You may like your local grocery store just fine, but it takes a real commitment to show the world – or at least your Facebook friends – that you “like” it. Occasional customer satisfaction surveys have declared certain supermarkets to be the most or least liked of all, but a look at how many grocery shoppers have hit the thumbs-up[Read More…]
What started out sounding like pretty good news for fans of the Fresh & Easy grocery chain changed dramatically over the course of the day yesterday and into today. Word that the troubled chain finally found a new owner seemed good at first, then it started to turn bad. Ultimately, it ended up in complete confusion, anger and feelings of[Read More…]
(Be sure to read this update: “Shoppers, Staff Upset as Owners Pay to Make Fresh & Easy Go Away”) For once, it seems, a grocery takeover has been met not with shock and anger, but with a sense of inevitability and even a little relief – at least for those whose stores are remaining open. A long-rumored deal involving the[Read More…]
So far this year, at least nine grocery chains have come under new ownership. Could your store be the tenth? Kroger’s announcement last week that it’s buying Harris Teeter represents the biggest, and latest, deal in the grocery merger and acquisition game (read: “Sold! Kroger Buys Harris Teeter”). About six weeks earlier, Bi-Lo scooped up Sweetbay, Harveys and Reid’s (read:[Read More…]
With its limited selection, low prices and coin-operated shopping carts, ALDI has a lot going for it. But one thing keeps some shoppers from fully embracing it. ALDI doesn’t take coupons. The horrors! But as competitors try – and fail – to outdo ALDI, could accepting coupons be the one thing that sets others apart and really gives ALDI a[Read More…]
It may have seemed like a good idea at the time – a small, easy-to-get-in-and-out-of grocery store offering a combination of prepared foods and everyday necessities. Kind of like a Whole Foods in a convenience store setting. What could possibly go wrong? Well, just about everything. The British grocery company Tesco has finally confirmed what’s long been expected – it’s[Read More…]
In her famously cheerful book “On Death and Dying,” Elisabeth Kübler-Ross identified five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. One troubled grocery chain on the West Coast appears to be entering stage one, while another troubled grocery chain on the Gulf Coast has made it all the way to stage five. Nearly two months after its[Read More…]
Coupons for products are nice, but coupons off your total order can be great. Though you might want to ask the stores that offer them, how well those coupons are working out for them. If they haven’t gone of business yet, that is. Take the examples of two troubled grocery chains. With great fanfare, California-based Fresh & Easy has announced[Read More…]
Poor Fresh & Easy – apparently routinely and illegally overcharging its customers wasn’t even enough to keep it afloat. Now, the troubled chain will have to pay fines it can’t afford, and agree to a pricing program that may well outlive it. San Diego’s District Attorney announced today that Fresh & Easy has been ordered to pay $833,136 in penalties[Read More…]
“Fresh & Easy”? More like Costly & Failing. The British owner of the California-based, no-frills grocery store chain says it may be time to pack it in. At a time when ALDI is taking the U.S. by storm, Fresh & Easy represented another foreign-owned small-format grocer when it arrived on U.S. shores five years ago. It expanded to about 200[Read More…]
