Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned that Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is planning to start accepting WIC (Woman, Infant & Children's Program) Vouchers at its store located at 1025 East Adams Boulevard in South Los Angeles (pictured above), possibly as early as this weekend, but most-likely beginning next week.
The system is in place at the store to process the paper WIC Vouchers, and employees have posted the signs announcing the Fresh & Easy market will soon start accepting the vouchers from poor mothers.
As of today, store employees did not know the exact date when the East Adams Fresh & Easy would begin accepting WIC.
The store, which is located in one Los Angeles' lowest-income neighborhoods, will be the first Fresh & Store to accept the WIC Vouchers, which are provided by the State of California and the federal government to the poorest of poor mothers, so that they can purchase nutritious foods and beverages like infant formula, whole milk, whole grains breads and cereals, fresh produce and other similar items for their children.
Since 2008, Fresh & Easy Buzz has been writing about and arguing in the blog that Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is making a mistake from both a business (added sales) and ethical grocer standpoint by not accepting WIC Vouchers in its 159 fresh foods and grocery markets located in California (Southern and Central), Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona and southern Nevada.
Fresh & Easy Buzz was the first food and grocery retailing-focused publication to report the fact that Tesco's Fresh & Easy doesn't accept the WIC Vouchers, despite the fact nearly all of its competitors do.
Additionally, we've been the only publication to focus on the issue, offering analysis on it, and detail the benefits to Fresh & Easy, along with the communities the grocer serves, of its accepting WIC, such as in this 2008 piece - December 29, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy, 'Food Deserts' and WIC Vouchers; A 'Year-End' Analysis & Commentary.
Most recently, on February 23, 2010, we wrote and published this piece - Food Deserts & WIC Vouchers: Half A Loaf For the New Fresh & Easy Store Opening Tomorrow in South Los Angeles - about the opening of the then new Fresh & Easy store in South Los Angeles and the WIC issue - the same store at 1025 East Adams that will soon accept WIC. We received a considerable number of e-mails and tweets (at our @FreshNEasyBuzz address on twitter) from readers in Los Angeles, including comments from a couple of rather highly-places elected and other officials in the city, along with a couple state officials.
Additionally, more than one reader told us they had sent the piece to local elected officials in Los Angeles and to the California WIC Association, the state body that administers the WIC program.
If you read our February 23, 2010 piece - Food Deserts & WIC Vouchers: Half A Loaf For the New Fresh & Easy Store Opening Tomorrow in South Los Angeles - along with the others linked at the end of this post, you can see we've offered extensive analysis and argument as to why Tesco's Fresh & Easy is missing the boat from both business (added sales) and ethical perspectives by not accepting WIC Vouchers in its stores.
It now appears Fresh & Easy's CEO Tim Mason and his senior management team has come to agree with our analysis and arguments - perhaps aided by some encouragement from members of the South Los Angeles community, and a realization that they've been turning down potentially added sales in the stores.
And now that Fresh & Easy has revamped the front-end point-of-sale system at its store at 1025 East Adams in South Los Angeles, so the store can now start accepting WIC Vouchers, we suggest the grocer quickly work out any bugs that might appear in the system, and then start accepting WIC Vouchers at all of its stores, starting with the Compton Fresh & Easy, which like the East Adams market in South Los Angeles is located in a low-income, inner city neighborhood in which many poor mothers could benefit from being able to use their WIC Vouchers at their neighborhood Fresh & Easy.
When Fresh & Easy does have WIC in place at all of its stores, senior management will wonder why they didn't think of it sooner. But, as the old saying goes: 'Better late than never.' We will, however, leave out the one about old dogs being unable to learn new tricks, since it's obviously wrong in this case.
Linkage: Fresh & Easy, WIC Vouchers, food deserts:
February 23, 2010: Food Deserts & WIC Vouchers: Half A Loaf For the New Fresh & Easy Store Opening Tomorrow in South Los Angeles
February 20, 2010: Fresh & Easy Store Opens its Doors in South Los Angeles
July 11, 2008: 'Food Desert' Neighborhoods and Southern California: More on the Fresh & Easy Store Planned For South Central Los Angeles
July 15, 2008: Fresh Food to Bloom in An Inner-City Food Desert: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Breaks Ground For New Store in Underserved South Los Angeles Neighborhood]
March 20, 2009: Federal Government Spending Bill Increases WIC Voucher Program Dollars by $1.2 Billion; 21 Percent Increase
December 29, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy, 'Food Deserts' and WIC Vouchers; A 'Year-End' Analysis & Commentary
September 7, 2008: Analysis & Commentary: Should Tesco's Fresh & Easy Put An Asterisk Next to its Motto? Yes; Unless it Corrects Four Operational Omissions.
February 13, 2008: Leading Democratic Candidate for President Barack Obama Joins Group in Asking Tesco's Fresh & Easy to Put More Stores in Underserved Neighborhoods
September 23, 2008: Food Retailing, Society & Economics: 'Food Deserts' and Public Health
August 11, 2008: Arizona Region Market Report: Which Food Retailer Will Seize the Opportunity Offered by the Lack of a Grocery Store in Downtown Tempe, Arizona?
July 2, 2008: Tesco's to Open A Fresh & Easy Grocery Market in Low Income, Underserved South Central Los Angeles Neighborhood
July 11, 2008: 'Food Desert' Neighborhoods and Southern California: More on the Fresh & Easy Store Planned For South Central Los Angeles
May 14, 2008: New Foods At Fresh & Easy: Los Angeles' 'Homeboy Bakery' and Tesco's Fresh & Easy Could Be A Match 'Made in Heaven'
April 30, 2008: (Grocery) Storeless in Seattle: Food Deserts in Urban and Inner-City Seattle, Washington; Might be a 911 Call to Tesco's Fresh & Easy?
April 27, 2008: New Study Points to Increasing Urban 'Food Deserts' In North America: Locating Stores in 'Food Deserts' A Part of Fresh & Easy's Strategy
April 29, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy an Issue in Sacramento, California Mayor's Race A Year Before its First Store in the Capital City Even Opens
April 13, 2008: San Francisco: Cool Bay Breezes, A City Full of History, Cable Cars--And A 'Fresh & Easy' State of Mind
February 19, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Serving as an Economic Stimulus Package of Sorts for California's Troubled Commercial Retail Real Estate Industry
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6 comments:
ALDI does not accept WIC - but yes to EBT.
It's only taken Tesco 3 years to figure out taking WIC is a good idea. That's what I call slow on the uptake. I bought the infant formula category for many years at a California chain. 30-40% of our sales were from WIC. Most of the stores weren't in real low income areas either. The average retail on a 4 pk of forumula is about $25 bucks. As I recall the WIC coupons often are for a 4 or 6pk of Enfamil, ect. each. As a buyer at the time my numbers on that particular category would have been very poor were it not for the WIC sales.
Hi, can anyone workout the average weekly sales per store for fresh and easy.
With the annual sales figures just out it should be a case of dividing the sales by number of stores open is that right.
I know early on there were rumours stores were doing around $70000 a week which was much lower than the $200000 tesco had targeted. Ive never seen any update to these figures in a few years now and wondered if they have improved much.
Hello gh:
We will be publishing an analysis piece sometime next week which will include most of the data - along with additional analysis - you mention.
I like how you guys put it out there that only the POOREST of poor mothers have WIC. Just because its government help doesn't mean everyone that receives WIC is super poor. Go do some research before you say something like that.
Anonymous said...
I like how you guys put it out there that only the POOREST of poor mothers have WIC. Just because its government help doesn't mean everyone that receives WIC is super poor. Go do some research before you say something like that.
June 24, 2010 8:56 PM
Reader:
In order to receive WIC a person has to basically have non-existant or extremely low wages. In other words the poorest of the poor. Not all every mother who receives WIC are the poorest, of course. But the term is based in research and reality. It's an economic term; it's not meant to pass any sort of status judgement. If you research California WIC qualifications you will find if a mother has even a barely-making it income it makes it hard to qualify.
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