ensuring the shopping trip continues to deliver that vision for them.

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