Long Lines Mark Fresh & Easy Opening

ELLIOT ZWIEBACH

LOS ANGELES — Customers at the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market’s grand opening in Glassell Park here had to stand in line yesterday to enter the store. Although the line was constantly moving, it persisted from 8 a.m., when the store opened, through noon, SN observed. As a result, the store was extremely crowded, and navigating was very difficult, particularly around the “Kitchen Table” demonstration/sampling area, where people tended to stop. Traffic was also jammed up front at the store’s checkstands, where customers had the option to check themselves out or ask for help, and where lines extended up two aisles almost to the back of the store. Asked why the crowd was so large, a spokeswoman told SN, “Due to the curiosity factor.” Crowds were reportedly smaller at the four other stores Tesco opened yesterday in Southern California. Asked about the opening of a sixth store, in Hemet, Calif., a week earlier, Simon Uwins, chief marketing officer for Tesco USA, said the company had the soft opening “to test out the systems and make sure they were working properly, and we felt Hemet [100 miles southeast of here] was a sensible location to do it. This is a brand new business, and we learned an immense amount in the last few days,” he said, though he declined to be specific.

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