Fresno bound at fresh&easy

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Uwins) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:31:00 +0000

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

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:36:00 +0000

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

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 04:12:00 +0000

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

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 20:18:00 +0000

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

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:23:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Uwins) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:52:00 +0000

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

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Uwins) — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 02:44:00 +0000

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...

Retreat at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:50:00 +0000

You may have noticed a lot of changes around our shops this summer. That’s because we’ve been adding over 1,000 new products based on your feedback including larger family sizes, budget-friendly choices that are national brand quality, more top name brands and even more fresh&easy branded products!

Most recently, we’ve added more choices to our health & beauty aisle including our own brand of beauty products called Retreat. We developed our Retreat line using the same high-quality standards that all fresh&easy products are known for i.e. no artificial ingredients & minimal preservatives… So, our Retreat products have no artificial colors, parabens, mineral oils or harsh SLS detergents. And most of these new items are priced under $5!

More high-quality choices offered at affordable prices based on customer feedback! Now that’s fresh&easy…

Have you tried our Retreat products yet? If so, leave a comment and tell us what you think!!!

Cheers,

Gary

Back-to-School at fresh&easy

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:37:00 +0000

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)?

Shop for Schools is back at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 02:01:00 +0000

Earlier this year we piloted a program called Shop for Schools and helped raise money for K-8th grade schools in the neighborhoods around our stores. Afterwards, we were delighted to hear from parents, students, teachers and administrators that our donations helped them purchase much-needed supplies, books, instruments and sometimes helped pay teacher salaries.

Each day we hear about the pressure schools are under when it comes to budgets; and we really want to help out. So after talking and listening to participants and customers from our pilot program, we’ve made some improvements and decided to bring it back!

This time, we’ve extended the fundraising period and added enhanced fundraising opportunities. For example, participating schools will receive a $1 cash donation for every $20 spent at our stores beginning September 15th through December 31st and on a designated evening schools can receive 5% of a store’s sales.

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

We recently sent registration forms to eligible schools in the neighborhoods around our stores, so be sure to chat with your school’s administrator if you’d like to register. Registration ends October 1st!

We're interested to hear your thoughts... Did your school participate earlier this year? What did you think?

Cheers,
Gary

Fashionable Meetings at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:46:00 +0000

We just wrapped up our City Meetings in California, Nevada and Arizona. These are fun, open-forum meetings with our new team members and our executives about what’s happening in the business and where we are going.

We hold these meetings several times a year in each state so team members can voice their opinions and help us make the shopping trip even better for customers.

Unprompted, our team members show up decked-out in green outfits illustrating their fresh&easy spirit. Some get quite creative… In Las Vegas, a talented & aspiring designer made shirts and even a dress out of our organic canvas bags for her team members. Check out this video from the meeting.

We encourage each team member to bring their personality to work and celebrate when they do. The result is our staff has fun which leads to more enjoyable shopping trips for our customers.

Our next round of City Meetings will be this October. I’ll be sure to report back the latest green fashion trends live from the Green Carpet. In Simon’s words, it’s definitely clear that “Green is becoming the new Black.”

Cheers,
Gary

more stores opening at fresh&easy

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:32:00 +0000

It was a big opening day for us with three new stores in Southern California, including one in Ventura, CA and our first two in Santa Barbara County, CA.

- Channel Islands & Rose, Oxnard
- Clark & Bradley, Orcutt
- H & North, Lompoc

Lots of our neighbors came out to check us out.

Like we do for every opening, we donated $1,000 to a local charity for each store. Congratulations to The Boys and Girls Club in Lompoc, the Orcutt Aqua Center, and the Parent Faculty Organization of Channel Islands High School!

These new stores created nearly 75 new jobs… and we are creating about 25 more for our next store opening in Delano, CA on August 19th!

For more pictures of the store openings check out our Flickr page.

Cheers!
~Sallie

Wining & Dining with Chef Mike

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:47:00 +0000

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!

more fresh&easy stores opening!

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:36:00 +0000

Today we celebrated with our new neighbors in Pasadena the grand opening of our 121st store at California & Lake.

Here are some photos and a video from today's event!

You can see more pictures of the opening event today on our flickr page.

Be sure to keep an eye out, because we have three other stores opening this month!
Two in Santa Barbara County and a store in Oxnard all open July 29th and our Delano store will be opening its doors on August 19th. For details on these openings, be sure to check out our What's New section of our website.

Pasadena, thank you so much for the warm welcome. We are delighted to join the neighborhood!

~Cheers,
Sallie

Designer Angel at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 00:45:00 +0000

We have fantastic & passionate people working hard around our shops to give customers the best shopping trip possible. As a new business, we put a lot of thought into creating a fun and rewarding workplace; after all creating a great place to work is key to ensuring our customers have great service. So we encourage all our team members to voice new ideas and bring their creativity & personality to work.

Meet Angel, a team member at our Las Vegas & Lake Mead store in Nevada.

Angel is a talented artist who designed and airbrushed fresh&easy t-shirts and hats for her fellow team members. To show her green fresh&easy pride at one of our recent City Meetings, Angel designed a fabulous hat which caught the eye of Tim, our CEO. Tim loved Angel’s design so much, that he produced one for everyone in our company!

Each of our team members brings something different and special to our shops and we love to celebrate the creativity, innovation & passion of our team members. Congrats Angel! And thanks for the sweet hat!!!

Cheers,
Gary

Award winning wine at Fresh & Easy

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 22:20:00 +0000

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!

A Grill-Packed Day at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:05:00 +0000

We’ve recently partnered with an award-winning grilling master Neil Strawder, also known as Big Mista, to give our customers helpful grilling tips. Last week he stopped by our home office and treated our team to a delicious BBQ! He fired up his grill and cooked up all our fresh&easy favorites including our Grill Pack - Nearly 5 lbs of high-quality beef patties, pork and chicken – It was a great day and we certainly ate a lot!

Here’s a picture of Big Mista (right) with the man behind our meat range, Bill Arnold (left).

Happy 4th of July!

Cheers!
Gary

Big Pizza at Fresh & Easy

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:11:00 +0000

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

Taste Testing at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 00:14:00 +0000

Ever wonder why our fresh&easy branded products always taste great? The answer: Lots of taste testing and development…

Before fresh&easy products hit our shelves, they are sampled in blind taste tests by our own team members. These sessions occur almost daily around our offices and we use the feedback to craft products we think taste just good as or better than leading national brands; all while adding no artificial colors, flavors, trans fats and only using preservatives where we have to.

Recently our fresh&easy Gazpacho, Hummus and Pizza Dough have been popular among customer comments and blogs. So tell us, which fresh&easy products do you think taste the best?

Cheers,
Gary

Keeping it cool at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Thu, 28 May 2009 01:38:00 +0000

As good neighbors we’re always finding thoughtful and innovative ways to reduce our global impact. That’s why all our stores and our Riverside, CA depot are built with energy efficient technology.

This week we announced our commitment to reducing refrigerant greenhouse emissions by joining the EPAs GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership. Just by closely monitoring our refrigeration systems and implementing leak detection & alarm technology, we are able to minimize our impact on climate change, help protect the ozone layer and keep our refrigerant leak rate under 10%; which is well below the industry average of 25%. Cool right?

Here are some other thoughtful ways we’re working to be a good neighbor to the environment.

Cheers,
Gary

following the customer at fresh&easy

noreply@blogger.com (Simon Uwins) — Tue, 19 May 2009 05:53:00 +0000

"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.....

fresh&easy gives back to schools

sallie.boorman@gmail.com (SallieB) — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:43:00 +0000

Last year, we heard a lot from our neighbors, customers and employees about how hard-hit schools have been because of the current economy. So we created a fundraising program called Shop for Schools to help. Today we announced that our first ever Shop for Schools program helped raise over $130,000 for schools in California, Arizona and Nevada!

The school that raised the most money in each state was awarded a $5,000 bonus. We presented the winning schools with their checks today at celebrations we threw at their neighborhood stores. The money raised can go toward anything the schools need most, from art supplies and books to playground equipment. We’re excited to share this video with you of Tim Mason, our CEO, presenting Mountain Meadows Elementary School in Moorpark, CA with a $10,000 donation!

Congratulations to all the participating schools on their fundraising efforts!

Cheers!
~Sallie

Sampling at our fresh&easy kitchen table

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Thu, 14 May 2009 03:54:00 +0000

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

fresh&easy opens 120th store

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:52:00 +0000

We just opened our 120th store at Durango Dr. & El Capitan Way in Las Vegas and our new neighbors stormed in just after the ribbon cutting! Here are some photos…

What's New at fresh&easy

GTLA2009@gmail.com (Gary) — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:59:00 +0000

There’s always something new happening around our shops. Each week we’re introducing new products to our range, finding new ways to help stretch budgets and preparing to open new stores!

To stay informed on What’s New around your fresh&easy, Click Here! And check back often!!!

Cheers,
Gary