F&E Buzz Reader and Food and Beverage Industry Entrepreneur Offers Her Suggestions to Tesco's Fresh & Easy About 'Sense of Place' and 'Localism'

Editor's Note: Beverage industry entrepreneur and former consumer packaged goods marketer Lucy Leahy has been reading Fresh & Easy Buzz and focusing particularly on our analysis and prescriptive suggestions that Tesco's Fresh & Easy grocery stores are lacking a "sense of place" and need to "localize" the store's themselves and their product mixes far more to the communities and neighborhoods the grocery markets are located in.

Armed with a Harvard MBA, a number of years' experience as a consumer packaged goods marketer and, perhaps most important of all being a new mother, Ms. Leahy in 2007 founded Glow Mama, a low-calorie, vitamin and nutrient-packed healthy beverage for pregnant woman, which is endorsed by the American Pregnancy Association.

Lucy Leahy grew up on a small Kiwi Fruit orchard in New Zealand and now lives in Oakland, California, where her beverage company is based. As such, her life seems to suggest she knows a little about importing concepts from home--the idea to use Kiwi's in the Glow Mama drinks for example--but keeping things local--which her marketing efforts for the beverages clearly are. (we aren't saying the Kiwi's come from New Zealand by the way, but rather the concept does.)

Read Fresh & Easy Buzz reader and food and beverage industry entrepreneur Lucy Leahy's suggestions to Tesco and its Fresh & Easy management group regarding what she thinks might make the stores more popular and thus more successful below:

Dear Fresh and Easy,
I can empathize with your startup struggles here with your new stores and wish you all the best success – sounds like you’re listening to lots of good business, PR and marketing advice on how to turn things around. One thing that would give your stores more of a “sense of place” would be supporting local small vendors more and linking your customers meals back to their neighboring farms, growers and business people. Take a lesson from Gordon Ramsey’s book and try and teach Americans to care where their food comes from and to take interest in the new blossoming categories of nutrition and wellness. If you make a point of supporting your local vendors (as opposed to being “arrogant” as reported recently), you’ll find the vendors much more proactive in helping you reach your communities and neighborhoods and your customers more willing to venture in and support your local green grocer format.

Thanks,
Yours sincerely,
Lucy Leahy – CEO and founder
Glow Beverages
The new startup lifestyle beverage company
http://www.drinktoglow.com/

Editor's Note II: As far as we know, Lucy Leahy isn't related to Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy. However, since U.S.Vice President Dick Cheney's wife Lynne recently announced she discovered (through a geneological search she had done) Democratic candidate for President Barack Obama and her husband the VP are distant cousins, (which has become part of Obama's stump speech humor) one never knows :)