Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Opens Three New Stores in Southern California Today

The first customer (pictured above holding up his register receipt) to make a purchase this morning at the just-opened Fresh & Easy market in Costa Mesa, California gets a round of applause from a couple store employees.

Southern California Market Region

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market opened three new stores today, all in Southern California.

The three stores, which all had grand opening celebrations today, are at: El Toro Road & Trabuco Rd., Lake Forest; Newport Boulevard & Harbor Boulevard, Costa Mesa; and Camino Del Norte & Dove Canyon Road, San Diego.

Today's openings bring to 159 the total number of Fresh & Easy stores Tesco now operates in California, Nevada and Arizona. A majority, 110 units, of the 159 Fresh & Easy stores are in California.

El Segundo, California-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has so far opened four new stores this year, all in Southern California. In addition to the three fresh food and grocery markets opened yesterday, a store was opened in El Cajon (at 2nd Street & Madison Avenue) on January 12.

The grocer plans to open three more new stores in Southern California next week, on February 16. Those stores are located at:

• Oceanside Boulevard & Vine Street - Oceanside

• Alameda Street & Florence Avenue - Walnut Park

• Seaward Avenue & Thompson Boulevard - Ventura

Below is the current store-count rundown by market region for the 159 Fresh & Easy stores, which average 10,000-12,000 square-feet and feature a limited assortment - 4,500 -to- 5,000 SKUs - of fresh foods, groceries and non-foods' packaged goods:

Southern California

= 96

Bakersfield, California Metro Region

=7 units

Fresno, California Metro Region

=7 units

[California = 110 stores.]

Metro Las Vegas, Nevada

= 21 units

Metro Phoenix, Arizona

= 28 units

Total #Stores

= 159 units