Fresh & Easy Could Exceed Expansion Forecast: Analyst

NEW YORK — Armed with a unique market concept and free of the burdens of legacy U.S. retail practices, Tesco’s Fresh & Easy concept could easily exceed its prediction of having 200 stores open by February 2009, a London-based food retailing analyst said in a presentation Monday. Tesco, which opened its first stores in California just last month and currently operates 30 sites, has 270 sites in its development pipeline, according to James Anstead, U.K. food retail analyst for Citi Investment Research here. “Tesco will be very keen to over-deliver,” on its expansion plans, Anstead said. “I don’t think 1,000 stores by the end of five years is at all unrealistic. Within 10 years, 2,500 stores is not impossible.” Tesco is poised to succeed in part because it has “a clean sheet of paper,” allowing it to implement such aspects as self-checkout and central back-office support chainwide more easily than an existing supermarket could, Anstead added.

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