Retail Marketing Memo: Safeway Uses Mother's Day Holiday to Launch its New 'mom to mom' Store Brand Baby Products Line in its Stores

Safeway Stores, Inc. is adding a brand new store brand to its already impressive line-up of food, grocery and non-foods store branded product lines.

Joining such Safeway store brands as its upscale Safeway Select and O 'Organics food and grocery brands, it's value-priced Safeway brand, its Signature Cafe prepared foods' store brand and Eating Right health and wellness brand, is mom to mom, a branded baby products' line of over 80 items, including disposable diapers, infant formula, baby wipes, toiletries and more.

Safeway Stores developed the mom to mom baby line with the help of real moms, according to James White, the supermarket chain's senior vice president for consumer brands.

White tells Natural~Specialty Foods Memo Safeway developed the 80-plus item baby products' line based on extensive research and conversations with moms about their babies, their lives and motherhood.

In the research and conversations with the real world moms, White says the concepts of "gentleness" and "ease-of-use" were the two key variables or take-aways from that process.

"The mom to mom line reflects the truth of the adage 'Mother Knows Best," White says in explaining how Safeway created the products based on the input and feedback from the mothers who participated in the brand's development.

As an example of what Safeway learned about the importance of ease-of-use from the moms, White says the mom to mom brand baby wipes for example are hypoallergenic and come in a flip top package with an extra-wide dispenser, making them easy to access with one hand by mom when she's feeding or changing her child's diaper. This design attribute came directly from the research with the real word moms, White says.

Safeway has chosen Sunday, May 11, to introduce the mom to mom store brand in its 1,740 supermarkets in the United States and Canada. We like the timing.

The real world moms, who's input was used extensively in designing the over 80-item baby products' line, also will have their say in Safeway's in-store merchandising of the brand.

The retailer will use parenting tips from experienced mothers on its mom to mom brand in- store point-of-purchase displays. Shelf talkers featuring these parenting tips also will be used for each of the items shelved throughout the store.

Among the tips provided by real world mothers for the displays and shelf talkers include this one: "Read to your little one everyday. It's great bonding time, and it will help prepare her for school."

The baby products line will be sold exclusively in Safeway-owned stores. There are currently no plans to sell the items to other retailers like Safeway recently announced it will do with its O' Organics and Eating Right brands. [Read our recent piece on that development here.] Not yet at least.

We say not yet because we believe it's Safeway's strategy to eventually do the same with the mom to mom brand if it's successful in the grocer's 1,740 supermarkets.

The O' Organics brand proved successful in the stores over a one year period. The brand is less than two years old and Safeway is already planning to license it to other retailers and wholesalers internationally, as we reported here on April 28.

Further, the Eating Right health and wellness brand is barely a year old, if that, and it's been so successful according to CEO Steve Burd, Safeway decided to include it along with O' Organics in its new brand marketing venture.

We suspect the retailer to look at the mom to mom baby products' brand after about a year and evaluate whether or not it too should go into the brand marketing partnership its created to market, license and sell O' Organics and Eating Right in the U.S. and internationally.

As we've discussed on Natural~Specialty Foods Memo before, Safeway Stores, Inc. is evolving from being a retailer only to being a brand marketer in general, as well as a marketing-driven food and grocery retailer.

In addition to its new brand marketing venture described above, the company also has build its Blackhawk gift card business into a substantial entity.

Additionally, Safeway has created a small division in which it will assist other companies in saving money on their health care costs by using some of the innovative market-based measures its created to keep its own corporate health care costs from rising as high as most other U.S. supermarket chains and corporations in general have

Safeway had among the lowest increases in corporate health care costs among U.S. corporations in the last two years thanks to a number of innovations the company has made in how it offers and handles employee health care and insurance.

Safeway also continues to improve its online/home grocery delivery division. It's the leader in home grocery deliver via Internet ordering in most of the markets where it offers the service.

The San Francisco Bay Area-based brand marketing-driven grocery retailer also continues to brand all of its in-store prepared foods offerings.

For example, it's private label deli meats now carry the Primo Taglio brand, its in-store prepared foods offerings sport the Signature Cafe brand, it's fresh beef is branded as Ranchers Reserve brand, and its most upscale and premium fresh bakery items and other specialty products have been branded Safeway Select Artisan.

Safeway also has extended its O' Organics brand into fresh produce and fresh poultry, and its Eating Right brand into the fresh produce, refrigerated and prepared foods categories.

The grocery chain also is expanding the variety and quantity as well as upgrading the look of its value brands, such as its Safeway brand for grocery and non-foods products and its Lucerne brand for dairy goods.

Safeway also recently created a "branded generic" grocery and non-foods brand called Basic Red. The minimalist-looking yet attractive package, which appears on basic items like toilet paper, paper towels, napkins, facial tissues and other grocery and non-foods items, has a simple red, round circle on the package with the words "Basic Red" in white against the background.

The supermarket chain has been promoting Basic Red brand items like 4-roll white toilet paper and 50-ct packages of white napkins for 10 items for $10, or $1 a package. This is part of the value package offering Safeway said it would start doing this year in its Lifestyle stores as it begins to close in on its goal of converting 100% of its supermarket format stores in Lifestyle format markets. The company says it's about 70% finished with that massive project to date.

The increased emphasis on the store value brands, while at the same time creating and positioning more upscale brands, also has much to do with the state of the economy in the U.S. as well as the soaring food price inflation currently occuring in the nation, Safeway CEO Steve Burd told Natural~Specialty Foods Memo earlier this year.

Burd says consumers are trading down and buying far more store brands in Safeway's stores than they are national brands. He says Safeway is enhancing its value brand offering to stay competitive with the big box discounters like Costco and Wal-Mart, while at the same time offering shoppers its upscale and organic brands for lower prices than comparable national and regional brands.

With its growing brand marketing emphasis, coupled with its evolving Lifestyle retail format, Safeway's positioning could be summed up as the store is the brand, and the brands are the store, in our analysis and observation.

Resources:

>Safeway has created a seperate webpage on its corporate website for the mom to mom brand baby product's line. You can view that webpage here.

>You can learn more about Safeway's market-based healthcare reforms by viewing a video of a presentation CEO Steve Burd gave at the recent annual Food Marketing Insitute (FMI) convention held this year in Las Vegas, Nevada. There's a link to the video here.

>If you want to take a look at some of Safeway's store brands mentioned in our piece above, you can take a look at the grocery chain's weekly advertisement here.

>Safeway donates about $154 million a year to various charities throughout the U.S. and Canada through its Safeway Cares charitable organization. You can learn more about the organization and its charitable giving here. Many of the retailer's donations go to organizations helping mothers and their children.

Retail Marketing Memo: Ad Circulars, Promotions and the Web: Aldi USA and Tesco's Fresh & Easy as Small-Format Grocery Store Marketers in America

Despite what you may have heard, Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market isn't the fastest growing, and its far from the biggest, small-format, convenience-oriented discount grocery store chain in the United States.

That honor goes to Aldi USA, the U.S. division of German-based retailer Aldi International, which like Tesco PLC has food and grocery stores throughout the world.

Aldi USA, which already has over 850 small-format, no frills (about 13,000 -to- 15,000 square foot) discount grocery stores stretching from the Midwestern USA, to the Mid-Atlantic and Eastern portion of the country, is adding about 100 new grocery stores each year in the U.S. for the next five years.

If Aldi USA stays on that course, the grocer, which already is the 24th-largest in the U.S. based on annual gross sales, will have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,400 stores in America by 2013.

Aldi in America

Aldi USA, which opened its first U.S. grocery store in 1976, operates its stores under the philosophy of less-is-more.

It's small-format, no frills discount grocery stores average no bigger than 15,000 square feet and look like a slightly modern version of America's 1970's-era neighborhood grocery store.

The grocery markets carry about 1,300 of the most frequently purchased food and grocery items in the U.S., along with a limited selection of specialty items and various non-foods products.

At least 80% of the grocery chain's food and grocery items are under its own private or store brand labels. These store brand products range from basic dry grocery, refrigerated, frozen and fresh products, to specialty and ethnic foods' items.

The small-format, no frills discount grocery chain sells high quality fresh produce and meats at cheap prices, along with its limited assortment grocery and non-foods offerings.

The stores, similar to Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in design, are essentially shrunk-down versions of a typical American supermarket.

However, unlike Tesco's Fresh & Easy, Aldi USA grocery stores have a much more specifically-positioned merchandising philosophy and format: basic groceries with some specialty items tossed in at the cheapest prices possible, along with a variety of general consumer products advertised each week in-store and in the grocer's weekly advertising circular.

Aldi USA's eclectic weekly promotions

Aldi USA does lots of in-and-out promoting of everything from major national brand groceries, which they don't carry everyday, to gourmet foods on occasion like "Whole Lobster for the best price in the U.S." and numerous ethnic foods items, usually tied-in with major events like Chinese New Years for Asian foods and the like.

But even more interesting, Aldi tends to promote everything--food and grocery products, furniture, computers, consumer electronics, flowers and plants, garden supplies, clothing and more--under the sun except the kitchen sink (which we bet is on the way) in its weekly advertising circular. These non-food durable and consumer products are promoted and sold on an in-and-out basis.

To say the ads are eclectic could be the understatement of the decade.

For example, take a look here at Aldi USA's weekly ad which breaks today, Sunday, May 4.

Sharing space in the current advertising circular with Pillsbury brand refrigerated biscuits, Klondike ice cream bars, fresh peanuts in the shell, fruit juices and frozen pizza, is an electronic video picture frame, a portable GPS navigation system for $189, an under-the-counter AM/FM kitchen radio, numerous gardening supplies for mom for Mother's Day next weekend, cosmetic items for mom, summer dresses for toddlers, and an eclectic assortment of other food and non-food items.

We forgot to mention the USDA Choice Bacon Wrapped Filet Mignon for only $1.99. And...the Vanderwall Bombe Accent Chest furniture piece for $99.99.

Did we say Aldi USA's weekly ads are eclectic ?

They work too: Aldi USA is growing its store-count so fast because the small-format, no frills discount grocery stores are super-popular and successful in the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic and Eastern regions of the USA.

Aldi's aggressive USA growth program

As part of its 100 new stores per-year growth program, Aldi also is moving into new states and further into regions in those states it's already in. For example, the grocer is making a big push into Florida, where it sees lots of opportunity for its brand of grocery retailing.

The no frills, discount small-format grocery chain also is moving into more regions in the eastern U.S., such as New York state and Pennsylvania, as well as filling out with more stores in those places where it already operates numerous grocery markets.

Aldi USA's focus in the Midwest is similar. The grocer is adding more stores in the regions where it already operates to create stronger critical mass and retail brand recognition, while at the same time moving into new, nearby regions where its opening its first stores.

More on Aldi's weekly ads

Aldi's weekly ads are like the one for this week described above each and every week: A mix of store brand grocery products, national brand products, non-foods items, electronics, furniture, clothing, and many other surprises.

For example, take a look here at Aldi's advertising circular for next week, the week of May 11.

The non-foods theme for next week appears to be automobile care. There's a two-ton hydraulic car jack for only $17.99, a "car creeper," those things used to get under the car to change the oil, for $14.99, and a couple more interesting car-related items which you will have to look and see for yourselves.

Most of the food items in the May 11 ad circular are national brands, rather than varieties of Aldi's various store brands, this time around. There's Tyson brand chicken products, Angel brand Soft bathroom tissue, Nestle Juicy Juice fruit juices, Kellogg's and Quaker snack items and a number of other branded offerings.

Aldi USA posts these weekly advertising circulars on its website at least one week in advance of the ad breaking, and it stays on the site until it ends. There's also a function on the website where people can type in their email address so they can receive the weekly ad circulars right in their email box prior to the ad's start-date.

The Aldi ad circulars (printed copies) also are mass mailed out to residents' homes and available in the stores.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market also posts its advertising circulars on its website. However, it's ads run for a three-week period on the website rather than weekly like Aldi's do.

Additionally, although we searched for it, we can't seem to find a function on the Fresh & Easy website in which a customer or potential customer can put in their email address and receive the online advertising circular in their email box like one can with Aldi. Adding this function is cheap to do, and Fresh & Easy is missing the boat by not having such a simple yet powerful tool on its website. [If there is such a feature, and we missed it, it means it's hard to find because we searched all over the site for it.]

Lastly, no place on the Fresh & Easy website's home page does it tell you where you can specifically find the advertising circular. Rather, a user has to guess.

Instead of making you guess, we will tell you where it is: the advertising circular can be found by clicking on the link titled "Fresh & Easy Ideas" in the left-hand column on the home page. It is behind that link where you will find the Fresh & Easy promotional advertising circular.

Why not a link right on the website's home page that says: "Click here for Fresh & Easy's advertising circular/specials?" We think such a simple link would not only be fresh--but EASY as well. Doing so also will result in many more sets of eyeballs reading the Fresh & Easy advertising circular on the website, which we would hope if the retailer's goal.

Learning form Aldi USA's website

Tesco's Fresh & Easy could pick up some general marketing tips, as well as communications quality and ease of use tips, from viewing Aldi USA's website.

For example, Fresh & Easy is still using the exact same website it had set up before it even opened its first store in November, 2007.

The website is really a start-up site in terms of how it's set up rather than one for a grocery chain with 61 stores and about 90 more on the way before the end of the year.

For example, take a look at how the store listing link is set up on the Fresh & Easy website. If a user wants to see where the stores are, he or she has to click on maps, and go through a cumbersome process.

Why not, like nearly every other grocery chain and independent grocer website in the U.S. has, just put a simple list of where the stores are like this one. Fresh & Easy could keep the map function if it likes it, but add a simple store list for quick viewing along with it at least.

There is a zip code box on the Fresh & Easy website, where a user can type in his or her zip code and get a list of stores nearest them. This is a good feature. However, adding a simple store list, and updating it regularly, would make good sense in our analysis.

Food retailer websites are a marketing tool; an extension of the brick and mortar storefront, as well as being a corporate communications and informational tool. As such, they need to look clean, be simple to use, and provide as much information to the user as possible with the least amount of effort.

Fresh & Easy's website has some good features. However, it's overall look, usability and lack of features most other supermarket websites have, just screams "We haven't taken the time to modify the site since we opened our first stores last November." Marketing after all is everything a retailer does--including its website.

Is Aldi USA looking westward?

Meanwhile, there's been some talk since late last year that Aldi USA might start to look west in the USA for some of its small-format, no frills discount grocery stores.

Aldi International already has a western presence in part; the same family that controls the majority of Aldi International in Germany also is the 100% owner of Southern California-based specialty grocery chain Trader Joe's, another small-format success story.

Since the Aldi USA discount format and the Trader Joe's specialty grocery format are different enough that they wouldn't cannibalize each other--many Aldi and Trader Joe's stores exist close by each other in the East, Mid-Atlantic and Midwest already--Aldi USA executives have been exploring coming west with the small-format, no frills discount grocery stores, although it isn't a top priority at present.

The kitchen sink

Meanwhile, we just know one of these weeks we're going to find an Aldi USA weekly advertising circular in our email box that has, along with its normal eclectic mix of food, grocery, nonfood and consumer products...a kitchen sink advertised in it at a bargain price.

We also look forward to seeing Tesco's Fresh & Easy make those needed changes to its website. Tesco in the United Kingdom has one of the finest websites of any supermarket chain in the world. We think its USA Fresh & Easy divsion should have the same.

Retail Marketing & Public Relations Memo: What Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market 'Should' Be Doing Now

Last week, Tesco Neighborhood Market chief marketing officer Simon Uwins posted in his corporate blog on the Fresh & Easy website that the small-format, convenience-oriented neighborhood grocery chain was taking a "pause" in its new store opening blitz, which has found Fresh & Easy opening 59 grocery stores in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada since November, 2007. [Read about the Fresh & Easy new store "pause" or "breather" here.]

Blogs such as Fresh & Easy Buzz were the first to report on Uwins' announcement, followed by a number of UK newspapers. The U.S. business press picked-up the story starting on Monday. And yesterday and today numerous major newspapers and news services like the

Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle and many others are running stories on the retailer's three month new store opening "pause." Blogs of all sorts are writing about the three month new store opening moratorium and store sales' underperformance issue as well.

Most of these news stories and features (and likely those to come the rest of this week) aren't positive for Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market retail venture in the USA. The new store opening "pause" is the story news peg in all of the pieces, along with reports like those we offered months ago that the 59 Fresh & Easy grocery markets opened to date are seriously underperforming in sales as compared to Tesco's internal sales targets.

Uwins and company should have better prepared for this fact, which any experienced U.S. marketer or PR professional should have known would happen. It can happen to anybody though.

The reason any professional with experience with the U.S. business press should have known how the news cycle would have played out is because of the nature of today's media. First, because the newspaper business in the U.S. is doing so poorly, newsroom budgets and staffing has been lean for the last five years or so. As a result, today's U.S. business and popular press is a reactive rather than investigative enterprise in the main.

Business reporters at America's newspapers--with some exceptions of course--tend to report and write stories based on press releases issued by corporations, or based often times on news reports they find in blogs and other alternative media sources.

For example, the business section reporters who are reporting on the Fresh & Easy "pause" yesterday and today didn't read it on Mr. Uwins' corporate blog--even though it was there for blogs like Fresh & Easy Buzz to find, which reported it last Saturday. Rather, they either discovered the news from that blog, or from the British newspapers which started reporting the story on Sunday and Monday.

As a result though, Mr. Uwins' corporate blog post--which we think was a good idea but not complete as we will explain shortly--offered a news peg for the U.S. business press to generate stories about Fresh & Easy, which hadn't been much in the news in the last month. Since the "news" is that Fresh & Easy is taking this new store opening breather, originally reported by the grocery chain's marketing chief, and that the stores have been underperforming for sometime, based on numerous reports, put the two together and you've got the news peg the publications' went with; and rightly so--it's what is news, especially in the absence of any follow-up prepared by Fresh & Easy.

Mr. Uwins and the Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market team should have been prepared for this news cycle however--and even used it to the grocery chains marketing advantage. And, based on the responses from a Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market spokesman to the reporters in many of these stories, there hasn't been much preparation. His quotes to date have been on the order of: 'Things are going well, the stores aren't underperforming, we don't know where this data (the sales estimates) is coming from.'

Not good. Too boilerplate. Non-responsive. Sounds too much like spin. It's not the spokesman's fault either. He can only go with what he's provided with. It's not an easy roll.

What Uwins and company should have done before publishing the "pause" news in the corporate blog (a communication we agree with) was to be ready for the media before the post was made.

What do we mean by ready?

We suggest Uwins and company should have had three stories (news pegs) prepared and locked-and-loaded for the post "pause" announcement. Remember, today's business press, and even many bloggers, are a reactive lot in most ways.

We would have prepared three "news pegs" in the following areas:

First, we would have had one concrete change to be implemented in the Fresh & Easy stores. For example, a common complaint (which happens to be true) about the stores is that they aren't localized and customized enough to the demographics and character of the neighborhoods they are located in. We would have used this post-pause announcement period to announce a major initiative in which Fresh & Easy plans to start in May bringing in a substantial number of more local food and grocery products into its stores. Neighborhood-oriented merchandising.

For example, bringing in more Southern California-produced fresh produce and specialty products for its stores in that region. There are tons of such goods produced and marketed in the region. Additionally, how about a similar initiative for the Arizona Fresh & Easy grocery stores? An announcement that the grocer will stock many more Southwestern-style food and grocery products, produced in Arizona and New Mexico, in its stores. There are lots of those available as well.

Lastly, for both regions, and Nevada, an announcement that the small-format "neighborhood" grocery chain would be increasing the amount and variety of ethnic foods it merchandises in all 59 stores--Hispanic, Asian and other ethnic foods--based on the specific demographics of a given neighborhood. It's needed.

Such an announcement, say yesterday, would have generated lots of press, which in many cases would mean positive stories along with the more negative new store opening "pause" pieces. In some cases, such an announcement (local foods are big news in the U.S. right now) would have cut-short the "pause" story news cycle for the new "local foods initiative" cycle of stories.

But, if we were in charge we wouldn't have stopped there in our pre-publishing of the "pause" strategy, for the post-pause news cycle period.

April 22, just two weeks away, is Earth Day. Numerous grocery retailers, manufacturers and marketers are planning major Earth Day green marketing or green retailing promotions and activities for the day which celebrates the earth, conservation and environmental stewardship.

We haven't heard of any plans for Earth Day from Tesco's Fresh & Easy.

Our second, "locked-and-loaded" post-pause corporate blog post news peg would have been tied to Earth Day. For example, why not an announcement from Fresh & Easy that it plans to give away thousands of free reusable, canvass grocery tote bags at its 59 stores on Earth Day. Further, that as part of this give-away promotion, it will give one dollar for every free tote bag it gives away to shoppers to local environmental groups and charities in its market areas.

Green or environmental news from retailers is big news right now.

Or, the grocery chain could even go bolder. It could follow in the footsteps of Whole Foods Market, Inc.--which beginning on April 22 (Earth Day) will no longer offer single-use, free plastic grocery bags in its 270-plus stores in the U.S., Canada and England.

Fresh & Easy could announce it's decided to offer only paper grocery bags produced from 100% post-consumer recycled paper, along with reusable grocery tote bags in its U.S. stores. In fact, such an announcement would be even more powerful if it was done in conjunction with the free reusable tote bag scheme suggested earlier.

Either way, just doing one or both, we guarantee there would be a significant batch of news stories generated on the announcement in the U.S. media. [Just Google or Yahoo Search Whole Foods plastic grocery bags to get a flavor for what we are suggesting in terms of news coverage. Also, just wait until a few days before Earth Day for the Whole Foods plastic bag self-ban stories to come flowing in.]

Just as we mentioned above about the "local foods initiative" story, one or both of these Earth Day news pegs would result in considerable positive news coverage, along with the more negative "pause" and store sales underperformance stories currently all over the pages of newspaper business sections and in online editions. Further, just as with the "local food" news peg--and even more so because both that announcement and the Earth day one would be timed to be released fairly shortly apart--the "pause" and sales underperformance story news cycle would be shortened in our analysis, experience and opinion.

Lastly, we would have one more bullet in our "pre-pause" corporate blog post/"post-pause" post-publication strategic media arsenal. We might or we might not use it right away depending on the results of our above news pegs, by the way.

This third and last strategy would be to have Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason and his new, soon to be number two man, U.S.-born Jeff Adams who currently is the CEO of Tesco's Tesco Lotus retail division in Thailand, issue a joint-statement saying the retailer recognizes there are some sales underperformance and other format, operations, marketing and merchandising problems with the Fresh & Easy stores, which is why as CEO Mr. Mason ordered the new store opening "pause." [Mason hasn't issued a statement or said a word on the "pause" to date. Not a good communications strategy. Further, believe it or not, the press loves it when a CEO comes out and walks-the-walk and takes charge. It hurts a little at first. But starts to feel real good soon after.]

Further, in the statement, we would have CEO Mason state that in part this is why Adams, a U.S. native, has joined the senior executive team. That he's coming in, from his highly successful run as CEO of Tesco-Lotus, to provide a fresh mind (one that was formed in the U.S.) and a new set of eyes as Fresh & Easy enters a new phase, after the amazing task of opening 59 of the small-format basic grocery and fresh foods markets in a mere 150 or so days.

Further, in the statement Adams would offer his two-cents worth, not to mention talking about how happy he is to be returning to the USA, land of his birth, to be involved with what might just be one of the most interesting grocery grocery retailing ventures in the U.S. in the last five decades, which it is. This isn't spin, it's all factual--and real.

There's an old saying in politics and political campaigning: 'If you have a problem...hang a lantern on it.' We all know the converse: most corporations and politicians (and others) get in trouble not because they address an issue or mistake head-on, but rather because they deny it or even attempt to cover it up. Like its often said about Richard Nixon's Watergate fiasco: 'It wasn't the third-rate burglary that lost Nixon the Presidency; it was the cover-up.'

We aren't suggesting Tesco is covering anything up about Fresh & Easy. Nor are we naive enough to think or suggest any corporation should fully disclose its operational difficulties (first it has to know them though) completely if it chooses not to.

What we are suggesting though is two-fold: First, as we write this, Tesco's Fresh & Easy appears to have absolutely no strategy for dealing with the mostly negative stories that are appearing mostly in the business sections of U.S. and UK newspapers this week. As we have outlined above, there exists a strategy for doing so; one that should have been in place already.

Second, Tesco's Fresh & Easy has not just an image problem, but a real retail format, operations, marketing and merchandising one. But these aren't end of the world problems. They're "fixable," especially by one of the world's most innovative and successful retailers, which Tesco is. However, to fix these problems, those in charge first have to discover them; and do so despite personal pride or hubris. The suggestions we offer are part of hanging that lantern on these problems, as well as thinking strategically when it comes to marketing and media relations.

The story, of course, is still developing. Stay tuned. By the way, with some fast-moving and nimble work, Fresh & Easy could still launch a campaign like we describe above before the week is out.