Boycott Fresh & Easy

[sandnsea]

A message from the UFCW:

A new non-union grocery chain called Fresh & Easy is opening in communities throughout Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.

What’s different about this non-union grocery chain is that Fresh & Easy is owned by Tesco, one of the largest and most aggressive corporations in the world. Tesco is known as the "Wal-Mart of Britain" and they’re now opening stores in the United States under the name Fresh & Easy.

Tesco has refused to meet with UFCW leaders, and just like Wal-Mart, they want their stores to be non-union.

Tesco has already opened over 60 stores and are planning to open a further 150 by the end of the year. We cannot afford another company like Wal-Mart in our communities. Here’s what you can do:

Go to http://www.FreshandEasyFacts.com">FreshandEasyFacts.com today to sign the pledge not to shop at Fresh & Easy.

Tell all your friends and family to sign the pledge not to shop at Fresh & Easy.

We are always stronger when we stand together!

Please go to FreshandEasyFacts.com to learn more, and share this important information with your family and friends.

[Sherman A1]

1. Thanks for the link and update

:toast:

[mrreowwr_kittty]

2. They also advertise on Rush in my area.

I flipped the station from Nova M over to the crazy RW station to see what Lardass was up to, and what did I hear? An ad for Fresh and Easy. I will never darken their doorway. :puke:

[slackmaster]

3. Is it reasonable to expect a poor person who lives near one to boycott it?

I'm not sure it's appropriate to expect everyone to put the interests of society as a whole over their need for affordable, nutritious food.

[sandnsea]

4. Is it reasonable to not state the fucking obvious

Every goddamn time somebody tries to get the majority to do something different.

[slackmaster]

5. No, it's not reasonable for you to expect everyone to be silent on such an important point

No matter how "fucking obvious" you think it seems.

Feel free to use the Ignore feature if my posts offend you.

[sandnsea]

16. It's been stated so many times, over and over

Obviously if location or money dictates where someone shops, then that's life. Obviously these threads are for people who have and want to make the choice. It isn't necessary for someone to inject their anti-boycott argument every blessed time.

[slackmaster]

18. I didn't make an anti-boycott argument

:eyes:

[taterguy]

6. Done

Not much of a sacrifice since I live on the East Coast.

[AlCzervik]

7. i've been to Tesco stores in London and they always seemed ok, i never bought much beyond some

Cadbury, i wonder if their stores there have the same reputation, my niece is going to school in London so i'm sending here this link.

[LeftyMom]

8. They're putting one in not terribly far from me, out in Natomas.

When it's ready I'll go have a look, just to see what they've got.

I know UK grocers, including Tesco, are very good about labeling their vegetarian and vegan items appropriately, and I'm curious to see if the US spin-off does the same. If they do, I'd like to see that practice spread to US shops, so I'd probably shop there occasionally to support that practice. I wouldn't do my regular shopping there, and my regular grocery store is cooperatively owned and the employees are union. However, I already duck into some non-union stores (Trader Joes, Whole Foods) for occasional items that aren't available elsewhere, or when I don't need enough stuff to justify the trip into midtown, and don't see why a Tesco-owned shop would be any different.

[AlCzervik]

9. The Tesco's in Europe including the super sized ones all seem pretty good, clean, well lit and no

bad smells at least in the ones i was in.

[LeftyMom]

11. No bad smells. Isn't it sad that we have to use that as a criteria in evaluating grocers?

I went into Ralphs once and the whole store smelled like really rancid fish. Another time I was at Safeway and there was a whole display of tangerines that were going rotten and dripping onto the floor.

[AlCzervik]

13. i always take a whiff, like are they spraying to mask something rotting? the local save mart

when it used to Albertsons smelled like lysol all the time and a quick trip by the meat case would tell you why, the whole place was dirty and drippy.

[LeftyMom]

14. The Albertsons/SaveMart by my Dad's house is FOUL.

The floors are always sticky and gross, the cart handles are sticky and half of them are black with grime, the employees clearly don't give a shit. And that's the nicer store near him, there's a FoodsCo (Kroger for poor people, I guess) that's even worse, and that place freakin' stinks. The funny thing is, when the store was a Lucky (three buyout/mergers ago) it was scrupulously clean, so it's not the neighborhood, just the willingness of the staff to keep the place up.

When I lived over there, I'd drive to the Raleys over at Bond and 99, because it was the closest store that was clean.

[AlCzervik]

17. Hey have you been to any Nugget markets? They just opened one on Bruceville

and since i have to go to Trader Joe's tomorrow i was thinking of checking it out but i don't anyone who has actually shopped in one yet.

[LeftyMom]

19. I've been to the one in Davis.

It's nice, but really expensive. Kinda between BelAir and Whole Foods on the pretension scale, closer to Whole Foods. Their bakery looked really amazing.

[AlCzervik]

20. ok thanks, i'll go just for the bakery.

[Kutjara]

10. Actually, Tesco is not known as "the Wal-Mart of Britain."

They're a leading quality food retailer, at or near the top of the market (arguably, only Waitrose have a stronger brand image). If anything, the ASDA supermarket chain is "the Wal-Mart of Britain," for the simple reason that it's owned by Wal-Mart. The "George" clothing line you find in Wal-Marts all over the US is, in fact, an ASDA brand.

Fresh & Easy, on the other hand, brings none of Tesco's strengths to the US. Out of curiosity, I visited the two branches closest to me (La Habra and Orange, CA). The stores are fairly dispiriting places, with a pretty limited range of fresh food. Most of the floorspace was devoted to cheap-looking rack shelving over stacked cases of canned and packaged goods, giving the place a 99 cent store feel. More worrying, a significant proportion of the "fresh" products were past their sell-by dates.

F&E appear to want to reduce their headcount to a bare minimum. The eight checkouts in the Orange store, for example, are all automated "scan it yourself" setups, manned by a single employee on a master terminal. His job appeared to involve little more than "approving" credit card purchases over some preset limit. My $75 total was referred to him for "clearance," so the limit is set fairly low (I guess F&E don't expect their customers to buy very much). In total, I would guess no more than ten people were on duty during my visits (three on the shop floor, one at the registers, and I'm guessing maybe five or six in the back). Nobody was policing the parking area, because shopping carts had completely overflowed the "cart return" area and were half-blocking one of the parking lanes.

One of the nice things about shopping at Tesco in the UK is the wide range of high-quality "ready meals" they carry. Quite sophisticated dishes, made with excellent ingredients, can be selected pre-prepared from the chiller cabinet, and then simply warmed in the oven or microwaved at home. For busy people, they're a godsend. I thought of them as "TV dinners done right." One of the reasons I visited F&E was because I thought they might bring the ready-meal concept to the US (where I'm still amazed to find none of the major food retailers offer anything similar). The good news is they have. The bad news is they're crap. Flavorless, lackluster attempts at "Mexican," "Indian" and "Thai" cuisine (I use the quotes to avoid insulting real Mexican, Indian, or Thai food) that, if you close your eyes, are hard to tell apart.

The other "fresh" offer at F&E is, of course, produce. What first struck me was that every vegetable and piece of fruit was wrapped in cellophane. The amount of unnecessary excess packaging was appalling. I couldn't understand why F&E did this until a realization hit me: this wasn't a grocery store, it was a vending machine. All the products are prepared and packaged somewhere else, and then simply shipped to the store and placed on the shelves by utterly interchangeable semi-skilled employees. There is no produce manager, ensuring only the best products adorn his/her shelves. There's no butcher, ready to make cuts to order. There's no fishmonger, happy to recommend the catch of the day. Instead, there are low-paid teenagers, trained in nothing but how to take a product out of a box and put it on a shelf.

It's unsurprising that F&E have taken such an anti-union stance. Skilled, competent employees are the last thing they want. Organized, skilled, competent employees are the stuff of nightmares for F&E's C-suite executives.

I really fail to understand what Tesco hopes to achieve with F&E. They've left everything that makes Tesco great in the UK and concocted a format that's little more than a large food vending machine (with less charm), staffed by uninterested, poorly trained, poorly paid drones. I can't honestly see F&E making it.

[Goat or Panic]

23. "this wasn't a grocery store, it was a vending machine"

You hit the nail on the head. I couldn't figure out the weird vibe I got from my local F&E (Simi Valley) but you just spelled it out. F&E's prices are insanely low, i've knocked about 80-100 dollars off my grocery trips for bare essentials, but I still end up at Whole Foods for produce and meats.

Thanks for posting the info sandnsea, it's good to get discussions going about the food we buy and how it gets to us. I does seem that most of the non-UFCW complaints come from the European stores, but the apple usually doesn't fall far from the tree does it?

Does anyone have recommendations for good, inexpensive union grocery stores? I don't know too much about Target's union status, but have found some great, inexpensive organic products there.

[magellan]

12. Actually, ASDA is the Walmart of the UK -- literally

ASDA became a subsidiary of Walmart in 1999, says Wiki. I remember when they floated the new trial balloon ASDA-Walmart supercentre up in the north of England. Apparently it was a success.

Tesco isn't affiliated with Walmart, but since we left the UK Tesco have become more like ASDA-Walmart to compete. The Tesco we shopped at, just a supermarket at the time, now has two floors and various departments.

We often shopped on the High Street at the butchers and the farmers market. That was within walking distance and we knew where the food was coming from!

[Omaha Steve]

15. K&R!

Can't boycott them until I visit LA in Aug. 09.

[cali]

21. Fresh & Easy? Sounds like a feminine hygeine product.

[JDPriestly]

22. We went into the local store shortly after it opened.

We were expecting a store with organic foods. There were some rather wilted vegetables and drowsy looking fruits, but mostly, there was a very poor selection of canned food and other uninteresting food.
I do not think that store is suited to rour neighborhood which is a mix of artistic types, less well paid professionals like teachers and social service and government employees and immigrants (mostly Hispanic and Asian). We have cheaper stores, and we have stores that offer a higher quality and better selection. I do not think that these stores will be able to compete. They appear to be poorly managed. This is just my opinion, but so be it.