Re: Fresh & Easy

On Fri, 30 May 2008 11:36:12 -0700, Nonnymus <nobody@xxxxxxx> wrote:

Some of you who live here, or might be visiting in a timeshare where you
do a little cooking, might be interested in our local Fresh & Easy
grocery stores. They're an experimental subsidiary of the largest
European supermarket, and are trying to develop stores in CA, NV and AZ
that combine the convenience of a mini mart with the ready to cook food
of a grocery store's deli and the "natural" foods concept of TJ's or
Whole Foods. The prices I've seen are in the range of TJ's and far less
than Whole Foods.

They date everything, so you can be reasonably assured that the food is
within its shelf life. Mrs. Nonny and I usually have meals for just
ourselves or one other, so we prefer smaller portions of food that I
don't have to screw around a long time preparing. For instance, I
scored two 6-oz. fresh, never frozen, albacore tuna steaks for dinner
tonight for $6.99/# and a pound of fresh cut fruit salad for about
$2.50. It's not just about the price, but also the convenience. The
stores are smaller than even the smallest Albertson's or Smith's, but
much larger than a "Quickie Mart."

I posted here before about my love for the Motherlode cake sold at Claim
Jumper's. Well, Fresh & Easy has a prepared dessert section that has
some really incredible foods like <sp> tres leches or dulce de leche in
individual servings, tira misu and several other offerings. They're
fresh, dated and in just the right size for one or two people. Like
many of the Fresh & Easy prepared items, they're prepared at a
commissary and delivered fresh daily to the stores, I suspect.

The size of the stores is just right, IMHO. The layout still "sucks" as
my kids say, in that you have to go clear to the back of the store to
get milk and other most frequently needed items. However, the size
means that the back of the store is more like the front of an
Albertson's or Smith's, and you don't need to crawl over lawn furniture,
grills, Christmas decorations and pool supplies to get a dozen eggs a
quarter of a mile back in the store. I like that. The stores are not
intended to replace the mega grocery stores, but to provide an easy
place to grab what you probably will need for a good supper, while being
assured that it's both fresh and probably not chemically enhanced.

Like Trader Joe's (TJ's) they offer most things under the Fresh & Easy
label, but also have brand named products. The selection seems pretty
logical and they merely offer a smaller selection. For instance, there
might be 4-6 types of breakfast cereal in medium sized boxes instead of
an entire aisle of 200 selections in 3 different sized boxes. I like
that. Likewise, they might offer 4-5 cuts of beef instead of the entire
selection and the sizes are typically proportioned for 2-3 servings.

To me, it means that when I'm not smoking an entire ***, 4 racks of
ribs, a couple chickens etc., I can buy and cook excellent food here at
the house for Mrs. Nonny without having too much in the way of
leftovers. I suspect that would also really appeal to folk doing a week
or two in a timeshare.


Good info, thanks for posting, Nonny !

Thomas
.

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