A 'Sign of the Times': New Form of Customization and Localization Spotted at Fresno Fresh & Easy Store

The "Sign of the Times" pictured above was spotted and photographed today by @thehieb (on Twitter) at the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store at Cedar and Nees (3040 North Cedar Avenue) in Fresno, California. Tesco has seven Fresh & Easy markets in the Fresno metro region.

As you can see in the photo at top, the store manager, most likely, or a store employee, decided to customize and localize the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market standard issue corporate sign, which the grocer installs in all the stores, by adding: "Even if you just came in here to cry" at the bottom, using what looks to be a Magic Marker.

Here at Fresh & Easy Buzz we've said since 2008 that one of Tesco's week points with its 169 Fresh & Easy stores in California, Nevada and Arizona is senior management's failure to customize and localize its stores based on the demographics and lifestyle criteria in the neighborhoods where the stores are located. But we frankly haven't thought about doing the same with the hand wash signs. But then we can't think of everything.

One example of our lack of custom and local-focused product mix critique of Fresh & Easy is this: The Fresh & Easy stores in Riverside and San Bernardino counties in Southern California, which just-released U.S. Census Bureau figures show both have a population that's nearly 50% Latino, as is the case in many other parts of Southern California, the Central Valley and metro Phoenix, Arizona, is identical to the product mix in the stores where the Latino population is less than 10%, such as in parts of Southern California's Orange County.

The store-level Fresh & Easy managers can't doing anything about the product merchandise mix situation however: It's controlled and dictated by Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's corporate buying and merchandising department in El Segundo, California.

But in the case of the standard issue hand washing sign, one of which goes up inside every Fresh & Easy store when it's built, it does appear that some customization and localization is going on at store-level, at least at the Fresno store at Cedar and Nees.

And in terms of the 'crying in the bathroom' customization aspect and the local angle explanation, Fresno currently suffering from a variety of economic ills, including having an unemployment rate of about 15%, along with having one of the highest housing foreclosure rates in the U.S. So perhaps that's it? At least we hope its that or something similar in the macro sense that might elicit the potential crying in the bathroom rather than the crying being a reflection on how the store employees feel on a regular basis because of store management.

Either way, it's a creative form of store-level customization and localization. And it's ... a "Sign of the Times."

[Readers: If you spot something you think is unique at a Fresh & Easy store, or in any grocery store or supermarket, shoot a photograph of it and send it to us at freshneasybuzz@yahoo.com. Or if you use Twitter, tweet it to us @FreshNEasyBuzz. If we think it's a suitable "Sign of the Times" we'll use it in Fresh & Easy Buzz.]

A Tale of Two California's: Welcome to the Once Thriving Central Valley

Related story: December 15, 2010: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's WIC Voucher Store Expansion Program Stalled.

[Fresh & Easy Buzz editor's note: Noted historian, classics scholar and writer Victor Davis Hanson, who's also a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, is a native of Selma, a small city near Fresno in California's Central Valley, where Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood market has 14 stores - seven each in the Fresno and Bakersfield metro areas.

Hanson currently lives in Selma, where he runs a family farm in addition to pursuing his scholarly work. Two of his most recent books are, 'Makers of Ancient Strategy: From the Persian Wars to the Fall of Rome,' which he edited, and 'The Father of Us All: War and History, Ancient and Modern,' which he authored.

Victor Davis Hanson, who's also a contributing writer for the conservative publication National Review, spent the last three weeks touring the Fresno, California area and other parts of the valley, including its many rural cities and small towns, by bicycle and automobile. The Central Valley native son scholar- farmer wrote about the results of what he calls his "unscientific experiment" in an essay, "Two California's," published in today's edition of National Review Online.

People of differing political ideologies can disagree with Victor Davis Hanson's arguments as to why the Central Valley is where it is today in terms of its high poverty and high joblessness. But despite those reasonable disagreements, the writer paints a very real picture of a region - California's Central Valley - which just happens to produce more food and fiber than any other place in the world - that's in very real and serious economic trouble.

Below is the Central Valley native's essay, which we're pleased to share with our readers today, courtesy of National Review Online.

December 15, 2010
Two Californias
Abandoned farms, Third World living conditions, pervasive public assistance - welcome to the once-thriving Central Valley.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

The last three weeks I have traveled about, taking the pulse of the more forgotten areas of central California. I wanted to witness, even if superficially, what is happening to a state that has the highest sales and income taxes, the most lavish entitlements, the near-worst public schools (based on federal test scores), and the largest number of illegal aliens in the nation, along with an overregulated private sector, a stagnant and shrinking manufacturing base, and an elite environmental ethos that restricts commerce and productivity without curbing consumption.

During this unscientific experiment, three times a week I rode a bike on a 20-mile trip over various rural roads in southwestern Fresno County. I also drove my car over to the coast to work, on various routes through towns like San Joaquin, Mendota, and Firebaugh. And near my home I have been driving, shopping, and touring by intent the rather segregated and impoverished areas of Caruthers, Fowler, Laton, Orange Cove, Parlier, and Selma. My own farmhouse is now in an area of abject poverty and almost no ethnic diversity; the closest elementary school (my alma mater, two miles away) is 94 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white, and well below federal testing norms in math and English.

Here are some general observations about what I saw (other than that the rural roads of California are fast turning into rubble, poorly maintained and reverting to what I remember seeing long ago in the rural South). First, remember that these areas are the ground zero, so to speak, of 20 years of illegal immigration. There has been a general depression in farming — to such an extent that the 20- to-100-acre tree and vine farmer, the erstwhile backbone of the old rural California, for all practical purposes has ceased to exist.

On the western side of the Central Valley, the effects of arbitrary cutoffs in federal irrigation water have idled tens of thousands of acres of prime agricultural land, leaving thousands unemployed. Manufacturing plants in the towns in these areas — which used to make harvesters, hydraulic lifts, trailers, food-processing equipment — have largely shut down; their production has been shipped off overseas or south of the border. Agriculture itself — from almonds to raisins — has increasingly become corporatized and mechanized, cutting by half the number of farm workers needed. So unemployment runs somewhere between 15 and 20 percent.

Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats, and chickens roaming around the yards. The public hears about all sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business — rigid zoning laws, strict building codes, constant inspections — but apparently none of that applies out here.\

It is almost as if the more California regulates, the more it does not regulate. Its public employees prefer to go after misdemeanors in the upscale areas to justify our expensive oversight industry, while ignoring the felonies in the downtrodden areas, which are becoming feral and beyond the ability of any inspector to do anything but feel irrelevant. But in the regulators’ defense, where would one get the money to redo an ad hoc trailer park with a spider web of illegal bare wires?

Many of the rented-out rural shacks and stationary Winnebagos are on former small farms — the vineyards overgrown with weeds, or torn out with the ground lying fallow. I pass on the cultural consequences to communities from the loss of thousands of small farming families. I don’t think I can remember another time when so many acres in the eastern part of the valley have gone out of production, even though farm prices have recently rebounded. Apparently it is simply not worth the gamble of investing $7,000 to $10,000 an acre in a new orchard or vineyard. What an anomaly — with suddenly soaring farm prices, still we have thousands of acres in the world’s richest agricultural belt, with available water on the east side of the valley and plentiful labor, gone idle or in disuse. Is credit frozen? Are there simply no more farmers? Are the schools so bad as to scare away potential agricultural entrepreneurs? Or are we all terrified by the national debt and uncertain future.

California coastal elites may worry about the oxygen content of water available to a three-inch smelt in the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta, but they seem to have no interest in the epidemic dumping of trash, furniture, and often toxic substances throughout California’s rural hinterland. Yesterday, for example, I rode my bike by a stopped van just as the occupants tossed seven plastic bags of raw refuse onto the side of the road. I rode up near their bumper and said in my broken Spanish not to throw garbage onto the public road. But there were three of them, and one of me. So I was lucky to be sworn at only. I note in passing that I would not drive into Mexico and, as a guest, dare to pull over and throw seven bags of trash into the environment of my host.

In fact, trash piles are commonplace out here — composed of everything from half-empty paint cans and children’s plastic toys to diapers and moldy food. I have never seen a rural sheriff cite a litterer, or witnessed state EPA workers cleaning up these unauthorized wastelands. So I would suggest to Bay Area scientists that the environment is taking a much harder beating down here in central California than it is in the Delta. Perhaps before we cut off more irrigation water to the west side of the valley, we might invest some green dollars into cleaning up the unsightly and sometimes dangerous garbage that now litters the outskirts of our rural communities.

We hear about the tough small-business regulations that have driven residents out of the state, at the rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a week. But from my unscientific observations these past weeks, it seems rather easy to open a small business in California without any oversight at all, or at least what I might call a “counter business.” I counted eleven mobile hot-kitchen trucks that simply park by the side of the road, spread about some plastic chairs, pull down a tarp canopy, and, presto, become mini-restaurants. There are no “facilities” such as toilets or washrooms. But I do frequently see lard trails on the isolated roads I bike on, where trucks apparently have simply opened their draining tanks and sped on, leaving a slick of cooking fats and oils. Crows and ground squirrels love them; they can be seen from a distance mysteriously occupied in the middle of the road.

At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets, gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go transactions.

In two supermarkets 50 miles apart, I was the only one in line who did not pay with a social-service plastic card (gone are the days when “food stamps” were embarrassing bulky coupons). But I did not see any relationship between the use of the card and poverty as we once knew it: The electrical appurtenances owned by the user and the car into which the groceries were loaded were indistinguishable from those of the upper middle class.

By that I mean that most consumers drove late-model Camrys, Accords, or Tauruses, had iPhones, Bluetooths, or BlackBerries, and bought everything in the store with public-assistance credit. This seemed a world apart from the trailers I had just ridden by the day before. I don’t editorialize here on the logic or morality of any of this, but I note only that there are vast numbers of people who apparently are not working, are on public food assistance, and enjoy the technological veneer of the middle class. California has a consumer market surely, but often no apparent source of income. Does the $40 million a day supplement to unemployment benefits from Washington explain some of this

Do diversity concerns, as in lack of diversity, work both ways? Over a hundred-mile stretch, when I stopped in San Joaquin for a bottled water, or drove through Orange Cove, or got gas in Parlier, or went to a corner market in southwestern Selma, my home town, I was the only non-Hispanic — there were no Asians, no blacks, no other whites. We may speak of the richness of “diversity,” but those who cherish that ideal simply have no idea that there are now countless inland communities that have become near-apartheid societies, where Spanish is the first language, the schools are not at all diverse, and the federal and state governments are either the main employers or at least the chief sources of income — whether through emergency rooms, rural health clinics, public schools, or social-service offices. An observer from Mars might conclude that our elites and masses have given up on the ideal of integration and assimilation, perhaps in the wake of the arrival of 11 to 15 million illegal aliens.

Again, I do not editorialize, but I note these vast transformations over the last 20 years that are the paradoxical wages of unchecked illegal immigration from Mexico, a vast expansion of California’s entitlements and taxes, the flight of the upper middle class out of state, the deliberate effort not to tap natural resources, the downsizing in manufacturing and agriculture, and the departure of whites, blacks, and Asians from many of these small towns to more racially diverse and upscale areas of California.

Fresno’s California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president’s announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won’t comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years. I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program’s sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability. By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions. In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.

I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, “Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.” I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth?

I think I know the answer to this paradox. Missing entirely in the above description is the attitude of the host, which by any historical standard can only be termed “indifferent.” California does not care whether one broke the law to arrive here or continues to break it by staying. It asks nothing of the illegal immigrant — no proficiency in English, no acquaintance with American history and values, no proof of income, no record of education or skills. It does provide all the public assistance that it can afford (and more that it borrows for), and apparently waives enforcement of most of California’s burdensome regulations and civic statutes that increasingly have plagued productive citizens to the point of driving them out. How odd that we overregulate those who are citizens and have capital to the point of banishing them from the state, but do not regulate those who are aliens and without capital to the point of encouraging millions more to follow in their footsteps. How odd — to paraphrase what Critias once said of ancient Sparta — that California is at once both the nation’s most unfree and most free state, the most repressed and the wildest.

Hundreds of thousands sense all that and vote accordingly with their feet, both into and out of California — and the result is a sort of social, cultural, economic, and political time-bomb, whose ticks are getting louder.

Two New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Open in Fresno, California Region Today

Customers wait to enter the New Fresh & Easy store in Fresno, California this morning. The grand opening started at 10 am.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market opened its two newest stores this morning to waiting crowds.

The two new markets, which make 165 Fresh & Easy stores as of today, are located in the Fresno Metropolitan region in California's Central Valley.

One store is in Fresno, in a shopping center on the southeast corner of Cedar and Shields avenues. The address is: 3040 North Cedar Avenue. The second Fresh & Easy market is right next door to Fresno, in Clovis. The Clovis store, the second Fresh & Easy unit in the city, is on the northwest corner of Herndon and Fowler avenues, at 1725 Herdon Avenue.

Grand opening celebrations, which started this morning at 10 am, are currently going on at both stores.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market now has seven stores in the Fresno Metropolitan region. In addition to the two stores in Clovis, the opening of the new store today in Fresno makes a total of four Fresh & Easy units for Fresno. There's also a Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market fresh food and grocery store in Reedley, which is in the Fresno Metro region.

Seven & Seven [stores] for the Central Valley

In addition to its seven stores in the Fresno region in California's Central Valley, Tesco has seven Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market locations farther south in the valley, in the Bakersfield region. Five of the seven stores are in Bakersfield; one is in nearby Wasco; and the other in Delano.

Fresh & Easy by the (store) numbers - and regions

Below is a tally, as of today, of the 165 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores by region:

~Southern California
=90 stores

~Central Valley, California/Bakersfield region
=7 stores

~Central Valley, California/Fresno region
=7 stores

~Metropolitan Las Vegas, Southern Nevada
=27 stores

~Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona region
=34 stores

~Total Number stores = 165

Three new stores opening next week

Three new Fresh & Easy markets are set to open on Wednesday, September 22.

All three of the markets are in the San Diego Metro region in Southern California. Two of the stores are in Oceanside and one unit is in San Diego. The locations of the stores are:

>32nd Street & University Avenue, San Diego, California
>River Road. & College Boulevard, Oceanside, California
>College Boulevard & Oceanside Boulevard, Oceanside, California

The September 22 openings are the last three new stores, of the nine units that will have been opened by Tesco's Fresh & Easy this month, set to open in September. At the end of September, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood market will have 168 stores open and operating in California, southern Nevada and Metro Phoenix, Arizona.

Fresh & Easy Buzz has been calling this month 'Big Bag' September for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market because of the high number - nine - stores it's opening this month.

But the fresh food and grocery chain didn't open any new stores in May, June, July or August 2010, instead it bunched them all up for openings this month - hence the 'Big Bang' title, so to speak. We reported Tesco's Fresh & Easy was doing this in a June 25, 2010 story: A Four Month Pause: No New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Set to Open Until September 2010].

Therefore, the high number of openings this month should be viewed in this light. For example, if the grocer opened just one new store a month, from May through August, and two stores this month, it would have achieved the same results, a total of nine new stores open and operating by the end of September 2010.

Fresh & Easy has followed this new store opening "bunching up" strategy all year.

To learn what the grocer did from February -to- April of this year in terms of new store openings, read our stories linked at the end of the piece here.

October 2010 openings

As of today, Tesco's Fresh & Easy hasn't announced any new store openings for October.

As we've previously reported, so far, according to our sources, three new stores are planned for October 2010 openings. However, new store openings are a moving target at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market headquarters in El Segundo, California. Therefore the number of new stores to be opened in October could increase before the grocery chain makes an announcement, which should be coming soon. Our reporting and planned number of new stores, three, is only as of today.

Related Stories:

September 8, 2010: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Hits (and Breaks) the 100-Store Mark in California With Today's Openings

September 7, 2010: 'Big Bang' September: First Four of Nine New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Opening on September 8

July 14, 2010: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Confirms Our June 25 Report it Will Open Nine New Stores in September 2010

June 25, 2010: A Four Month Pause: No New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Set to Open Until September 2010

June 1, 2010: No New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Likely This Month

May 1, 2010: No New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Set to Open This Month

March 30, 2010: Tesco Set to Open 11 New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores in April

March 29, 2010: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Set to Hit 150-Plus Store-Count Mark on April 7

March 16, 2010: A New Fresh & Easy Store Opens in Las Vegas Tomorrow on St. Patrick's Day; Will Tesco CEO Sir Terry Leahy's Proud Irish Eyes Be Smiling?

March 7, 2010: Three New Fresh & Easy Stores Opening This Month; First Opening March 10 in Palm Springs, California

January 27, 2010: February New Store Opening 'Big Bang' For Tesco's Fresh & Easy; Nine New Stores So Far

February 24, 2010: Fresh & Easy Store Opens its Doors in South Los Angeles

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

California's Central Valley region (detailed in the map of California above), stretching from Bakersfield and Kern County in the south to Stockton and San Joaquin County in the north, is the largest single-producing and most diverse -- cotton, grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, milk, beef cattle, chickens, eggs and more -- agricultural region in the world. Additionally, one fourth of all the food produced in the U.S. comes from the Central Valley region, which also is home to such well-known global companies and brands as E.J. Gallo (Modesto, CA), the largest family-owned winery in the world, and the second-largest overall seller of wine globally.

The Central Valley is a diverse region as well. Kern County (Bakersfield area) is one of the top oil producing regions in America, for example, in addition to being a major agricultural region, as well as being considered by many to be the second home of American country music after Nashville, Tennessee. And when it comes to college sports, the Fresno State University Bulldogs are among the top college football teams in the nation. Stockton, in the north, was in the 1930's -through- 1960's one of the centers for both amateur and profesional boxing in America. So much so in fact that the famous boxing movie, "Fat City" was set in Stockton.

The Central Valley also is home to a few famous brands when it comes to individual celebrities. For example, famed movie director and producer George Lucas was born and raised in Modesto, which was the setting of his award-winning movie "American Graffiti." The late Pulitzer Prize winning writer and playright William Soroyan (author of The Time of Your Life and numerous other plays and books) is from Fresno, and country music greats Merle Haggard and Buck Owens hail from Bakersfield, which often is called "Nashville-West" for its fame in country music circles.

Bakersfield and Beyond:
Central Valley, California Market Region Report and Analysis

Earlier today we reported that Tesco will open its third and newest Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market combination grocery and fresh foods market in Bakersfield, California on February 25. [Read that post here: Tesco to Open Third Bakersfield, California Fresh & Easy Store On February 25.]

The new store is one of nine Fresh & Easy units planned thus far by the grocer for the Bakersfield Metropolitan market region, which is in California's southern Central Valley. The first two Fresh & Easy markets opened on the same day in Bakersfield on December 3, 2008. [December 3, 2008: Tesco Opens its First Two California Fresh & Easy Stores Outside of Southern California in the Central Valley City of Bakersfield Today.] Seven of the nine Fresh & Easy stores are located in the city of Bakersfield. One is planned for nearby Wasco, and the other for the nearby city of Delano.

Wal-Mart's Bakersfield market region push

Tesco's entry into the Bakersfield Market region is going to add new competition into the region which has an economy based primarily on agriculture, oil production and increasingly on service businesses. [May 24, 2008: Upcoming New Markets Special Report: The Changing 'Face' of Retailing in Bakersfield, California.] [March 10, 2008: Bakersfield, California Region Next Up On the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market New Store Parade.] [May 15, 2008: Fresh But Never Easy: Tesco's Long But Rapid South-North March in the Nation-State of California.]

But Tesco isn't the only food and grocery retailer looking to add a new competitive retailing element in the Bakersfield market. Bentonville, Arkansas-based mega-retailer Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. also is targeting the Bakersfield market region aggressively, and plans to soon open its first Supercenters in the city of Bakersfield and in the region.

Wal-Mart currently operates three of its Wal-Mart discount format stores in Bakersfield. But has none of its combination food, grocery and general merchandise mega-Supercenters in the city -- yet.

The Wal-Mart discount format stores, at well over 100,000 square feet, sell only a limited assortment of food and grocery items and consumer packaged goods, mostly shelf-stable products, but also some perishables in the refrigerated and frozen foods categories. Additionally, unlike the Supercenters, the discount format stores don't offer fresh produce, fresh meats or in-store deli and bakery departments, as well as not offering a full supermarket-like selection of food and grocery items.

But Wal-Mart is out to change that in the Bakersfield market -- and beyond in the Central Valley.

Here is what we know based on our research:

>First, just last week the Bakersfield Planning Commission approved a request by Wal-Mart to remodel and add an additional 46,000 square feet to its Wal-Mart discount store (one of the three in the city) in northeast Bakersfield at 2701 Fashion Place, turning the store into one of the retailer's hybrid Supercenters, as we call them. All of the new, additional 46,000 square feet, along with some added space from the store remodeling, will be devoted to food and grocery, including fresh produce, meats, an in-store deli and bakery. The additional square footage will come from Wal-Mart's taking over an empty building next door that used to be a Vons supermarket, operated by Safeway Stores, Inc. before it was closed by the supermarket chain.

The Bakersfield City Council must vote in favor of the planning commission's approval. But a vote in favor of the project by the city council going forward looks likely, according to members of the Bakersfield Planning Commission.

>Second, Wal-Mart is looking to try to add additional square footage in a similar way to its other two Wal-Mart discount format stores in Bakersfield, using the added space to include a full supermarket inside and create a hybrid Supercenter like its doing with the northeast Bakersfield store.

Wal-Mart is converting existing discount format stores into these hybrid Supercenters throughout the U.S. For example, the retailer is in the process of converting 30 or more of its Wal-Mart discount stores stores in Southern California into the hybrid Supercenter format so that it can offer a full selection of food and grocery products for sale in the units, as we've previously reported and written about. [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.]

As we've also previously reported, Wal-Mart is using the hybrid Supercenter conversion process throughout the Central Valley, not just in Bakersfield. For example, the retailer plans to convert an exiting Wal-Mart discount store in Los Banos, California (Merced County) into a hybrid Supercenter that will offer a full range of food and grocery products, and is looking to do the same with a dicount format store in Merced and another in Turlock (Stanislaus County) if it can find the added space in the respective shopping centers to do so, and get approvals from the respective cities for the conversions, if the additional square footage can be found. [Click here to read a selection of past stories about the hybrid Supercenters and related Wal-Mart topics.]

In the fall of 2008 Wal-Mart opened its first "hybrid" Supercenter, located in a vacant big box building that it completely gutted and remodeled, on McHenry Avenue in the Central Valley city of Modesto, which is in Stanislaus County, about 10 miles from Turlock, 35 miles from Merced, and about 45 miles from Los Banos.

Wal-Mart took the about 100,000 square foot vacant building that used to house a warehouse format supermarket in one half and a drug store in the other, gutted it, then remodeled it into the 100,000 square foot combination food, grocery and general merchandise hybrid Supercenter. [April 25, 2008: Going Smaller: Wal-Mart Might have Found A Solution or Two to Much of the Opposition to its Mega-Supercenter Stores in the USA]

At 100,000 square feet the store is nearly half the size of the average Wal-Mart Supercenter, which are about 180,000 square feet and often larger. As an example, Wal-Mart is building a brand new Supercenter in Ceres, which is right next door to Modesto. That store is about 215,000 square feet.

>Third, Wal-Mart has had a partially built new combination food, grocery and general merchandise Supercenter sitting at a site at Panama Lane and Highway 99 in Bakersfield for about five years. Wal-Mart started construction of the store in 2003-2004 and then was hit with a series of lawsuits from environmental groups over various environmental aspects related to the store location. In late January (last month) the Bakersfield Planning Commission and Wal-Mart said those lawsuits have been resolved. Wal-Mart further announced two weeks ago that it is preparing to resume construction on the site and hopes to have the Supercenter completed in time to open in the fall of this year.

>Fourth, Wal-Mart has another site approved to build a new Supercenter at in Bakersfield. That site in on Gosford Road in the city. It was approved in 2002, just like the Panama Lane and Highway 99 site was. Wal-Mart decided not to start construction at the Gosford Road location because of the lawsuits filed against the Panama Road project. Now that the retailer has resolved those lawsuits and is completing construction on the Panama Road Supercenter, it's likely it will soon move forward with the start of construction on the approved site on Gosford Road.

>Fifth, Wal-Mart also is proposing building a Supercenter at a site in Delano, which is close to Bakersfield in the market region, and is where Tesco also plans to open a Fresh & Easy market. The city of Delano has approved the project and supports the hundreds of new jobs and added retail sales tax revenue the new Supercenter coming to down would bring. Delano is a rural city and the average income of is residents is at the very low end.

A citizen's group in Delano though is against the project and has filed a lawsuit against its going forward. The group says the Wal-Mart Supercenter will hurt and drive out local small businesses who can't compete against mega-Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart runs into such opposition with nearly every Supercenter it proposes in California, although in this current bad economy numerous California cities that in the past didn't want anything to do with a Wal-Mart Supercenter are now looking much more favorably on the prospect of the retailer bringing one to their respective town.

This Friday a court in Bakersfield will hear the Delano group's lawsuit against the Wal-Mart Supercenter going in their city. The judge will rule on the lawsuit following the hearings.

We're told it's likely Wal-Mart, and the city of Delano, will prevail in winning the lawsuit and getting the Supercenter in Delano built.

>Lastly, in addition to hoping it can find the additional space, and if it does to gain approval from the city of Bakersfield to expand and remodel its other two Bakersfield Wal-Mart discount format stores into hybrid combination food, grocery and general merchandise Supercenters, the retailer is looking for additional new Supercenter sites in and around Bakersfield as part of its strategy to become a serious player in food and grocery retailing in the region.

Wal-Mart's Central Valley strategy

Wal-Mart's plans to aggressively convert discount format stores into hybrid Supercenters and to open new Supercenters in the Bakersfield region of the Central Valley isn't an isolated strategy. Rather it's part of the retailer's overall strategic plan to become a major player in food and grocery retailing throughout the Central Valley -- from Bakersfield in the far southern end of the vast valley, and Fresno and Merced County in the middle of the region, to Stanislaus County and San Joaquin County in the Northern Central/San Joaquin Valley. Nearly 5 million people live in the Central Valley, from Bakersfield north to Stockton in San Joaquin County

The key to Wal-Mart's Central Valley strategy is its proposal to open a big, new distribution facility in the city of Merced, the county seat of Merced County. Wal-Mart submitted plans for the new 500,000 -to- 600,000 square foot facility early last year.

The proposal has been making its way through the various local government agencies responsible for approval. There has been objections to the huge facility from a number of groups in the region, and Wal-Mart has made some changes to its original proposal because of those objections. The objections center around environmental impacts like traffic congestion and other related issues.

Last year it looked like the proposed new Wal-Mart distribution center in Merced might not gain approval. However, according to sources in the region, the economic recession has changed that. Merced County has one of the highest housing foreclosure percentages of any county in the U.S., at times being number one, and one of the highest unemployment rates in the country at its current whopping 16%, which is almost twice the rate of the state of California (9.4%). The region is bleeding jobs and the Wal-Mart distribution center, which would bring hundreds of badly needed jobs to the area, now looks like it will soon gain approval, we are told.

With the new Merced distribution center, Wal-Mart will be able to supply fresh foods, grocery products and other goods without a hitch to basically all of the new and hybrid Supercenters and other format stores it wants to remodel and build in the Central Valley -- south to Bakersfield and Fresno and north to Stanislaus County and San Joaquin County, as well as up into the Sacramento region and even into the nearby San Francisco Bay Area -- where the retailer has a near-zero presence and wants to open many new stores, including Supercenters, if it can gain approval of them by Bay Area cities and counties, something the retailer has found near-impossible to do to in the past with its Supercenters because of so much opposition to the mega-big box stores. (That's one reason the retailer created its small-format Marketside grocery and fresh foods stores as an alternative food and grocery retailing format to help Wal-Mart increase market share in such difficult to enter with Supercenter markets.)

As we mentioned earlier in this piece, Wal-Mart opened its first Supercenter in Modesto in November of last year -- the 100,000 square foot hybrid store in the vacant big box retail building. The retailer also has a discount format store in the city it would like to convert into a hybrid Supercenter if it can find the the space next to the existing store to add the additional square footage. Wal-Mart also is looking for other vacant big box buildings in other parts of Modesto where it can create a hybrid Supercenter like it did with the one on McHenry Avenue in the city that opened in the fall of 2008. [Related story - November 21, 2008: Breaking News: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. Names New CEO to Replace Lee Scott; USA Chief Castro-Wright Elevated to Vice Chairman Effective Immediatley.]

The retailer previously tried to gain approval for a new, built from the ground-up Supercenter in Modesto a number of years earlier, but met objection from the city and various community groups. That's why it went with the hybrid Supercenter in the vacant building concept instead.

Fresh & Easy Buzz has identified and reported on two locations thus far Tesco's Fresh & Easy has leased for planned stores in Modesto. [Those reports are here and here.] Tesco hasn't publicly announced or confirmed the Modesto locations as of yet.

The process of putting a store in a vacant building like Wal-Mart did in Modesto doesn't require the same extensive approval and environmental impact process that building a Supercenter from the ground up does in the city and in most California cities. As a result, even though there were groups opposed to the Modesto store, they couldn't stop Wal-Mart because like any other retailer its able to convert an existing vacant building into what they want it to be without an elaborate planning process like with new store construction, and particularly like new big box store construction. Instead Wal-Mart just needed to meet the essentially simple approval process for remodeling a vacant store building in Modesto, just as all other retailers are required to do.

As we also mentioned earlier in this piece, Wal-Mart is building a huge, new Supercenter (over 200,000 square feet) in Ceres, which is on Modesto's southern border. The two cities basically run into one another. That store is set to open sometime this year. The store was supported by the city of Ceres and met with little opposition from members of the community, with the exception of some traffic issues that were resolved by Wal-Mart and the city. [Related story - November 19, 2008: Competitor News: Wal-Mart Lowering Prices on Holiday Items and Staples; New Formats Coming; Online Grocery Sales; Hundreds of New Stores FY 2009-2010.]

Wal-Mart also has applied to build a brand new 158,000 square foot Supercenter in the Stanislaus County city of Patterson. Patterson, which has about 35,000 residents, is located about 20 miles from Modesto on the county's west side. The proposed Supercenter is right across the street from an existing Save Mart supermarket, operated by Modesto-based Save Mart Stores, Inc., which is the market share leader in the region.

Additionally, Wal-Mart plans to turn its existing discount format store in the city of Los Banos (Merced County) into a hybrid Supercenter. We're told the city of Los Banos has no objection to that since the city of about 30,000 is understored in terms of supermarkets, having only one major supermarket, a branch of Modesto, California-based Save Mart, curently operating in town. There's also an independent supermarket in Los Banos, but it is an older and fairly small store. Los Banos is located about 20 miles from Merced, where Wal-Mart hopes to open its new Central Valley distribution center.

Further, Wal-Mart building a new Supercenter in the Merced County city of Livingston, which is a small city of about 20,000 people located just a few miles from Merced. That store will serve a much larger population base than just the residents of the Livingston though because numerous people live in the nearby unincorporated parts of rather rural and agriculture-based Merced County, in addition to living in the county's incorporated cities. It's also expected that residents of other towns just a few miles away will shop at the Livingston Supercenter when it opens.

Merced County has a current population of about 260,000 residents. Merced is the largest city in the county with about 80,000 residents. Next door Stanislaus County, of which Modesto (about 205,000 population) is the county seat, has a population of about 560,000. The two counties are right next to each other in one geographical block.

Merced is only about 40 miles from Fresno, where Wal-Mart has been opening up numerous new Supercenters and has plans to open more. The Fresno Metropolitan region has a population of over 1 million people, and has been one of the fastest-growing regions in California, as have Merced and Stanislaus Counties, until the housing foreclosure crisis and recession hit.

If it can gain approval, Wal-Mart wants to open numerous build new Supercenters and create hybrids, in some cases adding on to existing discount format stores and in other cases putting hybrid Supercenters in remodeled vacant big box buildings like the one on McHenry Avenue in Modesto, throughout the Central Valley. It will be able to do so aggressively once it gets the Merced distribution center open, which it wants to do no later than 2010.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy in the Central Valley

In addition to the two Fresh & Easy Neighborhood market combination grocery and fresh foods stores already opened in the city of Bakersfield and the other seven planned for the market region, and the Modesto stores we've discovered and reported on, the retailer has leased numerous sites in Fresno and the Fresno Metropolitan regions where it is either building or converting vacant buildings into Fresh & Easy markets it plans on opening in the near future.

Tesco plans to eventually open and operate Fresh & Easy stores throughout the Central Valley and Northern California, from Bakersfield in the south to the Northern San Joaquin Valley, and into the Sacramento Valley region and San Francisco Bay Area, as we've previously reported on and written about extensively in Fresh & Easy Buzz.

The retailer continues work on a number of its Fresno region stores but no opening dates have been announced. Work has yet to begin on the two Modesto sites, both set to be stores located in vacant buildings that formerly housed supermarkets.

Additionally, as we reported here, Tesco has postponed its Northern California launch, the first stores of which it originally planned to start opening in 2008, then changed to early 2009, and now has postponed indefinately.

California's Great Central Valley, as its often called, is suffering significantly in the current recession with high unemployment, massive housing foreclosures, growing poverty and other serious economic probelms. That's actually a good perscription for Wal-Mart's brand of discount retailing, which is why the retailer is moving forward with its strategic growth plan throughout the region.

The region also offers opportunity for Tesco's Fresh & Easy if it focuses its merchandising on creating a solid, comprehensive value proposition and communicates it well in the Central Valley, rather than one week positioning itself as a discount grocer, then the next week as a specialty foods market, and the third week as a prepared foods market that also happens to be an environmentally-friendly-focused grocery chain, as in our analysis it has been doing since it opened the first stores in November, 2007. There are some signs Tesco's Fresh & Easy is taking our advice though and starting to better create, develop and communicate a solid value proposition. It's far from being there yet though.

All those things are fine -- selling specialty foods and prepared foods and being a "green" grocer. But they need to be additions to the overall discount grocer value proposition, which should be Fresh & Easy's hub on the wheel of food retailing, with all the other aspects of its merchandising being the spokes on that wheel.

If Tesco does that with Fresh & Easy in the meat and potatoes Central Valley -- focuses on being a discount food and grocery retailer with a solid value proposition first, with all else coming after -- it stands a chance of doing well in the region, in our analysis. If it doesn't, or fails in trying, things are going to be very difficult, paticularly with Wal-Mart now joining the already competitive Central Valley food and grocery retailing market in a big way.

Fresno, California Fresh & Easy Grocery Store to Be First in Chain to Include Local, Community and Neighborhood Design Elements and Features

The Fresno, California City Council last night approved plans for an approximately 15,000 square foot Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market at 2820 Tulare Street in the Central Valley city in California.

The 2820 Tulare Street location is the site of Fresno's historic old Hofbrau restaurant, pictured at top, which once was a city landmark famous for its generous portions of roasted beef, turkey, ham, pastrami and other meats and side dishes, along with its numerous varieties of cold draft beers, before it was closed down.

Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned the Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market at the old Hofbrau location in Fresno will be the first store in which the grocery chain plans to incorporate local, community and neighborhood elements into the design theme of, which is something we've been suggesting since January Tesco do with its Fresh & Easy stores.

Plans for the Fresh & Easy grocery market going into the old Hafbrau include the store having a clock tower as part of the design, a masonary facade and murals which reflect the historic and cultural nature of Fresno and the 2820 Tulare Street neighborhood.

Including local (community and neighborhood) design features, including using murals with a local flair, is something Fresh & Easy Buzz has suggested in numerous blog pieces Tesco do with its Fresh & Easy stores in order to localize them, better fit into the communities and neighborhoods where it has its stores, and create a better "sense of place" to enhance the shopping experience in the stores for customers.

A member of the Fresno planning department told Fresh & Easy Buzz Tesco wants the store to fit into the historic elements of the neighborhood, as well as play up on the old Hafbrau's historic home there.

We've argued for a number of months that it's important--and will lead to greater success for the grocery chain--for Tesco to localize some of the design elements of its stores so as to respect and reflect the history and culture of the communities and neighborhoods it locates its small-format, combination grocery and fresh foods markets in because doing so will make the retailer not only a more accepted member of the neighborhood, but will pay dividends in the form of increased sales and customer loyalty in return.

As we were the first publication to report on March 17 (with a detailed follow up piece in May), Tesco plans to open at least an initial five Fresh & Easy grocery stores in the Fresno Metropolitan region, and likely will open additional stores in the region down the road. The first Fresbo market region stores should start opening in early 2009.

We haven't heard anything from our Fresno sources, both within the city government and in the commercial real estate and business community in the city, about any of the other four planned Fresno region Fresh & Easy stores having localized design enhancements like plans call for the 2820 Tulare Street store going into the old Hofbrau to have. We are continuing to investigate that aspect however.

Meanwhile, based on the overview we received from a source who was at last night's Fresno City Council meeting, it appears the plans for the old Hofbrau building Fresh & Easy grocery store are singularly unique compared to the 63 small-format grocery stores the grocery chain has opened thus far in that the retailer is taking some local community and neighborhood elements and aspects into consideration in the design of the store, rather than it being a cookie cutter-designed grocery market like the current stores, the majority of which have gone into remodeled existing buildings, are.

Like we've been suggesting since December, 2007--localization of some elements of a grocery store's design, along with some aspects of its product mix, is key in today's food retailing and local consumer-conscious society. Or, as the late, longtime former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Thomas "Tip" O'Neill used to say when asked to explain his fabulous success in politics..."Everything is local."

A Selection of Past Fresh & Easy Buzz Posts about Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market and the localization of store design:

February 21, 2008: A Look at Fresh & Easy at @ 50 (Stores): An Analysis and Some Suggestions for Going Forward

March 24, 2008: The Analysis of Tesco's Fresh & Easy From Piper-Jaffray's Mike Dennis in This Interview Published Today Sounds A Lot Like Ours For the Last Few Months

April 1, 2008: Supermarket News' Fresh & Easy Cover Story: Industry Analysts and Others Agree With Our Multi-Month Argument That Fresh & Easy Stores Need Local Focus

April 3, 2008: Our 'Fresh & Easy Stores' Lack A Sense of Place' Theory is Growing; Read What We and Others Are Saying Tesco Needs to Do With Fresh & Easy

April 5, 2008: F&E Buzz Reader and Food and Beverage Industry Entrepreneur Offers Her Suggestions to Tesco's Fresh & Easy About 'Sense of Place' and 'Localism'

April 9, 2008: USA Today Discusses Themes We Sound Off On Here at Fresh & Easy Buzz Near-Daily: Neighborhood, Community and 'Sense of Place' in American Retailing

April 9, 2008: Arizona's Shopper and Employee-Beloved Bashas' Named One of 'The Best' Places to Work in the State For Second Year in a Row

April 28, 2008: Having Trouble in the Neighborhood (Market)? Who You Going to Call? Gene Hoffman Would Be a Good Start

May 7, 2008: Feature & Analysis: Tesco is Launching A Major 'Local Foods' Program in the United Kingdom; Why Not Do the Same At Fresh & Easy USA?

May 13, 2008: Deja Vu All Over Again: Perishable Pundit Writes About 'Duality' Fresh & Easy Buzz Recently Observed At SoCal and Las Vegas Fresh & Easy Store Visits

May 16, 2008: Tesco is Incorporating New Interior Design Elements and Enhancements Inside its 61 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Grocery Stores

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

Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned Tesco plans to open at least five of its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery stores in the Fresno, California Metropolitan region in the state's Central Valley.

Two of the stores will be in the city of Fresno, with one each of the remaining three being in the nearby cities of Clovis, Hanford and Visalia. Fresno and Clovis are in Fresno County, Hanford is in King's County and Visalia is in Tulare County. Fresno and its growing skyline is pictured at the top of the story.

The five stores will be Tesco's first in the Fresno market region of the Central Valley.

The addresses of the five new Fresh & Easy stores are:

>8059 North Cedar Avenue, Fresno, CA, Fresno County

>R Street & Tulare Street, Fresno CA, Fresno County

>Fowler Avenue & Herdon Avenue, Clovis CA, Fresno County

>10th Avenue & Fargo Avenue, Hanford CA, King's County

>105 West Caldwell Avenue, Visalia CA, Tulare County

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market currently has off-sale beer and wine license applications pending with the California Department of Alcohol Beverage Control for each of these store locations.

In addition, we talked with a source in the Fresno County Planning Department who verified Tesco plans to open the five Fresh & Easy small-format, convenience-oriented grocery stores in the above locations.

The planning department employee also told us it's highly unlikely Fresh & Easy wouldn't get approval for the off-sale beer and wine licenses from the ABC, as it's generally a routine matter. Only when a retailer attempts to sell spirits at a new location is there generally the potential for licensing issue problems in California.

On March 17, Fresh & Easy Buzz reported in the brief item reproduced below in italics Tesco was looking to the Fresno region to open stores as part of its March north in the Golden State, home to 38 million people, from Southern California:

Is the Fresno Metro region next on Fresh & Easy's California agenda?

March 17, 2008

Two local sources from Fresno, one who is involved in economic development and the other who is a commercial real estate agent, have told us representatives from Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market have been looking around the city and metropolitan region for potential grocery store sites. Both sources are very plugged-in to Fresno retail business development and commercial retail real estate.

Fresno makes good sense for Fresh & Easy in that it is midway between Southern and Northern California, very close to Bakersfield where it will open at least six stores, is a fast-growing city (Fresno has a population of about 400,000, with a metropolitan region of about 1 million people.)

Our sources don't have any further details in terms of potential sites or lease negotiations yet. However, they said they believe its just a matter of time in terms of something tangible taking shape. We'll keep you informed.

We're pleased to confirm the March 17 Fresh & Easy Buzz Fresno item in this piece today.

As we reported here on March 10, Tesco plans to open five stores in the Bakersfield, California region in the Southern Central Valley either beginning at the end of this year or more likely early next year. [Read the March 10 piece here for the store locations and an analysis of the Bakersfield region food and grocery retailing market.]

Bakersfield is about 110 miles south of Fresno on Interstate 5, which is the major north-south interstate in California.

The Fresno Metropolitan region has a population of about 1.1 million residents, making it the second-largest region in the Central Valley after the Sacramento Metro area.

Fresno, which is the region's largest city at about 500,000 people, as well as the Fresno County governmental seat, has grown over the last 25 years from a fairly small rural city to a teaming urban city. Fresno is the sixth-largest city in California.

Fresno is home to Fresno State University, which is well-known nationally in the U.S. for its football and basketball teams. Fresno State also is famous for its enology and viticulture program, graduating thousands of wine grape growing and wine making professionals over the years who are employed in the California wine industry and throughout the world in the field.

The Fresno region's economy is still primarily based on large-scale agriculture or agribusiness. However, it's diversified considerably over the last two decades. Healthcare, education, retail and financial services are today among the region's key employment and economic drivers along with agribusiness.

The region also has a number of California's fastest-growing cities, according to population-growth data released just two weeks ago by the California Department of Finance. Three of those fast-growing cities are: San Joaquin, which had a 17.4 increase in population from 2006 to 2007; Coalinga, which had an increase of 5.9%; and Fowler, which saw its population grow by 5.8 % from 2006 to 2007.

Fresno region food and grocery retailing market

The Fresno market region's leading food and grocery retailers are Safeway-owned Von's, which operates its Vons' banner supermarkets in the area, and Modesto, California-based Save Mart, which operates supermarkets in the region under the Save Mart banner, along with discount warehouse stores under the FoodMaxx banner.

Other key food and grocery retail players in the Fresno region include: SuperValu, Inc.-owned Albertsons; Wal-Mart, which has a few Supercenters in the region; Food-4-Less, which operates a handful of large, discount warehouse stores in the market; Foods Co, the warhouse store division of Kroger Co.'s Ralphs Grocery Co.; Costco Wholesale; and Winco Foods, which has stores in Fresno, Clovis and Visalia.

Whole Foods Market, Inc. also has a store in Fresno. Trader Joe's has two stores in the city.

Last year, Trader Joe's started a local merchandising effort in its Fresno store, which included selling a range of wines made by the Fresno State University wine studies department. The wines did so well, Trader Joe's rolled them out to most of its California stores, as well as to some stores outside of the state.

The wines were created by University wine-making students and faculty especially for Trader Joe's stores. Fresno State is the only university or college in the U.S. licensed to sell the wines it produces.

There also are a number of high-volume independents in the Fresno market, such as popular Catalano's Market, Fresh Market, Bentley's Market and and a handful of others.

There's also a fairly popular nine-store local hybrid convenience store/small grocery store chain in the region called Johnny Quick Food stores. Seven of the markets are in Fresno, with two located in nearby Clovis.

Cultural climate

The Central Valley and the Fresno region are much different culturally and demographically than Southern and Northern California. Successful food retailers, whether national or statewide chains or local grocers, either knew that before coming into the market or learned it fast.

Fresno region consumers are very "hometown proud." For example, even though the metropolitan region has over a million residents, it doesn't have any professional sports teams. It really doesn't need any though, as the Fresno State Bulldog's football and basketball teams are professional sports teams as far as the area's residents are concerned.

During one or more times throughout the year, just about every supermarket--chain and independent alike--conducts some type of promotion involving the "Bulldogs." For example, in the photograph in this university press release you can see the Trader Joe's-Fresno State wine promotion has a "Bulldogs" theme to it in-store at its Fresno grocery markets.

The Save Mart supermarket chain even built Fresno State's fairly new multimillion dollar sports and entertainment arena, which is called the Save Mart Center.

Save Mart put up the majority of the cash to build the state-of-the-art facility and solicited the rest from its biggest suppliers and vendors. Together, the supermarket chain, the suppliers, and Fresno State conduct numerous promotional tie-ins of events held in the arena with in-store promotions at Save Mart stores in the market, involving the suppliers who helped pay for the facilitiy.

Although Fresno and the surrounding region is much different today than it was decades ago when its favorite and most famous son, the writer William Saroyan, was writing his famous books, plays and short stories, many of which were based in and on his life in Fresno, it's also still the same in many ways.

Family, community, agriculture; these remain the key values in the Fresno area today, despite the massive growth the region has experienced over the past 30 years or so.

Among Fresno-born and raised Saroyan's (he left to see the world but again returned to the city as an older man to live) most famous works include the play "The Time of your Life," which was set in a saloon on the San Francisco Waterfront. Saroyan moved to San Francisco from Fresno at one point so he could experience the "big city."

The writer won the Pulitzer Prize for the play, but refused it on the grounds that commerce should not judge the arts. In 1948 the movie version of "The Time of Your Life" was released, starring James Cagney. Saroyan didn't refuse what was at the time one of the highest prices Hollywood paid for the movie rights to a play however.

Another famous piece of Saroyan writing is the "Human Comedy," which is set in the fictional town of Ithacca in the Central Valley, but was known to all to really be about life in Fresno through the writer's mind and pen.

Another seminal Saroyan work is "The Daring Young Man On the Flying Trapeze," among many others plays, books and short stories he wrote and that have received world renown.

Saroyan died in a veterans hospital back home in Fresno in 1981. He had returned to live in Fresno a number of years before his death, living all that time in a modest tract-style home he owned in one of the city's middle income neighborhoods. You can read and learn more about Fresno's famous favorite son and international literary success story William Saroyan here at the website of the William Saroyan Society.

In his book, "The Time of Your Life," which was published in 1939, a young Saroyan wrote this:

"In the time of your life, live — so that in good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior.

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live — so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it

Fairly good advice for all of us competing in the marketplace "In the Time of our Life."