Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market
3220 S. Nellis Blvd.
Las Vegas, NV 89121
According to Wikipedia.org, Fresh & Easy neighborhood markets is an off shoot of a British supermarket chain called Tesco. The British chain announced that it would be expanding into the United States back on February 9, 2006. They have focused their expansion mainly into the western region on the United States including California, Nevada and Arizona. On November 1, 2007 Fresh & Easy opened its first store in the United States which was located in Hemet, California. Since then there have been a total of 107 stores opened in the United States.
The stores are much smaller than most regular grocery stores. They are usually located right on the corner of two major streets and do not have very large parking lots. Especially here in Las Vegas they came into town right at the same time as Rite-Aid was going out of business, they seemed to have used that greatly to their advantage and bought the old locations and converted them into new Fresh & Easy stores. The carts are all located outside of the store so you have to get one as you enter.
As you walk in there are always waters and plants for sale in the entrance. The first section you walk into once entering the store is the produce aisle. An interesting difference from most grocery stores is that the produce isn’t sold by the pound; it’s sold per package, which makes it a lot easier to buy than having to weigh out every piece of produce. There is then an aisle for frozen food and meats and cheese, they also have a section for pre-packaged meals that look like they have been put together by the store itself. These are usually very simple and very convenient meals made for one or two people. There are then other aisles like most grocery stores that have medicine, pasta, breads, candy, etc. There is a large bread area with many different types of bread I’m not used to seeing in a regular grocery store. Many types are ones that I have never even heard of. There is a pre-made desert section as well with cakes and pies prepackaged and ready to go.
It’s like the food is all packaged for a smaller family. Just like how Sams Club specializes in bulk packaging, it’s like Fresh & Easy specializes in packages made for small families of 2 or 3 people. It makes it really convenient for my wife and me to shop there. Another different point from most grocery stores is that there aren’t any cashiers, everything is self checkout and they have only one person watching the checkout lanes. This makes it good for the customer and good for the store. Good for the customer because we can checkout as fast or as slow as we would like, good for the store because they can cut down on the amount of employees they have to have on the clock which greatly brings down the overhead associated with this type of store. And different than some of the large grocery chains, these stores have always been very clean every time I have been.
My wife and I enjoy Fresh & Easy and will definitely continue to shop there for all of the above reasons. This new supermarket chain has gone without much recognition this far in its progression here in the United States, but I would assume that with all of the locations that keep showing up around town, their popularity will continue to grow as well.
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