Neighborhood Group in Oceanside, CA Appealing Fresh & Easy Store Development; We Look Back to Oak Park-Sacramento Group's Successful Appeal

Southern California Market Region Report: Fresh & Easy - New Store Development

The Oceanside Coastal Neighborhood Association, a neighborhood group in Oceanside, California near San Diego in the far-southern region of Southern California, says it plans to appeal the recent approval by the City of Oceanside of a new Tesco Fresh & Easy store in the city, according to the group's president, Charles "Chuck" Lowery. The Fresh & Easy market would be the first for Tesco in Oceanside. The grocer has stores nearby however.

The neighborhood association's plans to appeal the decision was first reported earlier today in the local North County Times newspaper by staff writer Craig Tenbroeck. [You can read his report here.] Fresh & Easy Buzz verified the neighborhood group's plans to appeal the approval by the city.

The proposed Fresh & Easy store is part of a two-building development -- the Fresh & Easy market and a second retail store -- that a developer plans to build on a vacant lot on the northwest corner of Oceanside Boulevard and Vine Street in Oceanside.

The City of Oceanside's planning department staff has approved the development, including the Fresh & Easy store.

The Oceanside Coastal Neighborhood Association plans to appeal the Fresh & Easy store's approval for two primary reasons: The neighborhood group feels the city approved the project without seeking input from affected neighborhood residents, and it believes the city should have held a public hearing, most often a common practice, before approving the development.

Scott Nightengale, a staff planner for the city, told the North County Times' that a public hearing wasn't needed because the two-building retail commercial development met all of the planning department's and city of Oceanside's planning guidelines.

The neighborhood group will get their appeal hearing however. It's expected to happen in Early June, city planner Nightengale told the newspaper.

Wal-Mart 'Marketside' store slated for Oceanside

In addition to Tesco's Fresh & Easy, Wal-Mart plans to build and open one of its small-format (15,000 -to- 20,000 square foot) Marketside grocery and fresh foods stores in the city of Oceanside, along with a second store in the region in downtown San Diego.

The Oceanside Marketside store could open before the end of this year. [Read our May 18, 2008 story here: Wal-Mart Looking For Sites in California For it's Small-Format 'Marketside' Grocery Stores. And our September 10, 2008 piece here: Financial Times Follows Fresh & Easy Buzz's Lead in Reporting on Wal-Mart's Plans to Open Marketside Stores in Southern California.] Click here for more of our stories and posts about Wal-Mart's Marketside.

Wal-Mart currently operates four Marketside grocery and fresh foods stores, all located in Arizona's Phoenix Metro region -- one each in the cities of Gilbert, Chandler, Mesa and Tempe. It's building a fifth Metro Phoenix region Marketside store in Peoria, Arizona.

Metropolitan Phoenix is one of the three market regions where Tesco's Fresh & Easy has its current 119 grocery and fresh foods markets. The other two market regions are Southern California and Bakersfield in California, and Metro Las Vegas in southern Nevada. About 61 of the Fresh & Easy stores are in Southern California; three are in Bakersfield; 30 in Metro Phoenix; and 25 in Metropolitan Las Vegas, Nevada.

Fresh & Easy store challenges

Tesco's Fresh & Easy has had few of its 119 small-format (10,000 -to- 13,000 square-foot), convenience-oriented combination grocery and fresh foods markets challenged by community or neighborhoods groups to date.

The retailer has had the liquor license for one of its stores in Southern California -- the Vanowen & Sepulveda Fresh & Easy market in Los Angeles' Van Nuys area -- challenged by a neighborhood group that didn't want additional stores in the neighbohrood selling liquor.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market pulled the liquor license permit for the store in response. The store currently only sells beer and wine.

Other than the liquor sales issue though, which Fresh & Easy solved by withdrawing its application to sell hard liquor at the store, the neighborhood generally welcomed the Fresh & Easy market's coming to the location.

Oak Park-Sacramento neighborhood association

The most prominant instance of a neighborhood group challenging Tesco in terms of one its proposed Fresh & Easy markets for their neighborhood is the Oak Park Neighborhood Association in Sacramento, California. Fresh & Easy Buzz reported on and wrote about that challenge extensively. [See the story links at the end of this piece.]

The Sacramento neighborhood group challenged the proposed design of the proposed Oak Park Fresh & Easy store, along with aspects of its siting on the vacant lot where the proposed store is to be located in the neighborhood.

The neighborhood association filed an appeal of the original proposed Oak Park neighbohrood-Sacramento Fresh & Easy market's design with the city's Design Review Board in September 2008. See our October 7, 2008 report here: Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood Association Files Appeal On Design of Proposed Neighborhood Fresh & Easy Store; Hearing Set For Oct.15.] A hearing on the neighbohrood group's appeal took place on October 15, 2008.

After the hearing before the Sacramento Design Review Board -- which sided with the Oak Park Neighborhood Association to a large degree in its appeal of the proposed Fresh & Easy store design even though the board had signed off on the proposed design initially -- and negotiations between leaders of the neighborhood group and representatives of Fresh & Easy (the developers of the store) -- the neighbohrood association and Tesco's Fresh & Easy reached an agreement on a revised design.

That revised design was approved by the City of Sacramento Design Review Board in November 2008. [See our November 17, 2008 story here: Sacramento City Design Board Agrees With Oak Park Group on Design Changes For Proposed Fresh & Easy Store; Escrow Closed on $1.1 Million Parcel. And our October 15, 2008 piece here: Hearing Tonight For Sacramento, CA Neighborhood Group's Appeal of Design of Fresh & Easy Store Proposed For Their Oak Park Neighborhood.]

Ironically, ground has yet to be broken on the Oak Park-Sacramento Fresh & Easy store because Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has postponed its Northern California market region launch indefinitly, as we've reported previously in Fresh & Easy Buzz.

Based on the initial construction timeline for the Oak Park Fresh & Easy, ground should have been broken by now on the store, even with the time taken up by the appeal hearings and negotiations with the Oak Park Neighborhood Association.

But Tesco Fresh & Easy's postponing of its Northern California launch (and not for the first time) changed the Oak Park-Sacramento store's construction timeline. [November 12, 2008: Analysis: Hard Times at Fresh & Easy - Northern California Expansion to Be Postponed or Shelved Do to Economy; But its Only a Symptom Not the Cause. November 16, 2008: November 16, 2008: Tesco Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason Says He's 'Deliriously Happy' With the Chain's Progress Thus Far; We Prefer Andy Grove's 'Only the Paranoid Survive.']

Oceanside Coastal Neighborhood Association

If the Oceanside, California neighborhood group has a desire to see the proposed Fresh & Easy store in its members' neighborhood look different in some way from the proposed current design, the links below about the Oak Park-Sacramento neighborhood group's appeal of the proposed store in their neighborhood, the start date for which is in limbo, might be a good place to start.

Linkage - Tesco's Fresh & Easy & Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood

>November 17, 2009: Sacramento City Design Board Agrees With Oak Park Group on Design Changes For Proposed Fresh & Easy Store; Escrow Closed on $1.1 Million Parcel

>Tuesday, October 7, 2008: Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood Association Files Appeal On Design of Proposed Neighborhood Fresh & Easy Store; Hearing Set For Oct.15

>October 15, 2008: Hearing Tonight For Sacramento, CA Neighborhood Group's Appeal of Design of Fresh & Easy Store Proposed For Their Oak Park Neighborhood

>Wednesday, October 8, 2008: Putting the 'Neighborhood' in Neighborhood Market: 'Localism' and Tesco's Proposed Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Sacramento's Oak Park

>Tuesday, October 7, 2008: Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood Association Files Appeal On Design of Proposed Neighborhood Fresh & Easy Store; Hearing Set For Oct.15

>Wednesday, October 15, 2008: Hearing Tonight For Sacramento, CA Neighborhood Group's Appeal of Design of Fresh & Easy Store Proposed For Their Oak Park Neighborhood

>July 16, 2008: Fresh Feature: A Former NBA All-Star Who Wants to Become Mayor, A Trade Union, And A Future Tesco Fresh & Easy Grocery Store In Sacramento, California

>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

>March 7, 2008: Former NBA All-Star and Sacramento Native Kevin Johnson is the Driving Force Behind a Fresh & Easy Market in Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood

>February 28, 2008: News & Analysis: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Confirms 19 Store Locations for the Sacramento-Vacaville Region in Northern California

>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

>December 3, 2008: Swearing-In of New Sacramento, CA Mayor Kevin Johnson Delayed A Few Hours Over A $2.2 Million Tesco Fresh & Easy Agenda Item

>November 12, 2008: Analysis: Hard Times at Fresh & Easy - Northern California Expansion to Be Postponed or Shelved Do to Economy; But its Only a Symptom Not the Cause

>November 16, 2008: Tesco Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason Says He's 'Deliriously Happy' With the Chain's Progress Thus Far; We Prefer Andy Grove's 'Only the Paranoid Survive'

[Follow Fresh & Easy Buzz around on Twitter.com at www.twitter.com/freshneasybuzz.]

Swearing-In of New Sacramento, CA Mayor Kevin Johnson Delayed A Few Hours Over A $2.2 Million Tesco Fresh & Easy Agenda Item

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson. The former NBA star recently sold a land parcel for the proposed Fresh & Easy market in Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood for $1.1 million. [Photo Credit: Sacramento Bee, 2008.]

Upcoming New Markets News: Northern California - Sacramento

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market continues to affect local politics in Sacramento, California even though the grocer has yet to open its first store in the city.

Sacramento's new mayor, city native, former NBA basketball all-star and now retired Sacramento developer Kevin Johnson, was supposed to be sworn-in as the city's new mayor at yesterday afternoon city council meeting. However, at the last minute there was a change of plans because of an item on the council's agenda that it was determined posed a conflict of interest for the new mayor.

That item was a proposal that the city of Sacramento redevelopment agency allocate $2.2 million dollars to a Tesco Fresh & Easy store development project in North Sacramento, according to a story in the Sacramento Bee newspaper.

As Fresh & Easy Buzz reported in this piece, now Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's Kynship Development Company recently sold a vacant land parcel in the city's Oak Park neighborhood (a separate project from the North Sacramento one mentioned above) for $1.12 million to Tesco's Fresh & Easy for a new store the grocery chain plans to build and open in the neighborhood -- the very neighborhood Kevin Johnson was raised in and where he operates the St. HOPE Academy non-profit community development foundation which he founded when he returned to Sacramento after retiring from the NBA a few years ago. Johnson has severed his ties with the foundation now that he is the city's mayor.

It was the fact Mayor Johnson's company sold this Oak Park neighborhood parcel to Tesco's Fresh & Easy that caused City Attorney Eileen Teichert to determine there would be a conflict of interest if Mayor Johnson was sworn in at the start of the Tuesday afternoon city council meeting, thereby being present to hear and vote on the $2.2 million dollar proposed city contribution to the North Sacramento Fresh & Easy project.

Therefore, instead of being sworn in as Sacramento's new mayor during the afternoon meeting as planned, instead Kevin Johnson was sworn-in at 6pm that evening, avoiding any conflict of interest regarding the Fresh & Easy proposal.

We checked with the Sacramento City Clerk's office. Johnson was sworn-in last night and presided over the city council's evening session as mayor. The spokesperson told us at press time no decision has yet been made about giving the North Sacramento Fresh & Easy project the $2.2 million in redevelopment money.

There could be a problem going forward with Mayor Johnson's voting on any development or other issues involving federal dollars to Sacramento. That's because following a federal probe earlier this year into how Johnson's St. HOPE Academy used federal funding, the mayor-elect and St. HOPE were placed on a list of entities that can't do business with the federal government.

City Attorney Eileen Teichert says however mayor Johnson will not be precluded from voting on issues involving federal funding. But there does seem to be some confusion over this since she told the Sacramento Bee that 'she did not know how Johnson's presence on the list would affect the city, but that she was confident that it "won't affect the city's ability to accept funding." She said the only other issue is "how much disclosure we have to do to whatever federal agency we're applying for funds."'

Since Johnson is no longer in charge of St. HOPE academy though it appears he should be able to vote on such matters. However, according to the City Attorney its likely he will recuse himself from voting on any matters, including the $2.2 million redevelopment grant, involving Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market.

Tesco has confirmed plans to open 19 of its small-format, convenience-oriented Fresh & Easy combination grocery and fresh foods markets in the Sacramento/Vacaville Metropolitan region, including a number of units in the city of Sacramento, as Fresh & Easy Buzz previously has reported and written about frequently.

However, Tesco's Fresh & Easy recently announced it will postpone its launch into the Northern California market. This isn't the first time the grocery chain has done so. The first Fresh & Easy stores in Northern California -- the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento region -- were originally supposed to start opening in the middle of this year. The retailer then postponed the launch, saying the first stores in Northern California would open at the end of this year, only to change that to early in 2009. Right now our analysis is the first Northern California Fresh & Easy markets, if they open at all in 2009, won't open until about the middle of next year.

Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason says the main reason for postponing the Northern California launch is because of the current recession and financial crisis in the U.S. However he also says it is because the retailer's Northern California distribution center in Stockton is behind schedule in being completed. The facility is needed in order to supply the Northern California stores. The Stockton distribution center is nowhere near completed at present. Therefore it isn't likely any Fresh & Easy stores in Northern California could open before mid-2009 even if the grocery chain wanted to do so, which isn't the case anyway.

Meanwhile, as we reported previously, the Oak Park Neighborhood Association, which is comprised of a group of residents who live in the neighborhood, recently won a number of concessions from Fresh & Easy regarding the design of the proposed Oak Park store. At an October hearing before the City of Sacramento Design Review Board, the members of the board agreed, after hearing a presentation from Dustin Littrell of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association, to write those changes into the final approval of the Oak Park Fresh & Easy.

Tesco agreed with the board's decision, even though it went all the way to the hearing wanting to keep the store's design the way it was, and went ahead and in partnership with the sites developer bought the vacant Oak park parcel for the $1.6 million from now Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson's Kynship Development Company.

What will be interesting to see now that so much has transpired regarding Fresh & Easy and Sacramento's new mayor, who beat the city's incumbent mayor Heather Fargo by a wide margin in the November election, is if the Oak Park Fresh & Easy market will end up getting built, and if so, when.

Meanwhile, after being sworn-in as Mayor of Sacramento the sometimes controversial but very popular Kevin Johnson has already hit the ground running, which isn't surprising since he was famous in the NBA for his hard-running style on and off the basketball court. The new mayor already has named the key members of his leadership team, along with announcing what he calls an open and transparent government initiative, in which he pledged to make the city's business and his own business interests open to the public.

Mayor Johnson also has said he plans to be a major player in California regional public policy issues and politics. California elects a new Governor in 2010. Could Kevin Johnson possibly be thinking about a run? As Mayor of Sacramento he already is just down the street from the state capital after all.

Johnson was the change candidate in the November election for Sacramento voters, winning a mandate to do just that -- change how the city is run from what the incumbent Heather Fargo was doing. We expect him to shake things up in the capital city. It should be interesting, as should Fresh & Easy's future in Sacramento.

Reader Resources

Related posts from Fresh & Easy Buzz:

>Monday, November 17, 2008: Sacramento City Design Board Agrees With Oak Park Group on Design Changes For Proposed Fresh & Easy Store; Escrow Closed on $1.1 Million Parcel

>November 12, 2008: Analysis: Hard Times at Fresh & Easy - Northern California Expansion to Be Postponed or Shelved Do to Economy; But its Only a Symptom Not the Cause

>November 16, 2008: Tesco Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason Says He's 'Deliriously Happy' With the Chain's Progress Thus Far; We Prefer Andy Grove's 'Only the Paranoid Survive'

>Wednesday, October 8, 2008: Putting the 'Neighborhood' in Neighborhood Market: 'Localism' and Tesco's Proposed Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Sacramento's Oak Park

>Tuesday, October 7, 2008: Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood Association Files Appeal On Design of Proposed Neighborhood Fresh & Easy Store; Hearing Set For Oct.15

>Wednesday, October 15, 2008: Hearing Tonight For Sacramento, CA Neighborhood Group's Appeal of Design of Fresh & Easy Store Proposed For Their Oak Park Neighborhood

>July 16, 2008: Fresh Feature: A Former NBA All-Star Who Wants to Become Mayor, A Trade Union, And A Future Tesco Fresh & Easy Grocery Store In Sacramento, California

>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

>March 7, 2008: Former NBA All-Star and Sacramento Native Kevin Johnson is the Driving Force Behind a Fresh & Easy Market in Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood

>February 28, 2008: News & Analysis: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Confirms 19 Store Locations for the Sacramento-Vacaville Region in Northern California

>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

>February 8, 2008: Retail Memo: Tesco Fresh & Easy Insight: A New Store Blooms in Compton, CA.; F&E's Chicagoland March; a Sacramento Neighborhood and F&E Get Hitched

>February 8, 2008: Read this February 8, 2008 piece from the blog Natural~Specialty Foods Memo about one of Fresh & Easy's stores which will go in the low-income Oak Park neighborhood in Sacramento.

>September 23, 2008: Food Retailing, Society & Economics: 'Food Deserts' and Public Health

First Look at One of the Two Fresh & Easy Stores Opening In Sacramento Wednesday

Sacramento Bound

Pictured above is the Fresh & Easy grocery market at Watt Avenue & El Camino Avenue in Sacramento, which opens March 7. The photos were taken last week - the one at top during the day, the one above at night - as workers prepared the store for Wednesday's opening. [Photo credit: Fresh & Easy Buzz.]

Wednesday morning Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market will make its long-awaited - and long-postponed - launch in metropolitan Sacramento, California, opening two stores, at Watt Avenue & El Camino Avenue and Mack Road and Franklin Boulevard, in Sacramento.

The following Wednesday, March 14, Fresh & Easy will open three stores in three Sacramento-area cities - Folsom (East Natoma Street and Blue Ravine Road), Elk Grove (Elk Grove Florin Road and Calvine Road) and Lincoln (Lincoln and Sterling Road.)

In November 2011 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market said it would open a sixth store in the region, at 34th Street and Broadway in Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood, before the end of March. Fresh & Easy hasn't announced an opening date for that store yet.

Fresh & Easy's Sacramento market region launch is long-awaited, as well as long-postponed, because it was in February 2008 when the fresh food and grocery chain announced its plans to enter the market, listing 19 store locations it said it would start out with.

United Kingdom-based Tesco originally planned to start opening Fresh & Easy stores in metro Sacramento as early as mid-to-late 2009, as part of a planned launch into Northern California. However it postponed the Northern California launch because of Fresh & Easy's poor performance.

Tesco and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market also decided not to launch into Northern California in 2010, again because of the chain's poor performance and numerous problems.

Finally, in March 2011, Fresh & Easy launched into Northern California. To date there are 19 stores in Northern California - 16 in the San Francisco Bay Area and one each in Fairfield, which is on the outer border of the Bay Area; Vacaville, which is about midway between Sacramento and the Bay Area; and Modesto, which is about an hour's drive from both Sacramento and the East Bay Area.

The opening of the first two stores in Sacramento on Wednesday, including the unit at Watt Avenue and El Camino Avenue pictured at top, comes a year and five days after Fresh & Easy opened the first two stores in Northern, in San Jose and Danville, as we reported here on March 2, 2011: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Opens First Two Stores in Northern California Today.

Coming this week

We'll have a piece in the blog later this week offering analysis on Tesco's move into the metro Sacramento market, along with a competitive analysis of the key food and grocery retailing players in the region.

Suggested reading below: A primer on Tesco's Fresh & Easy in the Sacramento metropolitan market region

February 9, 2012: Confirmed: First 2 Fresh & Easy Stores Open in Sacramento March 7; 3 in Metro-Area March 14

January 18, 2012: Fast-Growing The Fresh Market Chain On Track to Launch in California This Year

August 3, 2011: Fast-Growing Specialty Grocer The Fresh Market Targeting Mid-2012 For First California Store

August 31, 2011: Tesco Says Sayonara to Japan, Good Morning to Sacramento

August 29, 2011: Meaningful Move or Too Little Too Late? Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Planning Early 2012 Metro Sacramento Market Launch

January 12, 2011: First Northern California Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Opening March 2; Nine More to Follow March-April

January 10, 2011: Sprouts Farmers Market to Open Second Northern California Store in Roseville No Later Than Mid-April

December 5, 2011: Dollar General Jump-Starts California Launch: Taking Over 5 Centro Mart Supermarkets For Early 2012 Openings

November 22, 2010: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans Five New Stores in Northern California's Sacramento Region

September 26, 2010: While Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Postponed, Target Opened 42 'P-Fresh' Fresh Food and Grocery Markets in Northern California

August 17, 2010: Henry's Farmers Market 'Beats' Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market to Northern California Despite Multi-Year Head Start; Elk Grove Store Opens Tomorrow [Henry's is now part of Sprouts Farmers Market. The Elk Grove store has been rebranded as Sprouts Farmers Market. Details here]

July 6, 2010: Walmart Looking for Store Sites in Northern California For 20,000 Sq-Ft Neighborhood Market by Walmart Prototype Store [Walmart is going to start opening Neighborhood Market stores in Northern California this year. More here.]

October 8, 2008: Putting the 'Neighborhood' in Neighborhood Market: 'Localism' and Tesco's Proposed Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Sacramento's Oak Park

February 28, 2008: News & Analysis: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Confirms 19 Store Locations for the Sacramento-Vacaville Region in Northern California

See these links - Fresh and Easy Northern California, Northern California Special Report, Fresh and Easy Sacramento, Fresh and Easy Sacramento Metropolitan Region, Vacaville-Sacramento region - for additional background reading.

Meaningful Move or Too Little Too Late? Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Planning Early 2012 Metro Sacramento Market Launch

News/Analysis/Commentary

Tesco's El Segundo, California-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is planning to open its first stores in the Sacramento metropolitan region in Northern California early next year, according to our sources, and has recently posted advertisements for store managers on the Internet in advance of its entering what will be a new market region for the 177-store small-format fresh food and grocery chain in 2012.

On Wednesday (August 31) Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market will hold a ground breaking at the site of what will be one of its first Sacramento-area stores to open next year, at 34th and Broadway in Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood. Joining Tesco group deputy CEO Tim Mason, who's also the CEO of Fresh & Easy, and other senior executives at Wednesday's ground breaking will be Ex-NBA basketball star and Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson, who once owned the site of the future Fresh & Easy store in the Oak Park neighborhood where he was raised, along with members of the City Council.

Mayor Johnson's neighborhood

It should come as no surprise to regular readers of Fresh & Easy Buzz that Tesco's Fresh & Easy will kick off it plans to enter the metro Sacramento market with a ground breaking at the Oak Park-Sacramento location Wednesday - or that Mayor Johnson will be attending the event. It's Mayor Johnson's neighborhood after all.

In 2008 Johnson's then Kynship Development Company sold the Oak Park parcel to Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market for $1.12 million. In December 2008 that deal held up the incoming mayor's swearing-in ceremony for a couple hours, as we reported here - December 3, 2008: Swearing-In of New Sacramento, CA Mayor Kevin Johnson Delayed A Few Hours Over A $2.2 Million Tesco Fresh & Easy Agenda Item.

Johnson was sworn-in though that same day and has gone on to become a very popular mayor in Sacramento, along with drawing national attention. He's also one-half of what is a major political power couple in the making: He will soon get married to Michelle Rhee, the former chancellor of the Washington D.C. Public school system, who is considered a leader, if not the leader, in public school educational reform in America. Rhee's Student's First organization has as its ambitious mission nothing less than the transform of public education in the U.S.

The mayor also has a background in public school education reform. After retiring from the NBA he returned to his hometown of Sacramento and went into business as a developer. He also set up the non-profit St. Hope organization. Among the numerous programs the foundation started a few years ago was a charter school that replaced the then-failing Sacramento High School into what has become a much more successful school than it previously was.

Johnson has focused much of his work with the non-profit St. Hope organization on the low-income Oak Park neighborhood where he was raised. After taking office as mayor in 2008 he severed his day-to-day ties with St. Hope.

He also focused much of his for-profit real estate acquisition and development efforts in the neighborhood prior to becoming Mayor of Sacramento. For example, in March 2008 when the then 42-year old Sacramento native announced he was running for mayor, Johnson owned about 37 properties in Oak Park, as we noted in this piece on March 7, 2008: Former NBA All-Star and Sacramento Native Kevin Johnson is the Driving Force Behind a Fresh & Easy Market in Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood. Notice what we said in the very last sentence in the story linked above.

It was in February 2008 that United Kingdom-based Tesco announced its plans to enter the metro Sacramento market region, saying it would open 19 Fresh & Easy stores, including seven units in the city of Sacramento.

The grocer's initial plans were to open the first stores in the Sacramento area in late 2008-to-early 2009. But Tesco's financial struggles with Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market have resulted in what will end up being an about four year delay of those original plans when the first stores open in the Sacramento market next year if all goes according to current plans.

In early March 2008 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market CEO Tim Mason and Sacramento's then-Mayor Heather Fargo, who Johnson defeated in the local election, held a press conference in front the the very same future Fresh & Easy store in the city's Oak Park neighborhood to announce the Tesco-owned grocer's plans to open stores in the city and region.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy finally opened its first Fresh & Easy stores in Northern California in March of this year. It has opened 13 units in the region to date.

Sacramento bound, locations waiting in the wings

The retailer has opened one of those 19 stores, the unit at Elmira & Nut Tree in Vacaville. Vacaville isn't in the Sacramento metropolitan region however. The city is located about midway between Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. It's about a 45 minute drive from Sacramento on Interstate 80.

Besides the original 19 stores publicly announced by the retailer, we've identified five additional future Fresh & Easy store locations the grocer has acquired in the Sacramento metro region since 2008. Those sites are in the following cities: Carmichael (5025 Marconi Avenue); North Highlands (3525 Elkhorn Boulevard); Gold River (2210 Sunrise Boulevard); Granite Bay (8701-8705 Auburn Folsom Road); and Placerville (Missouri Flat Road & Forni Road).

We've also identified three additional future Fresh & Easy store locations in the greater Sacramento region. Those future stores are: Oroville (Butte County), at Goldtown Plaza Center; Sutter Creek (Amador County), Sutter Creek Crossroads at Hwy 104 and Hwy 49 (see here); and Clearlake (Lake County), Hwy 53 and Dam Road. (see here); along with a location in Suisun City (Sunset Center at Sunset and State Highway 12), which is in the Sacramento/Vacaville region.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market hasn't publicly announced or confirmed any of these additional locations. However, we've identified them using multiple sources, including filings by Fresh & Easy with the state of California for alcoholic beverage permits and licenses for future stores at each of the locations.

According to our sources, the Oak Park location will be one of the first two or three Fresh & Easy stores to open early next year in the Sacramento region. The Oak Park neighborhood, like San Francisco's Bayview-Hunter's Point where Fresh & Easy opened its newest store in the 5800 Third Street development last week, is underserved by grocery stores offering fresh food and groceries at affordable prices. Such areas have become commonly referred to as "food deserts."

Oak Park is also home to an extremely strong neighborhood organization. In 2008 Dustin Littrell of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association filed an appeal with the City of Sacramento against Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's design plan for the store in the neighborhood. Littrell, who's a designer by profession, included in the appeal a number of detailed proposed design changes for the future store at the location, including site changes he says would have improved traffic flow at and around the store.

The grocer fought the appeal for a time. But after the City of Sacramento Design Review Board agreed with most of the neighborhood group's proposed design changes for the store, Tesco's Fresh & Easy made a deal with Littrell and other neighborhood association leaders, agreeing to incorporate the majority of their proposed design changes in its plan; changes that were mandated by the city anyway. Fresh & Easy then closed escrow on the parcel, which it bought from Kevin Johnson's development company. [See - November 17, 2008: Sacramento City Design Board Agrees With Oak Park Group on Design Changes For Proposed Fresh & Easy Store; Escrow Closed on $1.1 Million Parcel.]

We covered and wrote about the Oak Park Neighborhood Association vs. Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store design issue extensively. You can read our stories at the following links: Oak Park Sacramento, Fresh and Easy Sacramento, Fresh and Easy Sacramento Metropolitan Region, Oak Park Fresh and Easy store design appeal.

Why Sacramento now?

Tesco plans to enter the Sacramento metro region with its Fresh & Easy chain early next year comes in a year in which the retailer has been focusing all of its new store growth in California.

Thus far this year it has opened 23 new Fresh & Easy stores, all in California. Of those stores 13 units are in Northern California - 11 of which are in in the San Francisco Bay Area. The other two stores are the unit in Vacaville and a store in Modesto, which is in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. Modesto is about 70 miles from Sacramento. Vacaville is about a 30 minute drive from the capital city.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market also plans to continue to focus its new store growth in the Golden State for the remainder of the year. According to our sources, all the currently planned new store openings for the remainder of this year are in California.

Its been over a year since Tesco has opened any new Fresh & Easy stores in metropolitan Las Vegas, Nevada, where is has 21 units, and metro Phoenix, Arizona, where there are 28 Fresh & Easy markets. In fact, the retailer closed six stores each in the two market regions in November 2010, along with one store in Southern California, for a total of 13 units. (See here for details.)

Our sources also tell us that Tesco's focus in 2012 in terms of new store growth will be almost exclusively in California, where it has numerous future locations in both Northern California (over 50 sites in the area alone), Southern California and the Central Coast, along with a few in the Central Valley.

Entering the Sacramento market though will cost Tesco some money in terms of ongoing marketing and promotional costs, in addition to the nornal operational expenses involved in starting up. The region, where the dominant grocery chains currently are locally-based Raley's (133 stores and about $3.3 billion in annual sales), Modesto-based Save Mart (249 stores and about $5 billion in annual sales) with its Lucky banner supermarkets and Food Maxx discount warehouse stores, and Safeway Stores, Inc. (the fourth-largest food retailer in the U.S. and the overall market share leader in Northern California where it's headquartered in Pleasanton), is becoming increasingly competitive.

[See the numerous stories and analysis at this link - Northern California Special Report - for a good primer on just how competitive Sacramento and all of Northern California is fast-becoming.

For example, Sprouts Farmers Market and Sunflower Farmers Market are both focusing on opening numerous stores in the Sacramento region next year. Sprouts currently has two stores in the region, one unit in Roseville and another in nearby El Grove. Sunflower Farmers Market opened its first store in Northern California earlier this year. That store is also in Roseville.

Additionally, discount chain Target has added its "P-Fresh" fresh food and grocery sections to a number of its discount format stores in the Sacramento region and has plans to add more next year.

And Walmart Stores, Inc., the world's largest retailer and leading seller of food and groceries in the U.S., is putting a major focus on the Sacramento metro region with its smaller-format (30,000-60,000 square-foot) Walmart Market stores, having thus far acquired a number of sites for the stores in the region, with plans for more. Walmart also has plans for more supercenters in the Sacramento area.

We expect Walmart to open its first Walmart Market unit in the Sacramento region in early 2012. That first store - or at least one of the first units - will likely be the location at Highway 65 and Second Street  in Lincoln, which is near Sacramento, where Tesco has had a future Fresh & Easy store site (at Lincoln and Sterling) since early 2008. [For more details see - January 10, 2011: Walmart 'Gets Real' With Smaller-Format Grocery Store Initiative in California; First Stores On Tap; and July 6, 2010 story - Walmart Looking for Store Sites in Northern California For 20,000 Sq-Ft Neighborhood Market by Walmart Prototype Store.

A Fresh & Easy Buzz correspondent recently saw workers inside the vacant former Rainbow Market store in Lincoln tearing out interior materials and loading them into a Walmart Stores truck trailor parked in the parking lot, signaling work has began on turning the building into a Walmart Market grocery store.

A number of other Walmart Market grocery stores - which at their smallest (about 30,000 square-feet as is the case with the Lincoln unit) have three times the selling space as Tesco's 10,000 square-foot Fresh & Easy stores, carry four-to-five times the number of SKUs as Fresh & Easy (which offers about 5,000 SKUS), and offer a full selection of produce, meats and fresh-prepared foods plus in most cases an in-store pharmacy - will be located near the current planned Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market locations in the Sacramento region.

Sacramento: Continue to pay or start to play

Last year as part of a nearly year-long special report on food and grocery retailing in Northern California we wrote a series of stories about whether or not Tesco would launch Fresh & Easy into Northern California in 2011 (which it ultimately did, opening the first stores in March of this year), starting with this report - April 19, 2010: Tesco Debating Whether to Launch Fresh & Easy Into Northern California This Fiscal Year... or Wait.

We followed the April 2010 report up with this story - June 26, 2010: Tesco Planning to Announce in July When First Northern California Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores to Open . Three weeks later on July 18 our 'The Inside' columnist wrote this: July 18, 2010: When it Comes to Northern California - its Competitors are Rome Burning and Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is Nero Playing the Fiddle.

On July 29, 2010 we reported in this story - July 29, 2010: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Putting Together List of Managers Interested in Transferring to Northern California - that the wheels were in motion at Fresh & Easy regarding a Northern California launch.

On August 19, 2010, less than three months after we started reporting and writing about the retailer and Northern California, Tesco's Fresh & Easy announced in a press release it planned to open its first eight stores in the region in March 2011, as we wrote about here: Tesco Will Open its First Eight Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores in Northern California in 'Early 2011.'

Our analysis throughout 2010 (and long before that) was that Tesco should focus first in Northern California on opening the numerous locations it has in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's done just that - as noted earlier 11 of the 13 stores opened in the region so far are in the Bay Area.

We also said (best described in the July 18 column by 'The Insider') that by waiting to launch into Northern California in 2011 rather than doing so earlier, like in mid-to-late 2009 or even 2010, Tesco was late to the party for a number of reasons, including timing its entry two years late when the region's competitive profile had increased considerably compared to 2009.

But our analysis remains that from a strategic perspective, despite being extremely late to the party it was the right move for Tesco to launch in Northern California, with a focus on the Bay Area, rather than continuing to postpone, which among other things would have meant continuing to pay monthly rents on even more vacant building, plus its mothballed distribution center in Stockton, that it currently is. At least 13 of the more than 50 locations the grocer has in Northern California are open and operating.

This brings us to the metro Sacramento market and 2012.

Basically Tesco is left with two choices: Either start opening its numerous locations in the market region next year or continue to keep them vacant and pay for the privilege. It's chosen to do the former rather than the latter, despite the fact the Sacramento and San Francisco Bay Area regions are very different and distinct markets, although they are geographically close and have some similarities.

More expenses, continued price and margin pressures

Tesco CEO Philip Clarke has said the world's third-largest retailer will break even with Fresh & Easy by the end of its 2012/13 fiscal year, which is just 18 months away. The 2012/13 fiscal year ends in February 2013.

But in our analysis it isn't going to happen for a variety of reasons. First off, on the expense side of the ledger Tesco is spending a considerable amount of money on a variety of changes it's making to its existing Fresh & Easy stores, all of which we were the first publication to report on beginning early this year. Tesco and Fresh & Easy have since publicly confirmed all of the changes we reported on.

The major changes Tesco is in the process of making to its Fresh & Easy stores include: remodeling the store bakery sections and adding small in-store bakeries with ovens; moving the floral departments to the front of the stores; and replacing the reach-in style frozen food cases with more modern and energy-efficient upright frozen food display cases with glass door fronts. (You can see photos of the in-store bakery and upright frozen food cases here.)

Other changes include: resetting the health and personal care sections in the stores; removing the fixed location Kitchen Table in-store food sampling stations and replacing them with mobile units; and adding high-quality faux wood floors to some of the units, such as the store in Manhattan Beach, California, which is the first store to get the floors. According to a source in a position to know, the wood floors cost $75,000-$100,000 per-store.

The source says Fresh & Easy plans to install the floors over the existing cement floors in up to one third of its 177 stores, which if it does will cost a few million dollars. That's a wasteful and non-sales generating expense (even if the floors are only added to 10 stores) for a chain losing so much money - $300 million in Tesco's most recent fiscal year ended in February 2011 - not only our analysis but in our experience in the industry as well.

The wood floor, which we've seen at the Manhattan Beach store and is without a doubt of a high quality, actually looks out of place with the rest of the Fresh & Easy interior package, which is spartan and includes warehouse-style shelving and other more minimal design features. When it comes to grocery store interior design, the whole is always greater than the the sum of its parts, even if those parts are high quality and expensive like the wood floors are.

The numerous changes to the existing stores will cost Tesco many millions of dollars at a time when it needs to control rather than increase its expenses on Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market.

On top of these fresh expenses Tesco continues to pay monthly rent on at least a score of future store locations in California, Nevada and Arizona which it has yet to open, along with its mothballed Northern California distribution center, which sits empty in Stockton except for the security guard out front who keeps watch on the vacant building every day.

In terms of sales and operations, the markets Tesco has its 177 Fresh & Easy stores in are among the most competitive in the United States - and they're getting even more competitive as new grocers enter them - Winco Foods is coming to metro Phoenix, Arizona in 2012, for example - and existing players open new stores - Walmart's major focus in California with its supercenters and Walmart Market, for example - along with the continued growth of Target, Costco, Safeway Stores, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market, Sprouts, Sunflower Farmers Market and a couple other grocers in California - for example.

Add in the continuing poor economy - California, where 128 of the 177 Fresh & Easy stores are located has the second-highest unemployment rate (a bit over 12%) in the U.S. after Nevada, for example, and Arizona isn't much better - along with a state government that's broke.

Analysts don't see the state's economy improving much in 2012, although some areas like the San Francisco Bay Area and coastal portions of Southern California are doing better than the state as a whole is.

As a result, the continuing poor economy - particularly in California where all but 49 of the 177 Fresh & Easy stores are but also in Nevada where the grocer has 21 units and Arizona (28 stores) - combined with the heavy competition in those markets means continued pricing pressure, which in turn means Tesco isn't going to be able to raise retail prices on the products it sells in its Fresh & Easy stores significantly enough to add the much needed margin growth required to break-even with Fresh & Easy by the end of the 2012/13 fiscal year end.

Tesco reported a negative 38% margin for Fresh & Easy for its most recent fiscal year ended February 2011. In contrast, to serve as a comparitive illustration Whole Foods Market recently reported a plus-36% margin for its most recently-ended fiscal year. Whole Foods' has about the highest margin of any grocer. But few if any grocery chains can make a profit with a margin under 20%.

This intense competitive environment also makes it difficult for Tesco to reduce or eliminate the regular use of its deep-discount store coupons which offer shoppers up to 20%-25% off their total grocery purchases. Fresh & Easy has most recently tried to reduce the heavy frequency in which it issues the coupons both online and via direct mail pieces to shoppers homes. However when the grocer does so, the stores see a reduction in sales, which is why, based on our monitoring of the coupon distribution, we've recently seen an increase in the frequency in which the grocer is once again issuing the coupons.

Launching in the Sacramento region in early 2012 - a new market with all the expected an unexpected costs such a launch can bring, particularly to a chain like Fresh & Easy which needs numerous stores in a region to open based on its strategic plan - is only going to add to the cost side for Tesco in terms of its attempt to break even in the next 18 months. Therefore, the launch, coupled with the other factors we've noted above, will in our analysis prevent Tesco from breaking even with its U.S. venture by fiscal 2012/13-end.

No break-even in 18 months

In fact, we will offer a prediction. The prediction is between now and the end of fiscal 2012/13, Tesco CEO Philip Clarke will say publicly that the retailer will not meet its goal of breaking-even with Fresh & Easy by fiscal 2012/13-end, perhaps offering as the "primary reasons" Tesco's decision to make the major changes noted in this piece, along with the continuing poor economic conditions in California, Nevada and Arizona.

Such an announcement, if we are correct, could come as early as October of this year, when Tesco announces its first-half fiscal year financial results. The first half of Tesco's 2011/12 fiscal year end this month. Much more likely though - October 2011 is too early in our assessment - if such an announcement comes, it will come in mid-2012 when Tesco announces the results of the current fiscal year which ends in February of next year.

Of course we could be wrong in our analysis. Tesco could break-even with Fresh & Easy as Clarke says it will 18 months from now. If so we will be the first publication to offer our congratulations and say our prediction is wrong.

Can Tesco make a viable business out of Fresh & Easy?

Meanwhile Tesco will launch into the metro Sacramento region at about the same time next year as when Walmart Stores begins opening the first of what it plans to be numerous Walmart Market smaller-format grocery stores.

At the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday at the site of the future Fresh & Easy store in Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood, Tim Mason, Tesco group deputy CEO and CEO of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, will perhaps announce the locations of one or more additional of Fresh & Easy stores it plans to open first in the Sacramento area, along with the Oak Park unit. (We are working on finding out ourselves.)

Mayor Johnson will be there - the popular former NBA all star who sold that very same parcel of land that will house the Oak park Fresh & Easy store to Tesco - and he and the members of the Sacramento City Council will welcome Tesco to their city with open arms.

Members of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association will also be at the ceremony on August 31. They will celebrate the coming of a store they thought would open at least two years ago, along with celebrating the fact they first began trying to lure a grocer to the neighborhood a number of years before Tesco agreed to come with Fresh & Easy in late 2007-early 2008.

Like was the case in San Francisco's Bayview Hunters-Point, where all the local chains like Safeway Stores and others said no, so to did Raley's, Safeway, Save Mart and others say no thanks to putting a store in Oak Park. Tesco said yes. And in our analysis the location is going to be a good one for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, just as we've said Bayview-Hunters Point will be an excellent location for the grocery chain.

But hanging over Wednesday's ceremony and formal announcement by Tesco's Fresh & Easy that's it's headed to California's capital city of Sacramento will be that most important question, which is can Tesco break-even with Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market by early 2013, and even if it does can the United Kingdom-based retailer go beyond that most basic metric and eventually turn Fresh & Easy into a viable and profitable food and grocery retailing enterprise for the company in America, having invested about $1.5 billion in it so far and sustaining an operating loss since the first stores were opened in November 2007 that's approaching $1 billion?

We've offered our analysis on the first part of the question, predicting Tesco will not break-even with Fresh & Easy by the end of its 2012/13 fiscal year. The jury remains out for Tesco as to the second part of the question, whether or not it can ever make something viable and profitable out of Fresh & Easy.

But if our prediction about Tesco failing to reach break-even by the end of its 2012/13 fiscal year with Fresh & Easy is correct, Clarke will have to address the second part of the question before then. His decision and that of Tesco's board will be: If Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market isn't at or very close to break-even by then, does it make financial sense to keep on going or will it be time to pull the plug on Fresh & Easy and stop the losses, instead investing the money back home in the UK, in Central Europe (another growth region) or in Asia, which is where Tesco is putting its most major growth focus on over the next few years?

Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood Association Files Appeal On Design of Proposed Neighborhood Fresh & Easy Store; Hearing Set For Oct.15

Upcoming New Markets News Report: Northern California - Sacramento

Dustin Littrell, a member of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association and a resident of that Sacramento, California neighborhood where Tesco plans to build one of its 19 confirmed Fresh & Easy small-format, convenience oriented combination grocery and fresh foods stores in the Sacramento Metropolitan region, has filed a design review appeal on behalf of the group with the city over the store's design and related locational elements. The Sacramento-area Fresh & Easy stores are set to begin opening in 2009.

The appeal prevents Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market from doing any work on the site in the Oak Park neighborhood at Broadway & 34th until a hearing is held by the city of Sacramento Design Review Commission and a decision is made on the appeal, according to Matthew Sites, the design review team lead on the development for the city.

The neighborhood association met earlier this year regarding the design of the Fresh & Easy store in Oak Park, which is to be built on land owned by former NBA basketball star and current candidate for Mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson, as we've reported and have written about previously in Fresh & Easy Buzz.

Mr. Johnson faces incumbent Sacramento Mayor Heather Fargo in a winner take all election on November 4.

Kevin Johnson was born and raised in Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood which historically has been a low-income neighborhood but is going through a gentrification process. When Mr. Johnson returned to live in Sacramento after retiring from the NBA a few years ago, he started his own development company, which included a non-profit community development division. He also founded the HOPE foundation non-profit for youth which is headquartered in Oak Park. Johnson also owns numerous rental houses and vacant land in the neighborhood, including initially owning the property the Fresh & Easy store is to be built on.

The outcome of the meetings held earlier this year by the Oak Park Neighborhood Association was a decision by the group to prepare its own version of what they wanted the Oak Park Fresh & Easy store to look like in terms of how it would and should fit into the style and scale of their neighborhood.

The neighborhood association then created what they call the "community's plan" for the store.

At its July 3 Oak Park Neighborhood Association meeting the plan was presented to the members in attendance and "was chosen unanimously by the members present over the Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market plan" and design for the store in the neighborhood, Mr. Littrell told Fresh & Easy Buzz. A professional designer who lives in the neighborhood and is a member of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association then created a professional drawing of the group's design for the neighborhood Fresh & Easy store.

Mr. Littrell says the Oak Park Neighborhood Association met with representatives of Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market and presented the association's "community plan " to them. The company disagreed with the neighborhood residents version. The Oak Park neighborhood group then revised the plan, according to Mr. Littrell, taking into consideration some of the things in the plan that the Tesco Fresh & Easy representatives said they disagreed with from their perspective.

The neighborhood group then met with the Fresh & Easy corporate representatives a second time, presenting the revised plan to them at the meeting and hoping for some sort of compromise, according to Mr. Littrell and others who were in attendance.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy rejected the neighborhood group's revised plan, stating they decided to go with their original plan, which is the Fresh & Easy built from the ground up prototype store.
Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market representatives then presented their original plan with some minor changes such as landscaping and a couple others to the city of Sacramento Design Review Board. That plan for the Fresh & Easy store was approved by Bill Crouch, who is the city of Sacramento's Design Director.

According to Mr. Littrell and other members of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association, the chief concerns the neighborhood residents have about the Fresh & Easy store design include: the store's size or footprint; the way it's located (the facing to the street) on the lot; the parking layout; and how the store area is landscaped. Each of these issues was addressed in their group's "community plan" for the neighborhood's Fresh & Easy grocery market. Fresh & Easy Buzz has read a copy of the neighborhood groups design plan.

The city of Sacramento has a design review process in which citizens like Mr. Littrell and groups such as Oak Park Neighborhood Association can file a formal appeal with the city's Design Review Board if they feel their concerns haven't been satisfied in meetings with developers or companies and businesses proposing new commercial developments like the Fresh & Easy grocery store in the Sacramento neighborhood.

Mr. Littrell filed such an appeal against the approved design of the Oak Park Fresh & Easy store. He says he did so, with the backing of the Oak Park Neighborhood Association's members, because at this point it is the neighborhood residents' only recourse.

A hearing on Mr. Litrell's and the group's appeal was set by the city of Sacramento Design Review Board for September 17. However, according to Matthew Sites, the board's team lead, Tesco's Fresh & Easy requested the hearing be postponed until October 15, which the city's Design Review Board agreed on, according to Mr. Sites in a letter he sent to Mr. Littrell.

The new hearing has been set by the Design Review Board for October 15.

Along with representatives from Fresh & Easy and the Oak Park Neighborhood Association headed up by Mr. Littrell, representatives of Holloway Land Company, the developer of the parcel where the Fresh & Easy store is going in the neighborhood, also will attend the October 15 appeal hearing, according to the the design board's Matthew Sites.

Once each side is heard at the appeal hearing, the city of Sacramento Design Review Board will then weigh the Oak Park Neighborhood Association's arguments against the existing Fresh & Easy store design plan, along with those of Fresh & Easy in favor of its original plan, then arrive at a determination. Since its an appeal, the neighborhood group probably needs to make a stronger argument against the plan than Fresh & Easy likely has to make for it, since the city department previously approved the Fresh & Easy plan.

Sacramento's Oak Park neighborhood currently isn't served by a grocery store that offers basic groceries and fresh foods at affordable prices. Members of the neighborhood and Sacramento city officials have been trying for a number of years to bring such a grocer to Oak Park. When it was announced earlier this year that Fresh & Easy would build a store at the location, the news was greeted with much fanfare initially in the neighborhood, and city officials took credit for helping to bring the Fresh & Easy grocery store to the "food desert" neighborhood.

The big question now though is if Fresh & Easy wins at the appeal hearing and goes forward and builds the Fresh & Easy store in the neighborhood as planned using its original design without compromising with the neighborhood residents, what sort of loss of good will might that create in the neighborhood for Fresh & Easy?

For example, might residents of the neighborhood boycott the market because they feel it's design, street facing, parking and landscaping don't fit into the neighborhood properly? Such a boycott could hurt store sales dramatically, as well as become a major negative from a community and public realtions perspective.

Additionally, Mr. Littrell and other members of the neighborhood group argue the way the Fresh & Easy plan is at present creates a traffic safety problem. Could this become a major issue if there isn't some sort of compromise between Fresh & Easy's position and that of the neighborhood residents who desire changes in the store's design and siting, including some traffic mitigation measures?

The issue is a serious one from a local Sacramento and neighborhood perspective. Oak Park is one of the city's oldest and most historically rich neighborhoods. Many of its current residents moved into the neighborhood because they want to be part of turning it around. They've purchased abandoned houses and remodeled them. Other residents have started small businesses in the neighborhood.

Volunteerism also is big in Oak Park, ranging from arts programs for kids to other neighborhood-centered programs. Neighborhood localism and an appreciation for the neighborhood's history and culture is very important to most Oak Park resident and can be seen in various ways throughout the neighborhood, including public murals and in paintings and photographs in public buildings and businesses.

We will be following up on this story, reporting anything of interest prior to the appeal hearing on October 15, as well as reporting on the outcome of the hearing itself.

This is the first Fresh & Easy store development thus far we are aware of that's been opposed by a neighborhood group. A group of residents and city officials in Southern California's San Fernando Valley did recently oppose the selling of beer and wine by a Fresh & Easy store in their neighborhood. Fresh & Easy recently stopped selling beer and wine at that store, which is the only one of the current 90 stores that doesn't offer those beverages for sale.

[Note: The letter regarding the continuance of the appeals hearing from September 17 -to- October 15 is at this link: Broadway and 34th Continuance.pdf (459KB).]

Despite Postponing its Northern California Launch Again Earlier This Year Tesco's Fresh & Easy Planning Third San Francisco Store; First Stockton Unit

Upcoming New Markets Special Report: Northern California

Despite postponing its Northern California launch once again earlier this year, and having not yet opened any of the numerous Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store sites it's paying monthly lease payments on in Northern California, Tesco is planning a third store in San Francisco, California, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy has also signed a lease for what will be its first small-format grocery and fresh foods market in the Northern San Joaquin Valley city of Stockton, in Northern California. Stockton is located about 75 miles from San Francisco and about 30 miles from Modesto, where we've previously reported the grocery chain now has three Fresh & Easy stores planned.

San Francisco

The planned third San Francisco Fresh & Easy market will be located at 32nd and Clement Street in the City's Richmond District.

The two other planned Fresh & Easy store locations in San Francisco are at 5800 Third Street and Carrol Avenue in the low-income Bayview-Hunters Point Neighborhood, and at Silver Avenue and Goettingen Street, which is a mixed-use residential and commercial neighborhood in the city off of the 101 freeway.

The 5800 Third Street Fresh & Easy store is a new, built from the ground up store which will be the ground floor retail anchor to what is a multi-unit residential condominium building currently being constructed at the location.

The Silver Avenue Fresh & Easy market is planned to go into what is a now vacant building that previously housed a Cala Foods supermarket. Like many of its current 118 stores in California (Southern and Bakersfield), southern Nevada and Metro Phoeniz, Arizona, the Silver Avenue vacant, former supermarket building will be gutted and remodeled by Tesco and turned ino one of its small-format combination grocery and fresh foods markets.

Cala is (or more precisely was) owned by Kroger Co. Kroger Co., through its Ralphs supermarkets division based in Southern California, exited the Northern California market a few years ago, selling off or closing its about 50 Ralphs' banner supermarkets and about 25 Cala and Bell Market banner stores in the region.

All of the Cala and Bell banner stores were in the Bay Area, most in San Francisco or nearby cities. The Ralphs' stores were in the Bay Area and parts of the Central Valley and Sacramento region.

Kroger's Southern California-based Ralphs still operates a couple Cala-Bell stores in the Bay Area, which it is in the process of either selling or closing.

It also operates a couple of its FoodsCo banner discount warehouse stores in the region, including one in San Francisco's Bayview-Hunters Point neighborhood, not far from where Tesco is putting its Third Street Fresh & Easy market in the condominium development. Kroger-Ralphs has no plans to close the FoodsCo warehouse format stores in the region.

San Francisco's Richmond District is a part of the city, along with the next door Sunset District, that collectively also are referred to as "The Avenues," because its numbered streets -- all avenues -- start in the low numbers and run all the way to the high-forties as the streets get closer to the ocean. The Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods end at San Francisco's Ocean Beach, which is the end of land in the city's western portion.

The Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods, both the flatest residential parts of the city, run alongside San Francisco's famed Golden Gate Park -- the park is in the middle, dividing the two neigborhoods, which are two of the largest residential neighborhoods in the city in terms of the numbers of housing units and resident population. San Francisco's population is about 850,000.

There currently are a couple Safeway supermarkets in the Richmond district, along with a couple independent supermarkets. Safeway has a large store right near Ocean Beach that serves residents of both the Richmond and Sunset neighborhoods because of its central location. The store does are very high weekly sales volume.

Safeway Stores, Inc., which is the market share leader in the Bay Area and in the city of San Francisco, is based in Pleasanton, in the eastern part of the region, about 30 miles from San Francisco.

The 32nd and Clement proposed future Fresh & Easy store site once was home to a supermarket. However that store has since closed.

Tesco is only beginning the permitting and approval process for the 32nd and Clement store. And in San Francisco that can be a detailed and long process in terms of gaining approval.

For example, on Wednesday evening, April 15, Mark Warden, a vice president for the Costa Mesa-based Bergman Companies' design and building firm, will be making a presentation to the members of the Planning Association for the Richmond, which is an influencial group comprised of neighborhood residents, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned. The group's mission is to guide planning and development in its neighborhood.

The presentation is from 7 -to- 9 p.m. at the Richmond Recreation Center, 251 18th Avenue, San Francisco. The Bergman Companies' Warden, representing Tesco's Fresh & Easy, will detail the grocer's plans for the site, including the store's design and other details, according to a member of the neighborhood group, and a notice on the planning association's Web site.

In San Francisco gaining the approval of neighborhood associations -- there's one in nearly every neighborhood in what is a city comprised of many distinct neigborhoods --is crucial to gaining approval from the city to build a commercial project like a retail store.

Most neighborhood groups in San Francisco tend to favor local retail stores over chains, although that doesn't mean chain stores don't get approval in the city. It often depends on the neighborhood. A couple neighborhoods though actually no longer allow chain retail stores of any kind.

San Francisco neighborhood associations like the Richmond District group look not only at a retailer's proposed design for a store when evaluating a proposal -- it's size, physical design, energy use -- they also look at the retail company proposing the store -- it's ethical reputation, environmental policies, whether its union or non-union, for example -- in evaluating if they will support the development or not.

Neighborhood associations in San Francisco don't legally make the decisions as to whether or not retailers get the green light on new retail store proposals in the city -- city government does. But the groups are so influential that seldom does a project a neighborhood association is against get build in San Francisco. On the plus side, it's very seldom if ever the city refuses to approve a retail project supported by a neighborhood association.

This is a key reason that Tesco's Fresh & Easy is having its representative make a presentation to the Richmond District neighborhood planning group.

Other new Northern California developments

Modesto

Fresh & Easy Buzz reported in this March 31, 2009 piece [Despite Having Postponed its Northern California Launch Indefinitely; Tesco's Fresh & Easy Planning Third Store in Modesto, California] that Tesco is building its newest and what it plans to be its third Fresh & Easy Neighborhood market store in the Northern California city of Modesto.

Modesto, which has a population of about 205,000 residents, is located about 90 miles from San Francisco in the Northern San JoaquinValley. Modesto is about a 45 minute drive from the nearest Bay Area city, Livermore, which is located in the Easy Bay region.

Fresh & Easy Buzz has now learned from a commercial real estate source that Tesco is looking closely at a handful of potential sites in Modesto for a possible future fourth Fresh & Easy store location in the city. None of the Fresh & Easy stores have yet to open in Modesto, or anywhere in Northern California.

Tesco hasn't confirmed the three Fresh & Easy planned store sites in Modesto that we've reported on. However we've documented each location through various means, including physical observation of the site, through commercial real estate sources, and via the California Alcoholic Beverage Control Department, in the case of the two stores -- Sylvan Square and Oakdale Road --that Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has already applied for on sale beer and wine licenses for.

We agreed at the request of our source not to mention the potential sites Tesco's Fresh & Easy is looking at in Modesto for a possible fourth store at this point in time.

Stockton

Tesco's Fresh & Easy is also planning to build a store in Stockton, California, which like Modesto is located in the Northern San Joaquin Valley. Stockton is about 30 miles from Modesto, about 75 miles from San Francisco, and about a 30 -to- 40 minute drive from Livermore. This is the first future Fresh & Easy store site in Stockton we've been able to document.

The planned first Stockton Fresh & Easy market will be located in a redevelopment project in Stockton's Midtown area on what is the location of a former State of California mental hospital which was closed some years ago.

The 103 acre redevelopment site is now owned by the California State University System. Commercial real estate developer Grupe Co. is redeveloping the site, which is called University Place.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has signed a 25-year lease for an about 14,000 square foot parcel in the redevelopment project where it will build a fresh & Easy store from the ground up, according to our sources. Grupe Co. verifies the lease.

Plans call for a mixed-use residential and commercial development, including condominiums and apartments, along with office buildings and retail stores, at the 103 acre site. The development also is the future home for a new satellite campus of the California State University System, hence its name -- University Place.

The closest state university campus is about 35 miles away, in Sacramento. California State University, Stanislaus, which is located about 45 miles from Stockton, in Turlock near Modesto in Stanislaus County, operates a small satellite campus in Stockton. Sacramento State University also offers some classes in Stockton. But the city wants its own comprehensive satellite campus.

Colliers International, which has an office in Stockton, is marketing the University Park redevlopment project in partnership with developer Grupe Co.

We said well over a year ago, when we first reported on Tesco Fresh & Easy's plans to open stores in Northern California, that the grocer would be locating stores in Stockton.

Our research shows that whenever Tesco's Fresh & Easy leases a site for an initial store in a city like Stockton, more units will follow. As a result, look for addialtion Fresh & Easy store locations to come in the city. In fact, we are aware that Tesco is currently shopping for sites for additional Stockton stores.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's store location strategy is one we've termed a "critical mass" store location strategy, meaning it likes to open and operate numerous stores, located not far from one another in a city, especially in larger cities like Stockton, which has a population of about 320,000. The Modesto example is a good one. It started with one planned store site and is now up to three planned locations.

In terms of the "critical mass" store location strategy, think about what Walgreens does with its drug stores and what Starbucks does with its cafes, opening numerous stores not far from each other in various neighborhoods in a city, hoping that the stores will become defacto neighborhood retail outlets by virtue of their mass availability throughout a given city's various neighborhoods. Critical retail mass.

This (the "critical mass" store location strategy) is what Tesco's Fresh & Easy has been and is doing in its current markets in California (Southern and Bakersfield), Metropolitan Las Vegas, Nevada and in the Phonix, Arizona Metro region. The strategic goal being to become the "neighborhood" grocery market of choice. There are 118 Fresh & Easy stores split between these market regions.

Stockton is where Tesco plans to build its Northern California distribution center. That distribution center is nowhere near completed however. In fact, Tesco has in our analysis intentionally postponed completing its Northern California distribution center as part of its decision to postpone its Fresh & Easy store launch into the region. Tesco has yet to confirm the distribution center will be located in the Stockton area.

As we first reported over a year ago, Tesco has and continues to look for potential Fresh & Easy store sites in cities throughout the Bay Area, the Sacramento-Vacaville region, and in Northern California's Northern San Joaquin Valley (and elsewhere in Northern California), near the cities of Stockton and Modesto. Those cities include Tracy, Manteca and Ripon, along with Turlock, Patterson and Merced, as well as others.

Tesco at present has eight Fresh & Easy locations planned for Fresno, which is about 45 miles south of Merced (which is 30 miles south of Modesto) in the central-near-southern Central Valley.

The grocery chain currently has three stores open and operating in Bakersfield, which is in the southern Central Valley, with plans to open six more in the coming months. Bakersfield is closer to Southern California geographically than it is to Fresno (Central California) and the Northern San Joaquin or Central Valley in Northern California. A good rule of thumb is that anything north of Merced, including Merced, is considered Northern California. Fresno -to- Bakersfield is generally considered Central California. Southern California begins once over the Grapevine, which seperates the southern valley from Los Angeles.

Fresh & Easy Northern California

Originally Tesco planned to have its first Northern California stores opened by mid-2008. Then it said the first stores in the region would open in late 2008. Early this year the grocery chain said it was postponing its Northern California launch indefinately, leaving open the date when it would open its first stores in the region.

Tesco has confirmed it plans to open and initial 37 stores in Northern California; 18 in the San Francisco Bay Area and 19 in the Sacrameno-Vacaville region of Northern California. It's now been over 15 months since it confirmed the 37 Northern California locations.

Fresh & Easy Buzz however has identified numerous additional Northern California planned locations in adition to the 37 announced and confirmed by Tesco's Fresh & Easy.

Below is a list of the 18 planned Fresh & Easy store locations in Northern California's San Francisco Bay Area that have been confirmed by Tesco. Tesco's Fresh & Easy officially announced the 18 locations in January, 2008. [Read our January 30, 2008 story here: [Fresh & Easy Goes On the Record: Announces 18 Northern California Stores in the Bay Area .] Fresh & Easy Buzz had already reported on a number of the planned Northern California locations prior to the public announcement/confirmation by Tesco

The 18 confirmed San Francisco Bay Area locations

>Antioch: Somersville & Buchanan roads; Lone Tree & Golf Course
>Concord: Clayton & Ygnacio Valley roads
>Danville: Diablo Road & Interstate 680]
>Fairfield: Beck Avenue & West Texas Street
>Hayward: Mission Boulevard & Rousseau Street; A Street & Hesperian Boulevard
>Mountain View: Middlefield Road & Rengstorff Avenue
>Napa: Jefferson Street & Imola Avenue
>Oakland: 73rd & Bancroft avenues
>Oakley: Laurel Road & Ohara Avenue
>San Francisco: Third Street & Carroll Avenue; Silver Avenue & Goettingen Street
>San Jose: Bird & Minnesota avenues; Almaden Road & Curtner Avenue
>Sunnyvale: Tasman Drive & Fair Oaks Avenue
>Vallejo: Oakwood Avenue & Springs Road
>Walnut Creek: Ygnacio Valley Road & San Carlos Drive.

Below is a list of the planned Northern California Fresh & Easy store locations identified and reported on by Fresh & Easy Buzz (with the exception of the Seaside and Oroville locations which were first reported on by local newspapers), but not confirmed to date by Tesco:

San Francisco Bay Area

>Vallejo (two sites). Two additional Fresh & Easy locations in Vallejo; in addition to the Oakwood Avenue unit in the city confirmed by Tesco as one of the 18 sites listed above. Read our report - May 21, 2008: Breaking News: Tesco Has Two New Fresh & Easy Stores in the Pipeline For San Francisco Bay Area; Brings Total to Date to 20 Units For the Region

>Pacifica: 5550 Coast Highway. Pacifica is located about 12 miles south of San Francisco. [Read our report - June 12, 2008: Upcoming New Markets News: Tesco to Locate Yet Another Fresh & Easy Store in San Francisco Bay Area; 21 Thus Far By Fresh & Easy Buzz's Reporting.]

[Related stories: October 7, 2008: Fresh & Easy Corporate Reps to Meet With Pedro Point Pacifica, CA Neighborhood Residents to Address Concerns Over Store to Open in 2009. October 9, 2008: Pacifica, CA Mayor Jim Vreeland Says He's Excited to Have Fresh & Easy Store Coming to Pedro Point; Says New Center Will Be One of the Best in Town. October 13, 2008: Pacifica Riptide & Fresh & Easy Buzz Join Together to Offer Pacifica, California Citizen Opinions On the Fresh & Easy Store Coming to the City.]

>Palo Alto: Edgewood Plaza Shopping Center. [Read our report - October 15, 2008: Tesco to Locate Fresh & Easy Store in Palo Alto, California; it's First in the City and SF Bay Area Store Number 22 By Our Reporting.] Note: We wrote this piece [ Upcoming New Markets Special Report: Upscale Palo Alto, California is Laying Out the Welcoming Mat to Grocers: Will Fresh & Easy Knock On the Door?] five months earlier, On June 12, 2008. Tesco's Fresh & Easy did come knocking at Palo Alto's door.

[Related story - March 19, 2009: Another Tesco Fresh & Easy Future Market City Bans the (Plastic) Bag: No Plastic Carrier Bags In Palo Alto, CA Supermarkets Starting September 18th.

Sacramento-Vacaville region

Click here to view a list and map of the 19 Tesco-confirmed Fresh & Easy stores in the Sacramento-Vacaville region in Northern California.

Sacramento-Vacaville region - not confirmed by Tesco

>Suisun City: Sunset Shopping Center. Sunset Avenue and State Highway 12. Suisun City is located between Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area, not far from the city of Vacaville. [Read our report - September 11, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Adds Another Store to its Sacramento-Vacaville Market Region Portfolio in Northern California.]

Elsewhere Northern California - not confirmed by Tesco

>Seaside: West Broadway Village Shopping Center. Seaside is located in Monterey County, in Northern California's south-central coast region. Note: The Herald (Monterey County) newspaper first broke the story on the Seaside location. We followed-up and verified the site. [Read our report - July 27, 2008: Fresh Buzz: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Tesco PLC and Related Food Retailing News and Insight.]

>Modesto (3 stores thus far). (1) Sylvan Square Shopping Center; Coffee Road and Sylvan Avenue. (2) 1717 Oakdale Road. (3) Crows Landing Road near Whitmore Avenue.

[Read our reports: Sylvan Square - May 10, 2008: New Markets: Tesco's Fresh & Easy to Move Into Modesto, California Market; Open its First Store in the City Early Next Year. 1717 Oakdale Road - November 6, 2008: Upcoming New Markets News: Tesco Will Open A Second Fresh & Easy Store in Modesto, California. Crows landing Road - March 31, 2009: Despite Having Postponed its Northern California Launch Indefinitely; Tesco's Fresh & Easy Planning Third Store in Modesto, California.]

>Oroville, Butte County: Goldtown Plaza Shopping Center. The local newspaper, the Oroville Mercury Register, first reported on this location. Fresh & Easy Buzz verifield the lease and added some details in our report. [Our report - December 4, 2008: Despite Postponing its Northern California Launch, Fresh & Easy Continues to Grab New Locations in the Region, Including Going Rural.] Oroville is located in a rural region north of Sacramento.

Possible but not yet verified category
>Grass Valley, Nevada County. The local The Union newspaper reported in December, 2008 that Tesco's Fresh & Easy was negotiating with the owner of a closed Ford auto dealership in the city's Goldtwon Plaza to lease the dealership for a Fresh & Easy store. We verified the negotiations but haven't been able to verify the signing of any lease. [Our report - December 4, 2008: Grasss Valley - More on the Northern California Rural Strategy: An Existing Ford Auto Dealership in Grass Valley, CA Could Become A New Fresh & Easy Market.] As a result, we put this potential location in the "possible but not varified category" and don't count it yet as a "verified" Northern California Fresh & Easy planned store location.

Updated May 6, 2009:

Below are additional planned Northern California Fresh & Easy store locations we've uncovered and reported on since this piece was published. Tesco's Fresh & Easy has not yet confirmed these planned locations:

San Francisco Bay Area

>San Francisco, California. 32nd and Clement, Richmond District. This is the third planned Fresh & Easy store for San Francisco thus far, based on our reporting See our April 13, 2009 story here: Despite Postponing its Northern California Launch Again Earlier This Year Tesco's Fresh & Easy Planning Third San Francisco Store; First Stockton Unit.

>Hercules, California. New Town Center planned development. Hercules is in the Easy Bay Area, in Contra Costa County. See our April 17, 2009 story here: Another Planned New Location For Tesco's Fresh & Easy in San Francisco Bay Area: Market to Be Retail Anchor of New Development in Hercules, CA.

>Pleasanton, California. Rose Pavillion Shopping Center. Santa Rita Drive and Rosewood Drive. Pleasanton is in the East Bay Area. See our April 19, 2009 story here: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Signs Lease For New Store in Pleasanton, CA; We Reported 15 Months Ago the SF Bay Area City Was in its Strategic Sites.

Elsewhere Northern California - not confirmed by Tesco

>Stockton, California. University Place development, Stockton. This is the first planned Fresh & Easy store for Stockton. Stockton is in the Northern San Joaquin Valley; about 30 miles from Modesto and 35 miles from Sacramento. See our April 17, 2009 story here: Despite Postponing its Northern California Launch Again Earlier This Year Tesco's Fresh & Easy Planning Third San Francisco Store; First Stockton Unit.

Related stories from Fresh & Easy Buzz:

>November 12, 2008: Analysis: Hard Times at Fresh & Easy - Northern California Expansion to Be Postponed or Shelved Do to Economy; But its Only a Symptom Not the Cause

>November 20, 2008: Analysis & Commentary: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market and Tesco's Lowered Expectations

>May 15, 2008: Fresh But Never Easy: Tesco's Long But Rapid South-North March in the Nation-State of California

>April 13, 2008: April 13, 2008: San Francisco: Cool Bay Breezes, A City Full of History, Cable Cars--And A 'Fresh & Easy' State of Mind

>July 29, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy and San Francisco's Tenderloin Redux: Upcoming Developments Offer First Mover Opportunity For Fresh & Easy or Competitors

>December 29, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy, 'Food Deserts' and WIC Vouchers; A 'Year-End' Analysis & Commentary

>September 30, 2008: News & Analysis: Tesco Reports Half-Year Financials; Reports Loss For Fresh & Easy USA and Sales Per Square Foot Averages

>September 17, 2008: Store Workers at Huntington Beach Fresh & Easy Demand Union Recognition From Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market

>November 16, 2008: California: The State of the State and its Economy; Governor to Propose Tax Increases and Massive Spending Cuts to Fix $11 Billion Budget Shortfall

>February 11, 2009: Tesco to Open Third Bakersfield, California Fresh & Easy Store On February 25.

>December 3, 2008: Tesco Opens its First Two California Fresh & Easy Stores Outside of Southern California in the Central Valley City of Bakersfield Today

>November 5, 2008: Upcoming New Markets News: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Confirms Bakersfield, CA Stores; Says First Two Will Open Next Month on December 3rd, 2008

>March 10, 2008: Bakersfield, California Region Next Up On the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market New Store Parade

>May 24, 2008: Upcoming New Markets Special Report: The Changing 'Face' of Retailing in Bakersfield, California

>March 26, 2008: Mid-Week Tesco Fresh & Easy Roundup

>May 14, 2008: Fresh & Easy Buzz Exclusive: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Plans to Open Five Stores In the Fresno, California Metropolitan Region

>March 8, 2008: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Northern California DC Likely to Be At Arch Road Site In Stockton

>September 15, 2008: Wal-Mart Expanding its Discount Store-to-Supercenter Conversion Program As Part of its Strategy to Grab Even More Food and Grocery Sales Market Share

>December 29, 2008: Competitor News: Winco Foods to Expand in California and Nevada in 2009; Put Aggressive Focus on Central Valley, Northern California and Northern Nevada

>February 11, 2009: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Isn't the Only Food & Grocery Retailer With its Eyes on Bakersfield: Wal-Mart's Bakersfield Push and Central Valley, CA Strategy

>February 28, 2008: News & Analysis: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Confirms 19 Store Locations for the Sacramento-Vacaville Region in Northern California

>January 28, 2008: Fresh & Easy Applies For Liquor Licenses for Four Sacramento, California Stores

>Monday, November 17, 2008: Sacramento City Design Board Agrees With Oak Park Group on Design Changes For Proposed Fresh & Easy Store; Escrow Closed on $1.1 Million Parcel

>November 12, 2008: Analysis: Hard Times at Fresh & Easy - Northern California Expansion to Be Postponed or Shelved Do to Economy; But its Only a Symptom Not the Cause

>November 16, 2008: Tesco Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason Says He's 'Deliriously Happy' With the Chain's Progress Thus Far; We Prefer Andy Grove's 'Only the Paranoid Survive'

>Wednesday, October 8, 2008: Putting the 'Neighborhood' in Neighborhood Market: 'Localism' and Tesco's Proposed Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Sacramento's Oak Park

>Tuesday, October 7, 2008: Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood Association Files Appeal On Design of Proposed Neighborhood Fresh & Easy Store; Hearing Set For Oct.15

>Wednesday, October 15, 2008: Hearing Tonight For Sacramento, CA Neighborhood Group's Appeal of Design of Fresh & Easy Store Proposed For Their Oak Park Neighborhood

>December 3, 2008: Swearing-In of New Sacramento, CA Mayor Kevin Johnson Delayed A Few Hours Over A $2.2 Million Tesco Fresh & Easy Agenda Item

>July 16, 2008: Fresh Feature: A Former NBA All-Star Who Wants to Become Mayor, A Trade Union, And A Future Tesco Fresh & Easy Grocery Store In Sacramento, California

>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

>March 7, 2008: Former NBA All-Star and Sacramento Native Kevin Johnson is the Driving Force Behind a Fresh & Easy Market in Sacramento's Oak Park Neighborhood

>October 9, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Has Put 16 of its 93 Stores in Formerly Vacant Supermarket Buildings and Plans to Do More Coversions While the Deals Are Hot

>February 19, 2008: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Serving as an Economic Stimulus Package of Sorts for California's Troubled Commercial Retail Real Estate Industry

>January 30, 2009: Competitor News: Safeway Stores, Inc. Confirms Second Small-Format 'The Market' Unit to Be in San Jose, CA; Fresh & Easy Buzz Nailed it in June, 2008

>December 30, 2008: Competitor News: Smart & Final Appears Pleased With its Eight Hybrid 'Extra' Format Stores, More On the Way in 2009

>December 12, 2008: Competitor News: Safeway CEO Steve Burd Says Small-Format 'The Market' Is 'Good' So Far But Not 'Great;' But Must Be 'Great' in Order To Expand

>December 29, 2008: Competor News: Winco Foods to Expand in California and Nevada in 2009; Put Aggressive Focus on Central Valley, Northern California and Northern Nevada

>September 15, 2008: Wal-Mart Expanding its Discount Store-to-Supercenter Conversion Program As Part of its Strategy to Grab Even More Food and Grocery Sales Market Share

>May 18, 2008: Wal-Mart Looking For Sites in California For it's Small-Format 'Marketside' Grocery

>Tesco thus far has a couple Fresh & Easy stores planned for Northern Nevada, which is much closer geographically to Northern California (less than three hours from Sacramento), and is a much more similar market to Northern California than it is to southern Nevada, which is one of Tesco Fresh & Easy's existing market regions, along with Southern California, Bakersfield and Metro Phoenix, Arizona. Story link: Reno-Sparks, Nevada.

[You can follow Fresh & Easy Buzz around on Twitter.com at www.twitter.com/freshneasybuzz.]