Fear & Loathing in the Aisles: Reduction in Hours and Selected Firings Begin Today at 33 Fresh & Easy Stores

The Insider - Heard on the Street

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market began terminating selected store-level employees, mostly but not exclusively regular grocery clerks called Customer Assistants, today at 33 of its 199 grocery markets in California, Nevada and Arizona.

I learned this while visiting a number of Fresh & Easy stores in two states yesterday and today.

I also verified it with a number of store-level Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market employees, including two who were fired today.

In this July 26, 2012 piece, Fear and Loathing in El Segundo: Mass Firings, Reduction in Store Hours at 33 Fresh & Easy Stores ... and More, I reported exclusively that Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market planned to reduce the operating hours at 33 of its stores from the retailer's normal 8 a.m.-10 p.m. hours to 9 a.m-8 pm, beginning soon.

That day is here: I also learned during my store visits yesterday and today that the reduced hours at the 33 stores are effective today. Instead of the previous 8 a.m.-10 p.m. operating hours, the doors to these 33 Fresh & Easy markets now officially open at 9 a.m, and close at 8 a.m.

I'm not aware of one grocery chain (read competitor to Tesco's Fresh & Easy) in California, Nevada and Arizona. In fact, many stores operated by the leading chains in the three states, such as Safeway, Kroger Co., Supervalu, Save Mart, Albertson's LLC, Stater Bros. and others, keep many of their respective stores open 24-hours. The stores not open 24-hours close generally at 11 p.m or midnight and open at 7 a.m.

Grocery stores that are doing well don't close at 8 p.m., unless they're doing so well that opening them any later would prove to be an embarrassment of riches to a modest grocery retailer. And grocers who want their stores to do well don't close them at 8 p.m.

Additionally, for those not experienced in the food and grocery retailing business, if a grocer decides to close a bunch of stores, like 33 of its 199 units, at 8 p.m. rather than the previous 10 p.m., you can take it to the bank the company CEO has very little if any faith in the future potential of those stores. If that's not the case, then he just doesn't understand the grocery business.

The selected store-level layoffs are a part of the reduction in hours program at the 33 Fresh & Easy stores.

Since the stores are opening one hour later and closing two hours earlier, less employees are needed.

Some of the workers at the affected stores are getting transfers to other Fresh & Easy markets.

Other employees at the 33 stores are getting their hours cut, in many cases down to 20 hours a week, which is the minimum they are required to work in order for the grocery chain to pay the 70-75% employer contribution for the workers health insurance policies.

Over the last five years of its operation (the first stores opened in November 2007) most Fresh & Easy Customer Assistants, who are hired part time and guaranteed 20 hours a week at the time of hire, have worked more than the minimum guaranteed hours at the request of either store management or themselves. Few employees have worked just 20 hours a week over the last five years Fresh &Easy has been in operation.

Cost-cutting strategy

The reduction in store operating hours and related reduction in store employee hours, along with the layoffs of the Customer Assistants and others I'm telling readers about today, is all about reducing labor and related costs for Tesco's Fresh & Easy.

The store-level cuts go hand-in-hand with the termination of about 50 employees in one day at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's corporate headquarters in El Segundo, California, which I wrote about here on July 26.

Battles and wars

The cost-cutting comes now, in my analysis and opinion, because Tesco's fiscal half-year ends in about a month. Tesco must show its making at least a minimum reduction in its losses, $245 million for the most-recently-ended fiscal year (ended February 2012), when it reports its fiscal half-year results this fall.

Prior to making the cuts at its corporate headquarters in late July and the store-reductions I'm describing in this piece, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market was not on track to show any significant improvement in its half-year performance over the previous half-year, based on my reporting and analysis.

Since the cuts come so near the end of the half-year, I don't expect Tesco to report a major reduction in losses for the half-year in relation to the $245 million it lost in its most-recently ended fiscal year. It will be interesting to see - and more cuts are coming - what Tesco does report as a loss for Fresh & Easy for the half-year.

Breaking even with Fresh & Easy, which Tesco says it will do so by the end of its 2014 fiscal year, which is less than two years away, is only part of the story for Tesco - it's the battle but not the war. And it's the war that truly matters. Despite winning many battles a war can still be lost.

For Tesco, continuing my battle vs. war analogy, the war boils down to this question: Does Fresh & Easy have a future as a viable and profitable grocery chain?

That's a question I will be addressing in one of my next columns.

-The Insider

[Editor's Note: 'The Insider' isn't a literal or descriptiive title for our columnist. Fresh & Easy Buzz is an independent Blog, and is not affiliated with Tesco, Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, or any of its competitors. No member of the Fresh & Easy Buzz editorial team has ever or currently works for Tesco or its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain.]

Fear and Loathing in El Segundo: Mass Firings, Reduction in Store Hours at 33 Fresh & Easy Stores ... and More

The Insider - Heard On the Street

Regular followers (and if you aren't one, you should be) of our Fresh & Easy Buzz Twitter Feed are aware that for the last couple months we've been reporting there in real time on numerous interesting developments at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's corporate headquarters in El Segundo, California - near-daily closed-door meetings in the offices of the CEO and retail operations chief, and the increasing use of interns to staff various positions, for example.

These developments, and two big ones announced to employees at yesterday's weekly staff meeting, are all about Tesco's struggle to stop the financial bleeding at now five-year-old Fresh & Easy, and its attempt to make good on the promise made by CEO Philip Clarke that the United Kingdom-based retailer will break even with Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market by February 2014.

Clarke, a Tesco lifer (he started as a teenager stocking shelves) who became CEO of the global retailer in March 2011, said shortly after assuming the corner office from Terry Leahy that Tesco would break even with Fresh & Easy by February 2013. However, he added a year to his promise earlier this year, after Tesco reported a $249 million fiscal year loss at Fresh & Easy, which was a mere $4 million less than it lost on the grocery chain two years prior.

Mass Firings
Yesterday Fresh & Easy issued pink slips to between 40-50 employees at its corporate headquarters in El Segundo. The firings are designed to help Tesco cut its way to break-even with what former CEO Terry Leahy hoped and insisted (he still says it will be a success) would be the global retailer's American dream - Fresh & Easy.

But in the five years since Tesco launched Fresh & Easy it has invested around $2.3 billion and lost about $1.5 billion on the fresh food and grocery chain. The losses continue to the tune of nearly $5 million a week.

Tesco's original plan was to have at least 500-600 Fresh & Easy stores operating by now, on the way to 1,000 units in six to seven years from the November 2007 launch. Five years on there are 199 Fresh & Easy stores in California, Nevada and Arizona.

The firings yesterday were across the board rather than focused primarily on the real estate department as Tesco and Fresh & Easy's public relations representatives told various publications who reported it that way. There is a focus on real estate and construction but employees let go span the departments, from IT and operations to commercial.

Reducing Hours at 33 Stores

In a second attempt at cost-cutting - and this is the first time it's being reported anywhere - Fresh & Easy plans to reduce the store hours at 33 stores beginning soon. At present plans call for opening those stores at 9 a.m. instead of 8 a.m., and closing the poor-performing grocery markets at 8 p.m. instead of 10 p.m. Currently the standard hours for all stores is 8 a.m. (a few units open at 7 a.m.) to 10 p.m.

As part of this move, there will be some store-level firings and reductions in worker-hours at the 33 Fresh & Easy stores. Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which hires all its store-level non-management workers on a part-time basis, has already been reducing hours of store employees chain-wide as part of its cost-reduction program designed to help it stop the bleeding at the fledgling grocery chain.

I'm also told by sources in positions to know such things that Fresh & Easy plans to cut some store-level jobs in existing units (besides the 33 stores) that have workers who came on board from the nearly 30 Fresh & Easy units that have been closed over the last couple years. Fresh & Easy absorbed these employees from the closed stores, which added to its labor costs.

And More

An additional move - what I call tinkering around the edges in terms of cost-cutting - Fresh & Easy also plans to eliminate the "Kitchen Table" food sampling stations in the few stores where they remain. (The grocery chain started a program to eliminate these stations in 2011 and replace them with mobile carts but still has some stores with the fixed food sampling kiosks.) The "Kitchen Table" fixed-kiosks are staffed full-time by an employee, hence their elimination in stores where they remain.

The headquarters firings have been a long time coming. Why? Not because the workers didn't do their jobs but because, as we've been saying regularly for years in the blog, the Fresh & Easy model and business just doesn't, in its present incarnation and management, have the legs to achieve break-even in any other way but by making massive operational expense cuts -- and that's what Tesco has essentially concluded. Fresh & Easy has also from the beginning been overloaded with senior and middle management for a chain its size.

Meanwhile, moral at Fresh & Easy's corporate office in El Segundo is lower than it's ever been, according to numerous employees who work there, despite whatever spin its CEO and public relations staff may put on it. I know of numerous employees there looking for new jobs. Some have even created a saying, "The interns are taking over," reflecting Fresh & Easy's growing use of the college students and recent graduates throughout the headquarters operation.

Moral is down at store-level as well. For example, I know of a group of top managers who, frustrated by Fresh & Easy senior managements inability to improve the chain's performance, have been meeting to talk about whether or not they have a future at the grocery chain.

Here's what one store manager told me today, in fact: "Having talked to many store managers today, the feelings are not good.  Most of the talk is around what we should do. Stick it out or get out now?  The consensus was it's time to start seriously looking. A few people are hoping to be bought by someone else."

The firings at corporate headquarters and other changes detailed in my piece are just the beginning at Tesco's Fresh & Easy. More cost-cutting is coming, as are other changes.

The cost-cutting is all about Tesco being able to show some progress in terms of reporting less of a loss (than last half year) for the upcoming fiscal half year. If it achieves that, Tesco can tell the many investment firm analysts who follow it, who will then report it to their investor-clients, that progress is being made. CEO Clarke needs this because it's crunch time - he can't remain credible if he were to change the break-even date for Fresh & Easy once again, say to February 2015 instead of February 2014, for example.

But CEO's are supposed to be big picture, policy guys - that vision thing, as former U.S. President George H.W. Bush liked to call it - not bean counters. Therefore, Philip Clarke should be asking himself one central question, which is: 'What is my vision for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in America and how can Tesco achieve it?' But what, in my opinion, Clarke is probably asking himself is this: 'Can I get Fresh & Easy to break-even by February 2014, as I've publicly said I would, and then find a buyer for it?'

-The Insider

[Editor's Note: Fresh & Easy Buzz is an independent Blog, and is not affiliated with Tesco, Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, or any of its competitors. No member of the Fresh & Easy Buzz editorial team has ever or currently works for Tesco or its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain.]

Major Changes Coming to Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores

Breaking Buzz - News/Analysis

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is preparing to make some major and significant changes inside it small-format fresh food and grocery markets, including adding bakery ovens it will use to bake its artisan breads in-store throughout the day, Fresh & Easy Buzz has learned.

Current plans at United Kingdom-based Tesco and its El Segundo, California-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain call for rolling out the changes to as many as 100 stores by the end of this year.

Below are the key changes Tesco will soon start making to some of its 175 Fresh & Easy stores in California, Nevada and Arizona.

Fresh baked bread and bread-bakery front and center

The first and most significant change Tesco's Fresh & Easy plans to make is to install bread-baking ovens in the stores. The ovens will be used to bake Fresh & Easy's artisan breads in-store throughout the day. The grocer is also considering using the ovens to bake other selected items.

As part of its plans to install the bakery ovens and bake the artisan breads in-store, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market plans to relocate the bread and bakery sections and shelves from their current locations in the rear of the stores to the front of the store, as a way to showcase what it hopes will become a key offering, led by the fresh-baked breads and related merchandising, in the small-format fresh food and grocery markets

The addition of the ovens and the relocation of bakery to a more prominent, up-front location in the stores is part of an overall plan to attempt to create a warmer feeling and improved "sense of place" in the small-format (10,000-12,000 square-foot) Fresh & Easy stores, which feature a spartan "small box" design including cement floors, warehouse-style grocery shelving and utilitarian fresh and frozen food product display fixtures.

In April Tesco's CEO, Philip Clarke, said during his presentation of the UK-based global retailer's fiscal year 2010/11 financial results that later this year the Fresh & Easy stores would begin opening an hour earlier - at 7 a.m. - than their current 8 a.m opening time and concurrent with that change the stores will start offering fresh-brewed coffee and pastries in-store, hoping to become a morning destination stop for commuters and others.

Around five of the 175 Fresh & Easy stores currently open later than 8 a.m. - at 10 a.m. A couple of those same stores also close earlier than the regular 8 p.m. closing time. Fresh & Easy made the changes last year.

The planned addition of the in-store bread-baking ovens and relocation of the bread and bakery section to the front of the Fresh & Easy grocery markets is related in part to the earlier store opening time and new coffee and pastry offering Clarke mentioned last month, although it was in the works before then.

As part of the relocation of the bakery section, the installation of the in-store bread-baking ovens and the upcoming offering of fresh coffee and pastries, some of the Fresh & Easy stores will also get "mini-cafe" areas featuring seating of some type and/or a coffee bar where customers can drink their coffee and eat pastry, muffins, fresh-baked bread and other items in the store, according to our sources.

[You might find this February 21, 2008 story from Fresh & Easy Buzz - A Look at Fresh & Easy at @ 50 (Stores): An Analysis and Some Suggestions for Going Forward - this piece from 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 - and these stories interesting and informative.

Yes. We first suggested serving coffee, offering "mini cafes" and much more in the Fresh & Easy stores in February and March 2008 (see the linked stories above) and have written about it and other changes designed to create an improved "sense of place" (and for other top and bottom line reasons) in the stores since then. For example, here's a story from September 2010 we suggest you take a look at: September 14, 2010: Eight Plus One: Napa Unit Added to Eight Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Opening in Northern CA in Early 2011.]

According to our sources, how many of the stores will get such sit-down options hasn't been determined yet by Tesco and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market.

Essentially, the overall plan is to make the front-of-store bread and bakery section and the coffee and pastry offering the first thing customers see - and in the case of the fresh bread baking and coffee brewing, the first thing shoppers smell - when they enter the stores, something Clarke and Mason hope will help create a warmer feeling, more inviting in-store experience and better first impression from shoppers - along with selling some coffee, pastries and fresh-baked artisan bread - according to our sources.

The multiple top and bottom-line goals of the change and new additions are to help increase customer counts, gain more repeat shoppers, increase sales, and ultimately improve Fresh & Easy's margin, which is currently a rock-bottom negative-38%.

Going mobile with the 'Kitchen Table'

A second major change planned for the Fresh & Easy stores is to eliminate the in-store area called the "Kitchen Table," which is used primarily and regularly for product sampling, and replace it with a mobile unit that can be wheeled throughout the store so food products can be sampled next to where they're located in the stores -  in the condiment aisle, produce or meat department and the like - rather than being done at a fixed location, which is what the "Kitchen Table" currently is in the stores.

We've pointed out more than once in Fresh & Easy Buzz just this limitation with the fixed location "The Kitchen Table" food sampling station.

It's going away, to be replaced by a mobile version that can be used anywhere in the store, allowing food demos to be done right where the product being sampled is shelved or displayed.

The Fresh & Easy stores will also gain valuable product display space by removing "The Kitchen Table" and taking it mobile.

The square-footage currently taken up by the food sampling kiosk is "dead space" from a sales-per-square-foot perspective.

An example: If "The Kitchen Table" currently takes up 100 square-feet, that's 100 square-feet in the 10,000-12,000 square-foot Fresh & Easy stores that's not producing sales. Conversely, if product was displayed in the 100 square-feet space, which will soon be the case, whatever dollar amount of sales that space generates contributes to the total average sales per-square-foot of the store, resulting in a net-plus for the grocery chain.

Small-format stores like those operated by Tesco's Fresh & Easy can't afford to waste precious and valuable sales square-footage with permanent installations like the soon to be mobile "Kitchen Table," as we've pointed out previously in the blog.

Current plans call for turning the space where the "Kitchen Table" is now located in the stores into an end-cap to be used for product display purposes, our sources tell us.

Fresh flowers front and center

Another significant planned change for the Fresh & Easy markets is the moving of the fresh flower displays from the current location in the stores to a front-of-store lobby location.

Similar to the strategy behind moving the bread and bakery items up-front, this change will put the fresh flowers in a more prominent location in the stores, perhaps providing some of that warmth and better "sense of place" (our phrase and useage and not his) Tesco CEO Clarke, who just took over in March, would like to see in the Fresh & Easy stores.

Visualize it this way: Fresh flowers (which tend to evoke warm and fuzzy feelings in people), bread and baked goods (a warm and wholesome fresh food offering) will be among the first things customers will see (visual) as they enter the store. Along with that visual, those with decent-to-good olfactory senses will smell the scent of fresh coffee being brewed and artisan bread being baked, something that shouldn't be too difficult to do because the Fresh & Easy stores are small.

Many of the Fresh & Easy stores already merchandise a selection of fresh flowers and plants at the front-end of the stores and even outside, particularly those units that have outdoor patio areas.

For example, a Fresh & Easy Buzz senior correspondent visited the store in Pacifica, California, which was opened March 9 of this year, today and saw an assortment of potted plants merchandised on the outside patio area by the left-front entrance of the store, a display of fresh cut flowers located up-front near the front doors, and a selection of orchids displayed at the front-end checkout stands.

New meat, deli-prepared foods refrigerated cases

Tesco is also planning to replace the utilitarian open shelf-style refrigeration display cases it currently uses in the Fresh & Easy stores to display fresh meats and deli-prepared foods products with new, closed-in style fixtures that not only are much more attractive than what's currently in the stores but also have much higher energy efficiency than the existing open-style cases do.

The new refrigerated display cases fit into Tesco's overall desire to create a warmer and more inviting look and feel in the Fresh & Easy stores - that needed improved "sense of place" we've been writing about in the blog regularly since February 2008 - along with offering the energy-saving benefits.

A season of change

Tesco is planning a few other changes as part of the overall makeover we're reporting on in our story today.

However, those we've detailed above are the major and most significant changes Tesco is planning to soon start implementing in some of its Fresh & Easy stores.

Neither Tesco or its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain have publicly announced the plans or any of the changes we're reporting on today. The only mention has been of the planned 7 a.m opening time and the serving of coffee and pastries in the stores, which CEO Clarke noted in April.

Additionally, based on a comprehensive search of the three major search engines - Google, Yahoo and Bing - prior to publishing this story, no other publication has to date reported on any of the plans we're reporting on exclusively today.

We also know this to be true because of how closely and comprehensively we cover Tesco and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market.

Therefore, if you see stories on the changes we're reporting on today published in other publications in the following days and weeks, as Fresh & Easy Buzz readers you'll know it was reported here first, and will be able to say you first read the news here.

Current plans at UK-headquartered Tesco and and at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which is based in El-Segundo, California, call for the grocery chain to start rolling out the changes we're reporting on today to selected stores soon.

Tesco and its Fresh & Easy chain hope to have the changes detailed in this story, along with a few others, implemented in up to 100 of the 175 Fresh & Easy grocery markets by the end of this year, our sources tell us.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is currently testing the various new features we're reporting on today in one of its stores.

We're very familiar with the store where the test has been and is going on. However, we've decided not to disclose the location at this time.

The test, along with a couple other variables, has led Tesco CEO Philip Clarke, to "green light" the changes to what could be up to 100 stores by the end of 2011.

Behind the major changes

As we've previously reported in Fresh & Easy Buzz, although he's only been CEO since March 2011, having officially taken over March 3 from Terry Leahy who retired, Clarke, who was formerly head of Tesco's European retail operations and corporate information technology and who's been with the company for over three decades, has already made at least two trips to the U.S. to Fresh & Easy's corporate offices in El Segundo, its distribution center facility in Riverside County and to visit selected stores in California, Nevada and Arizona.

Clarke's first visit was in February of this year, before he officially assumed the CEO position. (See the story linked at the end of this piece.)

Tesco announced Leahy's retirement and Clarke's appointment as CEO in June 2010, and Clarke worked closely with Leahy from that time until taking over in March as part of the global retailer's succession plan strategy.

His second and most recent U.S. Fresh & Easy-related visit was in early April, when, according to our sources, Clarke made the final decision

The new CEO is under significant pressure from major institutional investors to right the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market ship.

For example, Warren Buffet and partner Charlie Munger, who through their Berkshire-Hathaway holding company and investment arm own about 3% of Tesco plc stock, spoke out publicly about Fresh & Easy for the first time at the recent Berkshire annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, which was attended by our 'The Insider' columnist, suggesting to Tesco - and CEO Clarke - that the UK-based retailer should take a very close look at its U.S. operation and seriously consider if it might not be time to pull the plug on Fresh & Easy, which has racked up losses of nearly $1 billion since the first stores opened in November 2007.

Last month Tesco reported a loss of $300 million for Fresh & Easy in its 2010/11 fiscal year which ended February 26, 2011.

We've been covering and writing about Warren Buffet and Berkshire-Hathaway since 2008, as it relates to the 'Oracle of Omaha' and partner Munger being one of Tesco's major institutional investors.

Based on our extensive coverage, we can report with a fairly high degree of confidence the recent comments by Buffett and Munger are the first time either has spoken out publicly in any way that casts doubt on Tesco's decision to continue forward with Fresh & Easy or its ability to succeed with the U.S. chain.

In fact, less than a year ago Buffett bought additional Tesco plc stock, and at the time wasn't concerned about Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market being a drag on Tesco's value. He's concerned it is now, which is the primary motivation behind the statements he and Munger recently made.

Clarke said shortly after taking over as CEO and again in April he has faith in Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market succeeding going forward.

The current strategy signed off on by Clarke is to have 300 Fresh & Easy stores, all being distributed to out of the Riverside County facility in Southern California, open and operating by the end of Tesco's 2012/13 fiscal year, which ends in February 2013.

Philip Clarke, is on the record as saying with the 300 stores open by then, Tesco will break-even with Fresh & Easy when it reports its 2012/13 financial results in April 2013.

There are currently 175 Fresh & Easy stores open and operating in California, Nevada and Arizona.

Tesco said in April it plans to open 50 new Fresh & Easy stores this year, all in the existing three states.

So far this year the retailer has opened 21 Fresh & Easy grocery markets - 11 in Northern California and 10 in Southern California.

No new Fresh & Easy stores are set to open in May. That means from June-to-December of this year Tesco needs to open 29 Fresh & Easy stores to hit its 50 store target.

The 21 new units were opened from January -to- April of this year, so opening 29 Fresh & Easy stores over the next seven months is achievable for the retailer, based on what's its done to date so far in 2011 and its past new store opening track record.

But it's going to be more difficult for Tesco to get to the 300 store number by the end of its 2012/13 fiscal year.

For example, if it opens the 50 new Fresh & Easy units this year, it will have 225 stores open and operating as it goes into 2012, leaving the retailer with 75 new stores to open from December 2012 -to- mid-February 2013.

The goal is achievable but not easy - particularly making sure the 75 stores are in prime locations, which is something Tesco has not done with Fresh & Easy in the three and a half years its been opening stores.

The reality is, far too many of the current Fresh & Easy stores are in poor or mediocre locations, which is something Tesco began to remedy when it closed 13 poor-performing stores - six units each in Nevada and Arizona and one grocery market in Southern California - on November 2010. There are stores currently doing as poorly from a sales perspective as those 13 were when the decision was made to close them last year.

But for the analyst at the London, UK investment firm and any others who are currently suggesting to the media and others they have the inside track on knowing Philip Clarke plans to pull the plug soon on Fresh & Easy, the major changes we're reporting on today serve as a counterfactual, not to mention empirical, refutation of those assertions, which in at least the one case are being made as part of a publicity campaign.

They're statements and not arguments because the assertions are backed by very little knowledge (and the hard work required to obtain that knowledge) about what's actually going on at Tesco's Fresh & Easy, accept for what they read in Fresh & Easy Buzz and perhaps elsewhere.

The informaton and work product from an objective publication like Fresh & Easy Buzz is then appropriated wthout permission and intentionally used to support an a priori determined conclusion - and also because it's easier than doing the hard work themselves - without informing their primary audience and the writers and editors of the publications they're seeking publicity from where they obtained the information. [See May 4, 2011 here and May 6, 2011 here, for an example.]

[Also read this story we wrote and published over three years ago in Fresh & Easy Buzz - 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.]

After all, would Tesco be making what will be a considerable financial investment in implementing the changes we're reporting on if

The answers are - no. No yet. And not in 2011, according to our research and reporting. That doesn't mean Clarke and Tesco's board won't pull the plug on Fresh & Easy before the end of Tesco's 2012/13 fiscal year however. Doing so remains a distinct possibility.

The major changes reported in our story, along with a few more to come, are, as noted earlier, set to start being rolled out to selected stores, beyond the current single test unit, soon.

Are the changes the right ones?

Will the major changes be enough to help Tesco right the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market ship?

We plan to address those propositions and a couple others in an upcoming piece.

Stay tuned.

[Editor's Note: The changes detailed aren't the only major and significant ones coming to Tesco's Fresh & Easy. Read our exclusive report from April 12, 2011 here: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market to Shrink Health & Body Care Sections in Stores; Add Candy and Snack Items.]

[Readers: Click on the following links - sense of place, store design, local retailing, neighborhood retailing, sense of place theory, localism, localization, localizing Fresh and Easy to neighborhoods, Fresh and Easy sales performance, store average weekly sales, store sales analysis,Warren Buffet, Philip Clarke,Sir Terry Leahy, Tim Mason - to see some related stories.]

Additonal Suggested Related Reading

May 11, 2011: CEO Philip Clarke Launches A New 'Vision and Strategy' For Tesco

April 19, 2011: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Posts Biggest One-Year Loss Yet - $307 Million Loss on Sales of $818 Million

February 23, 2011: Incoming Tesco CEO Philip Clarke Visits America - And Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market

October 8, 2010: Incoming Tesco CEO Philip Clarke Needs to 'Imagine' When it Comes to Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA

September 13, 2010: Reading Philip Clarke's Tea Leaves: Might A Mixed Corporate/Franchise Model Be in Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's Future?

June 12, 2010: Will Phil Clarke Shake Things up at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA When He Becomes Tesco CEO in 2011?