New Fresh & Easy Clock Logo-Shaped Candies Are A Pretty Sweet Idea

Private Brands Showcase: Confections Category

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is introducing a new line of fresh & easy store brand fruit candies (pictured above) in the shape of its clock logo, which it features as part of its corporate logo on all of the "Fresh & Easy" signs on its 159 stores in California, Nevada and Arizona.

The fresh & easy clock-shaped candies are set to be in the stores on July 7.

We don't yet know how the candies taste since they haven't hit store shelves yet - but we like the product concept, in large part because in addition to serving the primary role as a product in the confections category, the line has the potential, at least in concept since it's obviously too early to tell, to serve a secondary function as an incremental branding element for the Fresh & Easy brand, which the clock plays a central role, and should play a greater role, in.

We like dual elements in product design, when they make sense, here at Fresh & Easy Buzz. This one makes sense.

The clock has the potential to be a strong branding element for Fresh & Easy if marketed well, in our analysis.

Regarding the clock as branding element, here's a suggestion: Have a bunch of those temporary tatoos kids love so much made up in the F&E clock design. Give them out to children in the stores as premiums for various occasions like grand openings, special events, or just semi-regularly for fun. It's simple. But we think it would serve as a part (elements of that incrementalism) of a whole in terms of various and multiple tactics as part of an overall strategy to build the brand, using the clock as a key element.

And besides, who've been told that at least one, and perhaps more than one, member of the Tesco Fresh & Easy corporate family has an actual, not temporary, tattoo of the F&E clock on their body. That's what we call real "branding."

[Private Brands' showcase is a semi-regular feature of Fresh & Easy Buzz. In it we highlight various Fresh & Easy private brand - and private brands from other grocers - products: the good, the bad and the ugly, offering analysis and commentary on the brands, items and related aspects.]

Drug Chain Walgreens to Slow New Store Growth; Despite Tesco Fresh & Easy's Recent Announcement to Do Similar, We Suggest An Analogy is Misplaced

Mega-drug store chain Walgreens said today its first quarter, fiscal 2009 profit fell by 10% despite a 7% increase in revenue (which is record first quarter sales for the chain), falling short of Wall Street analysts' projections. The drug store chain attributed the substantial drop in profits primarily to expenses related to its opening of new stores.

The U.S. national drug chain, which is headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois, had earnings of $408 million, or 41 cents per share, in the three months ended Nov. 30. That total fell short of analyst expectations, and compares with $456 million, or 46 cents per share, a year ago. Revenue grew 7 percent to $14.95 billion. The expectations of the analysts (the consensus) was for Walgreens to earn 46 cents per share and generate about $15.08 billion in first quarter revenue.

As a response to its drop in income for the quarter, Walgreens today said it plans to slow the opening of new stores to save $500 million. It said doing so is a response to the current recession.

The drug chain says its selling and general expenses grew 9% in the quarter as it opened 212 new stores, and profit margins dipped due to greater expense provisions.

Sales at its older stores grew 1.7 percent, with prescription revenue in older stores growing 2.6 percent. Front-end revenue, or sales of nonprescription products, was flat compared with last year.

The company said prescriptions filled in its stores grew 3.7 percent during the quarter, while industry data has showed falling prescription levels for its rivals. In total, a significant 66% (which is both good and bad) of Walgreen's quarterly revenue came from prescription sales.

As a result of the new store opening expenses and the current recession, Walgreens president and chief operating officer Gregory Wasson said in a statement today that the drug chain will in fiscal 2010 slow its organic store openings to a rate of 4.5 to 5 percent, with growth of 2.5 percent to 3 percent in fiscal 2011. In July of this year the company said it would slow the pace of store openings down to 5 percent in 2011, from 8 percent. The reductions are expected to save the company a total of $1 billion in annual spending, according to Wasson. Organic store openings means opening new stores but not including acquisitions. We doubt Walgreens is planning any acquisitions in the near-term.

Walgreens currently operates 6,630 drugstores in 49 states. The chain had sales of $59 billion in the 2008 fiscal year. It said today plans to increase its store count by 475 stores in fiscal 2009, which ends in August of next year. At its annual investors day conference in October Walgreens announced s number of new strategies for 2009, which you can read about here.

Just a few months ago, Walgreen's made a counter-bid to acquire the Northern California-based Long's Drug chain following a deal made between Long's and the CVS drug store chain in which CVS said it would acquire Long's. Not too long after announcing it would make a counter-bid against CVS for Long's, Walgreens announced it has decided to drop that offer and plan. CVS is in the process of acquiring Long's.

That decision by Walgreen's was a good one in our analysis in terms of its current challenges because if it did buy Long's it would currently be having an even tougher time making its revenue and income keep pace with its expenses. That decision however, or the initial one to make the counter-bid for Long's, apparently wasn't a good one for now-former Walgreens' CEO Jeffrey Rein, who resigned on October 10, just two days after the Illinois-based drug chain withdrew its counter-offer to acquire Long's. Walgreens said today it plans to name a new CEO in early 2009.

As we reported earlier today, Walgreens has made three new executive hires, which it confirmed to Fresh & Easy Buzz today. Those new hires include former Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market co-vice president of operations Brian Pugh, who left Fresh & Easy in September of this year.

Pugh has been named to the new position of vice president of store development at Walgreens. In that position he is charged with further developing the food, grocery, household goods and related categories for the drug chain.

Walgreens v. Tesco's Fresh & Easy: A non-valid analogy -- if made

In today's piece about Brian Pugh's hire by Walgreens, we commented that his new position at the drug chain has occupational and operational synergies for him personally, regarding his previous position at Fresh & Easy.

Many may want to make an analogy between Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA's recent announcement that it's cutting back its opening of new stores and postponing its Northern California market launch and today's announcement from Walgreens that it also is doing so.

However, other than the fact doing so will help both chains to conserve cash during the current economic recession, it's our analysis that the comparisons and analogy stop there for a number of reasons.

First, Walgreens is a drug chain and Fresh & Easy is a food and grocery chain. Drug chains are hurting far more from the recession than grocery chains are. In fact, chains that offer food at a discount such as Wal-Mart, Aldi USA and some others are doing well in this economic downturn, as shoppers shop where they perceive than can get the best deals.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy is positioned as a no frills, everyday low price format. As a result it should be doing much better than it is in the current recession, just like similar positioned food and grocery retailers are doing. It isn't, which is primarily why it is scaling-back its store expansion program at present.

Drug chains like Walgreens sell much more recessionary-influenced (negative) products than grocery stores do. These products includes prescription drugs and health and beauty care category items, which make up the majority of Walgreens' overall sales. (Prescription drug sales alone are 66% of Walgreens' total sales.) The stores sell some food and grocery items but they comprise only a small share of total store sales.

Additionally, there currently is a prescription drug price war going on among drug and discount chains led by Wal-Mart's price cutting on generic drugs. Even though prescription drug sales were up for the quarter at Walgreens, generic drug profits are down for all retailers offering pharmacy services. [For an interesting analysis on the generic drug price war you can read this piece from today's Wal-Street Journal.

Second, unlike Walgreens -- which in addition to being a drug rather than food and grocery chain is a mature chain in terms of store count and market region penetration in the U.S.; it operates 6,630 stores in 49 states and has been opening hundreds of new stores a year for the past few years -- Tesco's Fresh & Easy is a start-up grocery chain with only 104 stores at present, which is nearly 200 less than the company originally said it would have open by now.

In fact, Walgreens is in our analysis overstored in some regions of the U.S., which is in part why we think it has decided to focus (the Brian Pugh hire) more on developing food, grocery and related category sales in its existing and new stores. The time is soon coming to an end for the drug chain when it can count on significantly growing its sales by opening new stores. At some point -- and we think having 6,630 stores in the U.S with hundreds more in the pipeline. is getting near that point -- a chain reaches the point where new store growth can't be its primary sales driver (and profit driver either) because the stores in most market regions begin to cannibalize sales because they are just to close to one another geographically. We think Walgreens is almost at that point.

Therefore, developing organic, same store sales through consumables and related category developments, along with perhaps some new format development like the drug chain is looking at by opening smaller footprint stores, is a logical development in our analysis, as is going international, which is something Walgreens has no plans to do at present, as far as we are awre.

Lastly, unlike the mature Walgreens, in addition to its being a less recessionary format and being a mere start-up with only a shade over 100 stores currently, Tesco's Fresh & Easy hasn't even gone beyond three market regions --Southern California, Southern Nevada and Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona -- as of yet with its small-format, convenience-oriented combination grocery and fresh foods markets. As a result, cutting-back its new store opening program, which includes postponing for at least the second time this year its entry into the Northern California market, even in the current recession isn't a good overall sign for the retailer.

The reason we say this is because the logic for say postponing going into Northern California, where Tesco has leases signed on nearly 50 store sites and is in the process of remodeling and building stores at many of those locations, is that when things get better with the economy it will make more sense to open those stores.

But since United Kingdom-based Tesco is paying monthly leases, as well as putting out cash for the construction costs on many of these near 50 stores, we question the real reasons for postponing the launch. Our analysis is its not so much the economic recession, which ironically finds Northern California as one of the best-off regions in the U.S. although it too is hurting, but rather part of an overall crisis in confidence within Tesco as to the performance of Fresh & Easy to date, along with a bold move to conserve cash. Why else make a decision to conserve cash by cutting back on new store openings despite the fact that with a shade over 100 stores operating at present the chain is only at about one third of where Tesco said it would be as recently as late last year by this point in time? Tesco also is slowing the pace of new store openings in its three existing markets in addition to postponing the openings of its Northern California region stores.

From a potential-for-success standpoint, it's probably wise Tesco has put the brakes on its rapid new store growth with Fresh & Easy based on current chain performance and confidence levels. However in terms of its investment in Fresh & Easy, doing so does play havoc with the company's sales and profit targets for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA, which is something Tesco analysts in London and on Wall Street will soon start pointing out much more regularly we believe.

>Related Story: Monday, December 22, 2008: Breaking News: Mega-Drug Chain Walgreens Hires Former Tesco Fresh & Easy USA VP of Operations Brian Pugh For New VP of Format Development Position

Marketing: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Launches E-Mail Promo Alert Program; Something Fresh & Easy Buzz First Suggested it Do Many Months Ago

Beginning early this year, and in a few pieces since, Fresh & Easy Buzz has written about what in our analysis is a simple marketing opportunity Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood has missed since it opened its first first small-format, convenience-oriented combination fresh foods and grocery markets in November, 2007.

That missed marketing opportunity is the lack of the use of a simple e-mail address-based alert function on its Fresh & Easy Web site in which the retailer can alert customers and potential customers to its regulars advertising circulars, coupons, company news and related promotions and information, a function many food and grocery retailers, including the fast-growing small-format Aldi discount grocery chain, offer.

For example, below is a paragraph about the missed opportunity from a piece we published on May 4, 2008:

"Additionally, although we searched for it, we can't seem to find a function on the Fresh & Easy website in which a customer or potential customer can put in their email address and receive the online advertising circular in their email box like one can with Aldi. Adding this function is cheap to do, and Fresh & Easy is missing the boat by not having such a simple yet powerful tool on its website. [If there is such a feature, and we missed it, it means it's hard to find because we searched all over the site for it.]" Read our complete May 4, 2008 story on the topic here.

The reason, as it says in the paragraph, we searched all over the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Web site but couldn't find such a function is because one didn't exit -- until this month that is.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy, perhaps by mere coincidence to our suggestions, has this month launched just such an e-mail-based alert function on its company Web site, which you can find here.

Here's what Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market says in promoting the new e-mail function (graphic at top of the piece) and what we suggested could also become a valuable marketing and promotional database over time:

Are you a friend of fresh & easy?

'We've made it easy for you to get the scoop on our latest news , budget prices and special offers. Sign up below and we'll make sure you know what's happening around your store! Plus by signing up now, you'll receive an exclusive coupon for $6 off when you spend $30 or more at fresh & easy by December 24, 2008'.

Below is the response people get once they sign up for Fresh & Easy's e-mail alert program:

Below the text is a link where consumers can click and download Fresh & Easy's current $6 off total store purchases of $30 or more online coupon. [By the way, we would change the header in Fresh & Easy's adveretising text printed above in italics to: "Become a 'friend of Fresh & Easy.' It's much more inviting than asking the question in the header: "Are you a friend of Fresh & Easy?" which sounds a bit exclusionary. What if I'm not a "friend" but might want to be, for example, as in have never been in a Fresh & Easy store but might want to become a customer. It's a simple distinction -- but we think an important one.]

We don't get the "exclusive" aspect as it relates to Fresh & Easy's use of that term in the ad copy, since the $6 off coupon is the one Fresh & Easy gives out to everybody. "Exclusive" has a specific meaning after all and certainly doesn't apply to the coupon. But minus using the term "exclusive" we think it's a good idea to offer it -- if the grocer is going to offer the coupon at all -- as part of an incentive to get customers and potential customers to sign up for the e-mail based alerts.

Food and grocery retailers like Aldi, Safeway Stores, Inc., Kroger, Whole Foods Market and many others -- including many in Southern California, Nevada and Arizona where the Fresh & Easy markets are located -- have been using e-mail alerts for a long time. It's a simple, cheap and effective way to communicate with consumers.

It's also a natural, 21rst century way to get a retailer's weekly grocery ad into the hands of shoppers in an inexpensive and alternative (in addition to paper) way. Imagine the money retailer's could save if they can eventually eliminate paper advertising circulars, for example.

Having an e-mail alert function is something Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market should have been doing long ago. But it has to date been behind the marketing curve on this and so many other areas, particularly relating to the use of the Internet, which it should be a leader in rather than a follower. For example, imagine if the started the e-mail alert program in January of this year -- the grocer would have a nice data base built by now.

Additionally, since Fresh & Easy's customer base appears from our research to thus far be overwhelmingly comprised of younger people (about age 18-35), a group that uses the Internet and personal communication devices as second nature, the retailer should use the Internet and the various forms of electronic communication available to it like...well, second nature, in our analysis and opinion.

At its sign up site, Fresh & Easy indicates it also will eventually sent text message updates as well as e-mail alerts. Using text messaging alerts to personal electronic communication devices -- mobile phones, Blackberry's, iphones -- is something we've been suggesting in Fresh & Easy Buzz offers great potential for marketers in the food, grocery and consumer packaged goods industries.

For example, we see a day very soon when consumer packaged good manufacturers can send coupons directly to a shopper while she is in the aisle at a grocery store. For example, say a shopper is in the household cleaning products aisle. She could press a button on her mobile phone or other device and get a list of coupons for laundry detergent -- Tide, Cheer, even the store private label brand. No worry about printing any coupons out. The stores would be hooked up to companies offering the service. There could be a simple way to transmit the coupon data from the customers' hand-held devices to the stores' point-of-sale systems as the shopper has her purchases checked out, the coupon values being deducted from her order.

This is just one example of what we believe are a myriad of marketing uses, and convenient options for consumers, of digital technology and its application to food and grocery marketing and shopping.

Promoting e-mail alerts on the MyPoints.com system

Tesco's Fresh & Easy also is promoting its e-mail alert program via the MyPoints.com reward program (promotion graphic from MyPoints.com pictured above), Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned. Consumers with a MyPoints account recently received an e-mail alert, as they do from other companies using the system, announcing the Fresh & Easy program. Below is the text of that Mypoints.com alert as it was sent to users:

Get Your Points!
"Now that you've read the BonusMail, visit Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market™ online. Receive 5 Points. It then offer a link to the Fresh & Easy Web site."

In addition to MyPoints.com users getting five MyPoints bonus points (Mypoints' are similar to credit card points or airline miles in concept and use), which Fresh & Easy pays MyPoints.com for providing its users as part of the advertising arrangement, Fresh & Easy is offering the MyPoints.com users that sign up for the e-mail alerts on its freshandeasy.com Web site a coupon for a free Fresh & Easy reusable canvas shopping bag, which they can redeem in-store if they spend more than $10 at a Fresh & Easy market.

Since Fresh & Easy sells these bags for 99-cents in-store, we don't see it as much of a deal, and thus doubt if there will be much action in regard to consumers going to crazy over getting a 99-cent canvas bag for free in return for spending $10 at the store. Fresh & Easy should also have offered its $6 off coupon to the MyPoints.com users, along with the bag offer. Why not?

But using MyPoints.com as an additional avenue to promote the e-mail alert campaign is a good idea, in our analysis and opinion. Doing so taps into an established base of Internet savvy consumers who regularly use online-based marketing tools and programs offered by companies. It's smart for Fresh & Easy to piggyback on this base, we believe, even if the canvas bag incentive is rather on lean-incentive side. The main incentive to MyPoints.com users, in all promotions, are the five free MyPoint.

We are wondering why though Fresh & Easy hasn't e-mailed its current online promotional flyer to e-mail addresses, at least ours and those of a few readers we know, since we -- and they -- have already signed up for the e-mail alerts? In fact, you receive nothing via e-mail from Fresh & Easy after you sign -up -- not even a simple inbox message alerting you to the fact that something will be coming in a week or two, like the message we mentioned earlier in this piece that you get on the company's Web site after putting in your name and e-mail address.

It's simple to create a simple "bounce back" reply via e-mail like this. It's a good idea to do because not only does it provide instant feedback via e-mail to the person who just signed up -- something that's a good sign of things to come -- it also allows Fresh & Easy to get its first message (why not include a link to the $6-off coupon in a simple two or three sentence "bounce back" response if it need be limited to such) to its new e-mail alert participants right way.

God (and the Devil too it is said) is in the details. Add Internet savvy consumers to that list. Those consumers used to using the Internet regularly, like the target consumer base Fresh & Easy is (or should be) after with its new e-mail alert program, are used to and like instant response -- that's why they not only use computers but portable electronic communication devices as well.

Therefore, not getting any response from Fresh & Easy via e-mail after signing-up for the e-mail alerts program tends to short circuit the "alert" aspect of the program. It also makes users wonder if their e-mail sign-up went through, since they are used to getting immediate responses (instant feedback) from nearly all similar Web site sign ups. The grocery chain should fix that and add an immediate e-mail response "bounce back" posthaste, in our analysis. Follow through is key to everything a food and grocery retailer does. And details matter always, especially in marketing programs.

Fresh & Easy Touts 'Organics For Less' in its Grocery Stores For May: F&E Buzz Checks it Out and Finds it's the 'Real Deal'

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is touting its Fresh & Easy store brand organic products as "Organics for Less" in its 61 small-format, convenience-oriented grocery stores in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada for the month of May.

Fresh & Easy says as part of the grocer's mission to make fresh, wholesome food easily accessable to everyone, it offers a range of affordably-priced organic products in every store, at everyday low-prices.

Among the Fresh & Easy store brand organic food and grocery products the retailer is promoting at everyday low prices in its stores for May include:

>fresh & easy Organic Shredded Cheddar & Monterey Jack Cheese, 6 oz - $2.39

>fresh & easy Organic Mango Lemonade, 59 fl oz - $2.99

>fresh & easy Organic Medium Brown Cage Free Eggs, 1 dozen - $1.99

>fresh & easy Organic Applewood Smoked Turkey, 6 oz - $3.69

>fresh & easy Organic Ketchup, 20 oz - $1.65

>fresh & easy Organic Creamy Peanut Butter, 16 oz - $2.98

>fresh & easy Organic Whole Wheat Flour, 2 lbs - $1.25

>fresh & easy Organic Strawberry Low-Fat Yogurt, 6 oz - $0.98

>fresh & easy Organic Shells & Cheese, 6 oz - $0.99

>fresh & easy Organic Baked Beans, 15 oz - $0.98

>fresh & easy Organic Breakfast Blend Ground Coffee, 12 oz - $4.99

>fresh & easy Organic 100% Apple Juice, 64 fl oz - $2.99

The price comparison

We asked Fresh & Easy Buzz correspondents in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada, to do a quick and dirty price comparison for us on four of these 12 items: the organic coffee, organic whole wheat flour, organic medium brown cage-free eggs, the organic peanut butter, and organic ketchup.

Additionally, we asked them to check as many stores in the three market regions (where Fresh & Easy has its 61 stores) as they could, and to make sure they checked "everyday prices" on the items in the stores.

Lastly, we instructed them to note the price on a non store-brand national or regional branded organic item in these categories should the particular store they were price checking in not have store brand organics, which often is the case.

Note: Our Las Vegas correspondent couldn't come through do to an emergency.

Therefore, our data is for Southern California and Arizona, which is fine because that's were the majority of Tesco's Fresh & Easy stores are located anyway. In addition, retail pricing schemes in Southern California and the Las Vegas Metro region are very close, therefore its valid to generalize the Southern California comparisons to Las Vegas in our experience and estimation.

The stores checked in the price comparison by our correspondents:

Southern California: Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market, Vons.

Arizona: Bashas, A.J's Fine Foods (owned by Basha's), Whole Foods Market.

Here's a summary of what the correspondents found:

Whole Wheat Flour: The fresh & easy brand organic whole wheat flour was the lowest of all the brands checked in the stores (this included a branded item in two of the stores) at 2-lbs for $1.25, the correspondents' said.

Organic Ketchup: The fresh & easy brand was 4 cents lower than Safeway's O' Organics brand and 15% cheaper than Whole Foods' store brand, according to the correspondents.

Organic Medium Brown Cage-Free Eggs: fresh & easy store brand was the lowest of all the stores checked, the correspondents' reported. Only one store checked had a store brand, the rest were third-party brands, according to our correspondents.

Organic Creamy Peanut Butter: The fresh & easy brand was about 10%-15% cheaper than comparable brands in the stores checked, our correspondents said.

Organic Coffee: Whole Foods had a similar organic coffee for the same price, $4.99. However, the cheapest similar quality and size organic coffee at the other stores checked cost $5.99, according to our correspondents.

Organic cage-free eggs a bargain

The fresh & easy brand Organic Cage-Free Eggs at $1.99 dozen are a real bargain.

In fact, the $1.99 dozen price for the cage-free, brown eggs is a good price for eggs in general in all three markets.

A number of supermarkets in Southern California and the Phoenix Metro region are currently advertising regular white, battery cage-raised large eggs for 2 dozen for $5, for example. That's 51-cents more per-dozen than Fresh & Easy's higher-quality fresh & easy brand brown and cage-free eggs are selling for.

[Note to Fresh & Easy, large grade eggs are the eggs of choice for consumers in the Western U.S. by a considerable ratio over medium grade. Of course, at $1.99 dozen the medium brown cage-free eggs should sell well.]

By price-comparing five of the 12 items (you don't really think we would ask the correspondents to do all 12 since they did it for free, do you?) we got a decent random sample. And, based on that random sample and the results of the price comparison, Tesco's Fresh & Easy came out very well in terms of having affordable everyday low prices on those organic grocery products. In other words, it's the real deal.

fresh & easy brand organic products

According the Simon Uwins, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's marketing director, the Fresh & Easy store brand organic food and grocery products contain no added trans-fats, no artificial colors or flavors, and only contain preservatives when absolutely necessary.

These product attributes also are the case with Fresh & Easy's store brand non-organic items as well, according to Uwins.

Fresh & Easy Buzz analysis

If Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market were to promote and communicate the everyday prices and values of its organic range of food and grocery products on a regular and sustained basis, we think the grocer could begin to siphon-off some organic food and grocery category business from Whole Foods Market, Inc., Vons (especially Vons' Pavillions' stores) Trader Joe's, A.J.'s Fine Foods (Arizona only) and Sprout's Farmers' Market stores in the three respective market regions. Sprouts' is a big factor in Arizona, a lessor one in Southern California, and doesn't exist in the Las Vegas market--yet.

However, such communications and promoting (we're using promoting in the case of creating awareness rather than price promotion since the items are everyday-priced) need to reach a target audience.

For example, we got the initial information for this piece from a press release Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market distributed yesterday. We then decided to turn it into a story by having the correspondents conduct the price comparison.

Other than the press release--which may or may not be picked up by consumer publications like daily newspaper food sections--and the grocer's weekly advertising circular, we know of no other media Fresh & Easy is using to tout these organic food and grocery product values. (If anybody knows of any other media being used do let us know.)

We think some targeted radio, mixed with some selective print ads in key daily newspaper food sections in the three regions, tied-in with the press release scheme, in-store promotion of the organics and some creative gorilla marketing tactics, would really create awareness--and sales--for organic category items in the Fresh & Easy stores. When you are the new kid on the block you've got to go big or go home.

The time is right to make a big value splash. The economies in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada or some of the worse currently in the U.S. Many shoppers want to continue to buy healthy and organic foods, but are having to cut back because of not only the soaring costs of organic products, but any and all food and grocery products in general.

There is a large, receptive audience out there waiting for a strong value proposition in the organic food and grocery category, in our analysis. However, to reach those target consumers a retailer doing so has to be smart, savvy and aggressive in its marketing and communications. Lots of channels and multi media is the key--and it can be done cheaply.

As a result, if few or any consumer media sources don't write about the promotion, then the only place potential customers will see the values is in the weekly ad circular, if they get one. In other words, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to see it fall, it might have been a spectacular tree toppling--but who can say it really happened?

Based on our correspondents' simple price comparison, we can say the values Fresh & Easy is offering in these organic products are good. However, the next step is to communicate them as widely as possible.

Thus far, in our analysis, the retailer just hasn't been very good at that for whatever reasons.

Of course, that could change--and we believe the organic values program is certainly a good base in which to build that improved communications and marketing platform on. The organic product values are the real deal after all.