Fresh & Easy Moves in to the Valley

While major grocery chains across Arizona are closing, West Coast based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is moving into the valley.

According to Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market spokesman, Brendan Wonnacott, despite the sluggish economy Fresh & Easy is continuing to expand.

“Each week we see increasing sales and increases in customer numbers, we are opening 3 to 4 stores a week,” Wonnacott said. “For us it is just about providing what customers want.”

When asked about sales figures Wonnacott said that the figures and sales projections for Fresh & Easy have not yet been released.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market pride themselves on being “good neighbors,” therefore each time a new Fresh & Easy is opened, the company donates $1,000 to a local charity in that city.

The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Scottsdale was the beneficiary of one of the donations from Fresh & Easy in August 2008.

Becky Hornack, the Marketing and Public Relations Specialist for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Scottsdale, said the club obtained the donation through an online nomination process.

“We just submitted our information about all the youth services we provide to Scottsdale and we got lucky and they choose us to be the recipient of the $1,000 check,” Hornack said.

Hornack said the donation went into a general fund to help with program expenses.

“There are over 100 programs that we provide to the kids that come to our clubs in our 9 branches,” Hornack said. “We are really grateful, we rely heavily on organizations like Fresh & Easy to help with funding to provide programs and maintain a low membership fee.”

Fresh & Easy differs from other chain grocery stores in the fact that each store is roughly 10,000 square feet, which is much smaller then an average grocery store. Fresh & Easy believes a smaller store allows the customers to have an easier and faster shopping experience, according to a Fresh & Easy press release.

“Well for us overall our research was done in the homes of consumers with basically going through their cabinets and watching how they cooked, shopped, and ate, to get a sense of what consumers were looking for in a grocery store,” Wonnacott said. “We found that overall people were looking to do more shopping right in their neighborhood, easier shopping, which is why the stores are smaller.”

The main element that sets Fresh & Easy apart from average grocery stores is their wide selection of fresh made products.

“The biggest thing at Fresh & Easy is the fresh prepared products,” Wonnacott said. “We have a very wide range of pre-cooked meals that you would make at home, everything from carne asada burritos to beef lasagna to ahi tuna.”

Fresh & Easy opened its first location in Arizona in December 2007, since then many new locations have been opened and are continuing to open in cities all across Arizona, according to Wonnacott. 

Guest article contributed by Elizabeth Cain
Student, Arizona State University