Our April 30 iKristen-F&E Gal Bag Story Getting More Attention -- Particularly F&E Gal's 'Beyond the Call of Duty' Dedication to Tesco's Fresh & Easy

Grocers and Social Media-Networking

Fresh & Easy Buzz's April 30, 2009 story about social network site-user iKristen's search for a Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market reusable shopping bag she spotted on Fresh & Easy's flickr.com page (the bag pictured at top) appears to be generating a lot of interest among readers and others -- and most of that interest being in the form of positive praise for the Fresh & Easy store employee and Fresh & Easy Buzz reader known only as F&E Gal, who read about iKristen's search for the bag of her choice and helped her find it, offering to buy one with her own money and to send it to her free of charge.

That's dedication any grocery retailing chain should celebrate in its employees.

Read our April 30, 2009 post here: iKristen Buys Her Fresh & Easy Bag(s) -- and It's Almost the Right One: A Tale About the Power of Social Media Sites For Grocer-Consumer Interaction. (Note the comments in the "comments" section.)

We first mentioned iKristen's unsuccessful search for the Fresh & Easy reusable shopping bag of her desire in this April 27, 2009 story: Fresh Buzz: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Adds A flickr.com Photo Page to its Social Media Site Portfolio; Now Using Twitter, YouTube and flickr].

iKristen spotted the bag she wanted on Tesco Fresh & Easy's fairly new photo page on the flicker.com photographic social networking site and posted a comment on the picture asking Fresh & Easy's corporate marketing and public relations team, the people who operate the flickr site, where she could buy the bag.

She also posted a similar comment (called a "Tweet") on the Twitter.com micro-blogging site where iKristen has a feed, as does Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market. [Fresh & Easy Buzz also has a feed on Twitter at www/twitter.com/freshneasybuzz.]

See the details of the story our April 27 post linked above, as well as in our April 30 post here: iKristen Buys Her Fresh & Easy Bag(s) -- and It's Almost the Right One: A Tale About the Power of Social Media Sites For Grocer-Consumer Interaction.

In addition to the numerous comments posted by readers thus far on our April 30 post, today the CBS, Inc.-owned CBS Interactive Web site's business Blog Bnet.com picked up on our story in the form of a Blog post by Mike Duff, who writes in his Bnet Blog about retail-related topics and issues. [There is a link to his post today at the bottom of the comments section of our April 30, 2009 story linked above.]

In his post about our story on iKristens search for the bag of her desire and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store employee F&E Gal's going beyond the call of duty in finding such a bag at the Fresh & Easy store where she works, Mr. Duff suggests, as we did in our posts, that F&E Gal should get a little positive recognition from Fresh & Easy's top brass for showing dedication beyond the everyday call of duty in her job as a store-level employee.

Here is what the author suggests in his post:

"Turns out that, even if they represent a business, social network participants can be pretty social. Responsible, too, even if they aren’t necessarily going to get any credit for their actions. But, thanks to another social networker, Mike the Food Broker, who commented on Bnet’s earlier Twitter-related posting, F&E Gal is getting a little recognition here. And hopefully, Fresh & Easy will extend some, too."

[Read the full Bnet.com Blog post, "Fresh & Easy Employee Twitters to the Rescue" here.]

We agree with the sentiment -- and do hope some positive recognition from Fresh & Easy's senior management comes F&E Gal's way.

Store-level employees are the backbone of any grocer's operations. And as we've written often in Fresh & Easy Buzz in the past, when it comes to Tesco's Fresh & Easy, the grocery chain's number one asset in our analysis and opinion are its store-level employees.

[Photo Credit: Canvas bag photograph at top courtesy Fresh & Easy Neighbohrood Market.]