Back-to-School at fresh&easy

It’s that time of year again – the back-to-school rush is here. While parents are busy filling backpacks with supplies, they are also packing those lunchboxes with meals and snacks that will take their kids through the day. It is a challenge that all parents face to pack lunches they feel good about but will also be eaten and not “traded” away to friends and classmates. But who says it has to be complicated?

We just launched our new line of fresh&easy Goodness Snack Trays. They contain nitrate-free ham or turkey, real cheddar cheese (not processed) and organic wheat crackers for just $2.49 a pack. They taste great and they’re made with ingredients you can trust…



What are your tried and true tips on making fun and healthy lunches and snacks for your family (and for yourself)?

Wining & Dining with Chef Mike

Last Thursday night we had a great time cooking, eating, drinking and laughing (a lot) with a few blogger friends. Our own Chef Mike cooked for us and even taught us a thing or two about making great food.



LA bloggers gathered to taste our exclusive wines and try out the delicious, fast and easy meals that Chef Mike put together using all fresh&easy ingredients which never contain artificial colors, flavors or added trans fats and only use preservatives when absolutely necessary. The group even donned aprons to make homemade margarita pizzas and prepped the ingredients for apricot chicken tenders, salmon with peanut sauce and veggies, and beef fajitas.

Here are some pictures and a video of the event, the food and the fun. (Special thanks to Oakley for the permission to use some of her pictures.)


These easy Beef Fajitas were a hit and serve four for less than $5 each


Ana, Melissa and Silvia roll out dough for the pizzas


Cynthia, Amy, and Lee tweet and share some laughs


Handmade margarita pizzas made with love by Lupe, Annette, Bernadette and Marsha


Ready to cook in less than 10 minutes and serves 4 for less than $8



And who could forget dessert? A delectable sampling of fresh&easy banana cream pie, tiramisu cake, and gourmet chocolate cupcakes was definitely a hit!

For more pictures of the event, visit our Flickr page and the Flickr pages of bloggers Annette and Oakley. We hope everyone had as much fun as we did!

Award winning wine at Fresh & Easy

Last month, our Fresh & Easy exclusive wines won 29 awards from the Los Angeles International Wine & Spirits Competition and the San Francisco International Wine Competition. We have now won over 80 awards for our exclusive wines, which are blended with the help of Master of Wine Phil Reedman. (there are less than 300 Masters of Wine in the world)

Nearly 60 of the 170 wines offered at our stores are exclusive to Fresh & Easy – and most of our wine sells for less than $10 a bottle. We’ve worked hard to simplify the wine selection process for our customers by arranging them by varietal instead of region and by putting tasting notes, food pairing suggestions and storage tips on the back label of our exclusive wine bottles. We don’t think wine should be complicated for customers and we believe great wine doesn’t have to be expensive to be…well, great.

Even more good news for wine lovers: we are introducing 25 new wines this summer!

To show off some of our wines and meet a few neighbors, we had a party at the very hip Roosevelt Hotel in – right across the street from our Hollywood & Sycamore store. Chef Mike prepared the food and Karen, our wine and beer manager, picked the wines. It just shows you, you don’t have to spend a lot of money on food and wine to throw a great party!

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