dlake02

There seems to be far more emphasis on price (and making it as low as possible) rather than quality here. Tesco UK is not great at that either, but with the increased consumer awareness of organic, sustainability, etc that has been key in the UK market for at least 10 years now, others such as Co-op, Waitrose, Sainsbury, have made a killing and pushed Tesco quality up.

Food is SO cheap here - even a major shop in Wholefoods costs us a lot less than the equivalent in Tesco, let-alone Waitrose.

Personally, I'd rather spend another 10-20% and have much better quality food - although here in CA we do get some excellent fruit and vegetables (just not from the local supermarkets).

MarkCowan

Santa Monica Seafood in Costa Mesa.
Katella Deli in Cypress ( near Los Alamitos race track )
The Shamrock and Thistle on Valley View off the 405 in Garden Grove.
Fresh and Easy has been known to carry them also.

Hotscot

Excellent. Thanks Mark. I'll keep the cooler box in the car.

(Oh man just reading about smoked haddock makes me taste it.)

GeoffM

I don't know specifically kippers but Vallarta (Mexican supermarket) here has a large counter for fish with all sorts of bits and pieces. Certainly a lot bigger than the tiny counters in Stater Bros, so logically they ought to have a wider range... famous last words.

rallybug

We have Smith's (pretty much grocery only), Smith's Marketplace (more like a smaller Tesco with non-grocery) which are part of the Krogers group, then Dick's, Winegar's, Harmon's and Dan's (not been in Dan's yet though as I'd have to go down into SLC) which are independent supermarkets tied into Associated Foods.

Then there's Wal-Mart, Target, Sam's and CostCo, of course.

Most of our shopping is done at Smith's - it's further than Winegar's or Dick's, but cheaper, plus you get points for the fuel at Smith's Marketplace (up to $2 a gallon off, at the moment). It has pretty much everything we need, from cheap own-brand to the more expensive brand names (Twinings, etc), but we do prefer the bread from the store bakery in Dick's or Winegar's - can't have it all though.

We don't buy that much food from CostCo/Sam's, although we do partake of the sample stations About the only food stuffs we buy are sharp cheddar (5lb loaf - we get through a lot), mature cheddar (both carry Coastal Cheddar from Dorset), and turkey mince from CostCo as it's nice and a good price (unless Sprouts is having a sale on it).

Very occasionally we'll hit Sprouts or WholeFoods, but very rarely.

robin1234

To get to a halfway decent supermarket, something reasonably comparable with what you'd find in any English town except the smallest, I have to drive 130 miles in one direction or the other (Onion River Coop in Burlington, VT or any one of several Wegmans in Syracuse, NY.) Sure there are plenty of towns and cities closer, but all they have is the dire Grand Union type of market.... your choice of 20 brands of canned tuna, your choice of 50 brands of "coffee" (all undrinkable) and totally tasteless "produce." Oh and chips. And soda.

Uncle_Bob

They claimed to be a place where you could stop by on your way home from and put together a few products for a fresh meal.
The had a good range of meats and fish. But it went wrong with stock levels (they ran out alot) and with fruit and veg products, its was costco style bags of produce. Who wants to buy a sealed tray of 8 tomatoes for an evening meal? you can't buy one or two can you. No scales for weighing you see. I purchased a couple of produce items their and they were far from fresh.
Its sad to see FE go from a British foot perspective but unfortunately the quality/price was not competitive enough to pull people away from the drive-through.
I'm not sure if they make a good buy out prospect. They are paying for lots of empty stores and they have their own distribution center the size of Disneyland.

Giantaxe

That wasn't their business model though. They generally picked locations in relatively marginal areas that were under served by existing grocery stores. Going "upmarket" in some of those locations likely would have failed even more.

I'm kind of sad about this, especially as a third F&E store was due to open in SF in a location pretty close to where I live. For me it's now Whole Foods and Trader Joes. Safeway I hate except for bulk purchases of things like paper towels, toilet paper etc.

Some more info here:

http://www.latimes.com/business/mone...,4922150.story

dlake02

Exactly - I think that they didn't pick enough of a fight with the existing base. They should have been a lot more bold....

Giantaxe

"Why Tesco's Fresh & Easy turned Americans off"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2...-americans-off

Article's kind of lazy but some of the comments underneath are worth reading.

GeoffM

That's odd about the self checkouts. When I was last in the US 3 years ago I went with a living-in-the-US Brit to some major supermarket in Indiana which had loads of self checkouts. His comment was "Do they have these in the UK yet?" and was gobsmacked when I said that we have loads of them.

Around here, not so many places except Lowes and Home Depot, and nobody seems to grumble at using them. Albertsons had a self checkout; it failed to work for me; the one and only sales assistant looked over, said "I'll be with you in a minute", proceeded to serve three more customers (two after I'd arrived), and then finally decided to wander over to help. The store closed down recently.

The Asda Walmart I used to shop at in the UK expanded their self checkouts last year, from about a dozen to double that number, such is the popularity of them. I really wish there were more here.

Speedwell

Ugh, I am chronically unable to use self-checkouts. I start with the greatest possible optimism, and check my groceries in a logical way. Then things go wrong. I need to think about how I want to bag my groceries before I start, because once I put something in a bag, I can't take it out again to reorganize things. If I don't have the right sort of onions, I can't retrace my steps and choose the correct ones instead. If something doesn't scan, I can't punch in the number beneath the bar code. If I buy beer, I can't show the system that I'm of legal age. If I get frustrated, I can't kick the idiot machine in the teeth. I always walk away with my heart pounding and my head swimming.

Oh, and I work in IT. What is wrong here?

robin1234

Nowhere around here has self-checkouts. We do have a really big WALMART here, I was told that when it opened about two years ago, the management team decided not to include self-checkouts because either they felt it would be too much of a stretch for the local population (no self checkout within fifty miles of here, so local people would not have a clue how to proceed,) OR the people around here are so poor & desperate that they would try to steal stuff..

Giantaxe

I've used self checkouts in several stores, but I think it's true that F&E's were more problematic than most. I've lost count of the number of times that I've had to get help because there was an "unexpected item in bagging area". If it weren't for the fact that they sold some English stuff, I probably would have given up on them.

GeoffM

I wonder if their self checkouts are a different manufacturer to the well established ones? I remember the Asda and Tesco ones were the same brand, as was that one in Indiana.

Might be sad and nerdy, and go and have a look later. I need some groceries anyway.