Gift cards worth giving

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

Big Pizza at Fresh & Easy

As Simon mentioned in a recent blog post, we have been listening to the feedback from our customers and as a result we’re introducing over 1,000 new products into our stores over the next few months. One of the things we heard from customers – particularly in this economy – is they want larger portions to feed their families, but they don’t want to break the bank doing it and they still want quality food. Like we always do, we’ve listened. Among several other family sized meals, we introduced the fresh&easy Big Pizza (it serves six people for just $8.99). And like all of our fresh&easy products, it has no artificial flavors, colors, no added trans fats and only uses preservatives when absolutely necessary.

This pizza is so big that we had to take it to the local appliance store to make sure it fit into most ovens! We also had to buy a special piece of machinery at our kitchen facility to pack it because we didn’t have anything quite big enough. Here is Stephanie from our home office making sure it fits into several ovens at an appliance store.


We are excited to be able to offer this and many other new products in our store for you and look forward to your thoughts. As always, please keep the feedback coming!

Cheers!
~ Sallie

following the customer at fresh&easy

"follow the customer" is a phrase we use a lot, to describe the way we do business.

The needs of customers after all are always evolving - think about your own lives - so what could be simpler than just listening to what would help, and then organizing yourself to deliver it. That way, year-in, year-out, your shopping trip is always getting better.

That's exactly what fresh&easy is all about. It was designed by listening to people, and since opening 18 mths ago, it's been evolving on the basis of customer feedback.

A constant request has been for more fresh&easy products, so we continue to innovate in this area. We've recently added, for example, quiche (fresh from our kitchen), pita chips, and gourmet hamburger buns, to name just a few - all of course with no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives, and no added transfat.

However, as the economic climate has got harder, customers have also been asking for help in making their budgets go further, so we've been organizing ourselves to do just that.

Already, you can count on at least 6 different packs of produce at just 98c every week, to help keep fresh produce affordable, and we've introduced stronger promotions, together with a weekly flyer.

But we've also been asked for more family packs, so these are now starting to come into the stores. The family-sized meals, fresh from our kitchen, are one example we've recently introduced, but you can now get bigger sizes of your favorite detergents and cleaners, and across the store we've many more to come.

On the back of customer feedback on our Buxted meat lines and Taurino, we're also introducing many more new brands over the next few weeks that offer outstanding value - all national brand quality, at unbelievably low prices, and only available at fresh&easy. For example, look out for our Mothers Joy breakfast cereals launching next week.

Finally, we're also adding a few more national brands to our stores, in response to specific requests from customers, to make their shopping trips more complete - Guerrero tortillas are one example.

All this adds up to more than 1000 extra products coming into our stores over the summer. And by organizing ourselves, we can do this without taking anything away - by adding extra shelves, and fine-tuning how we use our space.

So by "following the customer", we end up with a better shopping trip. It's good for us, and it's good for our customers.

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

Sampling at our fresh&easy kitchen table

The Kitchen Table is the heart of our stores and offers customers the opportunity to sample different products and taste our signature dishes.
Scott, a fresh&easy team member, gives a quick overview of what's sampling this week at our Kitchen Table in this short video.



Next time you're in, stop by the Kitchen Table and sample some products. And then of course, be sure to review them at www.freshandeasy.com/KitchenTable. Your review may even be featured on our homepage!

Happy sampling!
Gary

Good Food in Frugal Times

Just because we are in a recession doesn't mean that we should have to compromise the quality and taste of our groceries. Staying at home and cooking is a simple way to save money, but it can be overwhelming to plan meals in advance and around deals. We pulled together some helpful links that have tips to help save in these tough economic times.

Here are some of our favorite blogs that battle the recession blues with good food:

• Recession Recipes - Take two inspired cooks and mix with seasonal ingredients, recent deals from many stores and add a splash of creativity and you have recipes that are not only recession proof, but downright beautiful.
• LA Cheapskate - Cindy scouts for deals and plans a whole weekly meal plan around what she finds. Have leftover ham? She's got you covered on ways to get more meals for your buck.
• CookThink - Plug in the ingredients you already have at home and it will come up with a gourmet recipe you. Its perfect for those nights when you can't think of anything to do with that pineapple, those pork chops from the freezer, and the can of diced tomatoes from the back of the pantry.

Some more excellent blogs to visit when looking for frugal tips:

• Green Stew
• Frugal Mommy
• Self Reliant Sisters
Frugal Girls

• Be CentsAble
The Cheapos

• The Frugal Diva

Some Fresh & Easy insider tips:

• Each Wednesday we launch new extra low price specials across our stores. They are updated on our website where you can view all the deals by downloading your weekly flyer for your area.
• In different aisles throughout our stores you will find our newest promotion “Buy more & save."
• Each day we have special mark downs in our clearance section at the end of our refrigerated aisle.
• If you haven’t already, sign up for our Friends of Fresh & Easy emails and we’ll send you our latest news and exclusive offers.

What are your special tips for saving money and sources for good tips and deals? We are always listening, so please share your thoughts!

~Sallie

Review what you sampled at our fresh&easy Kitchen Table

Each day in our stores we sample signature fresh&easy products at our Kitchen Table. The result is lots of helpful feedback on the different sampling items and you are introduced to new and different products all the time.

Since we’re always finding ways to listen to our customers we’ve just launched a Kitchen Table Product Review section on our website. If you’ve recently sampled something, we invite you write a brief review that may end up on our Homepage!

Stop by next time you’re in! And of course, let us know what you think.

Cheers,
Gary

green is the culture at fresh&easy...

In our kind of business, we have hundreds of thousands of contacts with customers every week - people shop our stores frequently.

And it's those contacts in the end, that determine how people perceive our brand.

So from the start, we set out to build a culture based around shared values, and a sense of purpose. That way, our people would just live the brand, while being themselves, with no need rule books or scripted conversations.

I was reminded just how far we've come on this path by our recent set of city meetings.

We do these 3 times a year in all our markets. Tim, our CEO, me and my Executive colleagues go along. We invite all our new team members from the last 4 months, as well as our store managers, to talk about what kind of business we're trying to be, and where we're going.

We've been doing these since we started, when we only had a handful of people, and they've become a real symbol of our culture.

Some of us go on a bit, about the business, about our values, and what's coming up. Then, increasingly central to these sessions, there's a Q&A, where anybody can ask us anything: it's proving a great way us to continually improve the business, as there's no holding back. Finally, Tim closes, with his usual flourish.

What really amazes me though, is how, unprompted, people are increasingly coming dressed up, in green: T-shirts, hats, green wigs, face painting, often to their own design, but all reflecting fresh&easy values (although if you walked in off the street, you might think it was St. Patty's day!).

Attending these, you can understand why we receive hundreds of emails from customers every week, letting us know how great our team members are in the stores. Or why, in our regular surveys, more than 9 out of 10 of our customers are very satisfied with how friendly and helpful our people are.

It demonstrates a simple point - by creating a great place to work, based around shared values, you end up giving your customers great service.

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

This is what its like. Check out a video from our last city meeting in Las Vegas..

Family packs at fresh & easy

We've always followed a very simple approach - listen to what your customers want, and then try and deliver it, better than anybody else.

That's why we encourage customers to give us feedback - through our website or comment cards - and why we carry out exit surveys around our stores every month.

So when customers told us they enjoy our prepared meals, but would like to see more family sized meals, we took action!

We’ve just introduced a selection of 6 new prepared meals suitable for a family of four, including favorites like Lasagna with Meat Sauce or our Chicken & Bacon Mac & Cheese. And with no trans fats and no artificial colors or flavors, we’ve introduced these dinners at just $8.00! Now families have more options without having to compromise on quality or price.

There's several other areas where our customers have asked us for larger pack sizes, so again we're busy working on them. Some have already hit our stores, like bigger packs of chicken breasts, and Huggies diapers.

It's a simple approach, but it means our shopping trip is always improving for customers. After all, everyday our customers vote with their feet, and that surely is how it should be...

Next time you’re in, be sure to check them out…



Lasagna with Meat Sauce, 44 oz. & Chicken & Broccoli Pasta Alfredo, 40 oz



Spaghetti with Turkey Meatballs, 45 oz. & Chicken Teriyaki with Rice & Vegetables, 45 oz.



Chicken & Bacon Macaroni & Cheese, 40 oz. & Chicken Burritos with Green and Red Sauce, 40 oz.

Fresh (& Easy) Tweets

Listening and talking directly with you, our shoppers, is the greatest and most important part of our business. To stay closer in contact with you, we are now on twitter @Fresh_and_Easy ! Through tweets, we will let you know all about the latest news, deals, new products, and meal ideas.

Please stop by, say hello and chat with us!

~Sallie