The Final Days of Fresh & Easy Grocery Stores

The neighborhood grocery store chain that tried…and then tried again…is in its final days of operation. All Fresh & Easy Grocery Stores will be closing by the end of the week.

All Fresh & Easy grocery stores will be closing soon.

For the second time in two years, the Torrance based grocery store chain has filed for bankruptcy and plans to close all locations by mid-November.

Just five years after starting its US venture in 2007, the British grocery company Tesco put all 200 Fresh & Easy stores up for sale and placed the chain into bankruptcy. The reasons cited for the move to sell included misdirected marketing, an incorrect approach to US shopping habits, and stiff competition from other grocery stores.

Fresh & Easy was saved in 2013 by Yucaipa, an investment firm familiar with improving business for grocery store chains. Yucaipa picked up 150 Fresh & Easy stores and saved jobs for about 4000 employees. With a vision to morph the chain into a mini-mart style Whole Foods, things looked promising.

In an attempt to save the chain, Yucaipa and Fresh & Easy tried new marketing concepts, changed prices (sometimes increasing them), and also closed more stores. In the end, the direction of the failing chain couldn’t be turned around. In October of 2015, the announcement came that the remaining 97 stores would close.

Shoppers look for deals inside the nearly empty F&E location in Manhattan Beach.

Looking back, I recall when F&E first opened on in Manhattan Beach on Rosecrans Ave. It was exciting to have a new, small-form-factor grocery store. But at the same time, I wondered “What are they thinking!?” In the area where the store opened, there was a Ralph’s not far away, a Bristol Farms right down the street, and a Trader Joe’s right next door. I wondered how the proverbial..and literal in this case…new kid on the block compete with the other stores.

My daughter and I would quickly wander through the store (quickly only because the store was small and didn’t take much time to navigate) and marvel at the packaged fruits and vegetables, and then at the brands of cereals and bulk goods that seemed foreign and amusing. True to the industry analysts’ words, we rarely bought the vegetables because we couldn’t browse the produce one-by-one like at other stores or the pre-packaged amount was more than we needed; and we didn’t buy the F&E store brands because we wanted the brands we were already familiar with.

I did appreciate F&E for their Thanksgiving sales, though, and will miss them this year! On a few occasions, I took extreme advantage of their $10 off coupons and free turkey options to buy baskets full of food for families in need during food drives.

I’ll also miss their Moroccan mint tea. it was one of the F&E products that I purchased religiously on each visit. My affection for the tea grew even more after I randomly met the F&E employee that developed the recipe. She was a product development specialist for the chain and explained to me the lengthy process they had undertaken to develop the perfectly flavored Moroccan mint tea.

So how will I spend these final days with Fresh & Easy? Well, getting groceries there will be difficult since many of their stores are not being restocked. The items that remain, though – mostly bulk goods and beverages – are discounted and priced to move.

All items in the store -- including wine and liquor -- are marked down for fast and easy liquidation. — All items in the store — including wine and liquor — are marked down for fast and easy liquidation.

So I’ll likely be stocking up on Jose Cuervo (and mint tea if I can find it), and then pouring out shots for me and my old friend Fresh & Easy.

My toast: Thanks for the memories!

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