Inside Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's Riverside County, California Distribution Center

[Photo: Courtesy T. Galvin]

As a major element of its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market small-format grocery store venture in the Western U.S. states of California, Arizona and Nevada, Tesco has constructed an 850,000 square foot distribution center in Riverside County, which is located in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. The distribution facility is designed to serve all of it's current and future--as many as 300 total--Fresh & Easy grocery markets in the Western United States.

In addition to hundreds of thousands of square feet of warehouse space, tens of thousands of product picking locations, and 74 truck bays, the Riverside County Fresh & Easy distribution center also includes a large commercial kitchen and related facilities, where Fresh & Easy brand fresh, prepared foods' products are produced.

T. Galvin, a Southern California-based real estate economics researcher who publishes the Inland Empire Economics blog, recently toured the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market distribution center in Riverside County. He was so impressed with the massive facility, he asked Ted S. Oyama, the lead senior architect for the Tesco project for an interview about the design of the distribution center. Mr. Oyama is the manager of architecture for the firm AEPC Group, LLC., whcih was the lead firm on the project.

Read T. Galvin's interview with Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market distribution center lead architect Ted S. Oyama here. It's the first interview we're aware of with the distribution facility's lead designer. The interview offers some specific and detailed information on the massive distribution center not previously covered in press reports about the facility. It's also a first-person discussion, since Mr. Oyama was the man at the helm when it came to desiging--and then making real--the 850,000 square foot distribution center.