Sunday, May 15, 2011

Breaking Buzz: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans to Open Second Store in Hayward, California August 10


[Related Stories: May 14, 2011: Breaking Buzz: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans August 24 Opening For Third & Carroll Store in San Francisco's Bayview District; May 10, 2011: Breaking Buzz: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans to Open First San Francisco Store at 32nd and Clement June 22.]

Tesco's Fresh & Easy in Northern California - 2011

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market plans to open its second store in the Northern California city of Hayward on August 10, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned.

The store set for the August 10, 2011 opening is located at A Street and Hesperian Boulevard in Hayward, which is in the East Bay Area, about a 45-minute drive from San Francisco.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy hasn't announced when the Hesperian Boulevard store in Hayward will open.

In fact, it hasn't announced the opening dates for any of its future locations in Northern California, beyond the 11 units it opened in March and April 2011. But that's not unusual because the grocer generally announces planned new store openings about 3-4 weeks before the opening date.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market opened its first store in Hayward - at Mission Boulevard & Rousseau - on April 27, 2011 [See - March 15, 201: San Francisco, Antioch and Fairfield Stores Next Up in Northern California For Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market; and April 27, 2011: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market at 175 (Stores): Three New Stores Open in Northern California Today]

The A Street and Hesperian Boulevard store, like the unit at Mission Boulevard and Rousseau, is one of the original 18 small-format (10,000-12,000 square-feet of selling space) Fresh & Easy markets Tesco announced in January 2008 it planned to open in the San Francisco Bay Area.

So far the grocery chain has opened six of those original 18 Bay Area units announced in January 2008 - one store respectively in San Jose, Concord, Danville, Hayward, Napa and Walnut Creek. All but the San Jose (South Bay) and Napa (North Bay) stores are in the East Bay Area region.

In February 2008 Tesco's Fresh & Easy announced it would open 19 locations in Northern California's Vacaville and Sacramento areas. The store in Vacaville - at Elmira Road and Nut Tree Road - which was opened on March 16, was one of the 19 Sacramento-Vacaville region stores on the grocer's list in February 2008.

The other four Fresh  Easy grocery markets opened this year (for a total of 11 units) - in Pacifica (5550 Coast Highway - read about here), San Jose (Saratoga and Payne - read about here ), Modesto (1717 Oakdale Road -Read about here) and Pleasanton (Santa Rita Road and Rosewood Drive - read about here) - are all locations Tesco obtained after its announcements in January and February 2008.

Fresh & Easy didn't confirm or announce any of the four locations when it announced the final 11 stores it would open first in Northern California in "early 2011." But we've identified and reported on all four locations, doing so in a series of stories from 2008-2010. If you click on the green "read about here" links in the paragraph above, you can read each of those stories as it pertains to the respective store noted.

Tesco originally planned to start opening its Northern California Fresh & Easy store locations in early-to-mid 2009. But after a couple postponements, it finally opened its first two stores - in San Jose and Danville - on March 2, 2011.

So far this year the retailer has opened 11 Fresh & Easy grocery markets in Northern California. All were opened in March and April.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has no new store openings announced for May, including for Northern California.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy hasn't opened any of its planned stores in the Sacramento region to date.

It's opened one of two planned stores in Vacaville so far this year. That unit, which opened March 16, is at Elmira Road and Nut Tree Road. The other yet to be opened Fresh & Easy location in Vacaville is at Alamo and Marshall. Vacaville is about midway between Sacramento and the Bay Area, on Interstate 80.

In addition to the 37 Fresh & Easy stores Tesco announced in early 2008 it would open in Northern California, through our reporting we've so far identified and reported on an additional 23 planned units Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has acquired in Northern California, along with four stores in Northern Nevada. See here.

None of these stores, except for the four that have opened so far this year, as noted earlier in the story, have been announced by Tesco's Fresh & Easy.

The Hayward store at A Street and Hesperian Boulevard Fresh & Easy plans to open on August 10 makes five stores, beyond the 11 units the grocer has already opened in Northern California so far this year, we've reported it plans to open this year.

Yesterday we reported Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is planning to open its store at 3rd Street and Carroll Avenue in San Francisco on August 24, 2011 [See - May 14, 2011: Breaking Buzz: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans August 24 Opening For Third & Carroll Store in San Francisco's Bayview District.]

On May 10, 2011 we reported in this story - Breaking Buzz: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans to Open First San Francisco Store at 32nd and Clement June 22 - Tesco's Fresh & Easy has a June 22, 2011 date set to open its first store in San Francisco, at 32nd Avenue and Clement Street in the city's Richmond District.

And on March 15, 2011, we reported in this story - San Francisco, Antioch and Fairfield Stores Next Up in Northern California For Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market - that the grocery chain has two stores in the Bay Area cities of Antioch and Farfield to be opened as soon construction on the two units is completed, the stores are stocked and employees hired.

The Antioch store is new, built-from-the-ground-up construction, and the Farfield unit is a renovation of an existing building.

No internal dates have yet been set at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market for the opening of the Antioch and Farfield stores, according to our sources. The Antioch unit is at Lone Tree & Golf Course and the Farfield store is at Beck Avenue and West Texas

Unlike the two units in San Francisco, both of which are completed and are getting the interior work done, the Antioch and Farfield stores are still in earlier stages of construction. However, since our story was published, Fresh & Easy has posted online advertisements for store managers for both units.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has already hired the manager for the A Street and Hesperian Boulevard store in Hayward, which is set to open August 10. The store's future manager is currently working as co-manager of the Mission Boulevard and Rousseau store in Hayward, which opened April 27.

Related Stories

[Readers
: Click here (see the links at the bottom) and on the following links - , , ,  - for related stories from late 2007 to the present. Click on this link -  - to read our April-December 2010 'Northern California Special Report' series.]Tesco's Fresh & Easy in Northern California - 2011

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