Fresh & Easy Bankruptcy Again?

[CalItalian]

If anyone cares. I rarely see any cars in the parking lots of the ones I often pass by (and one is literally attached to a Chik-fil-A and still gets next to no customers).

"Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Inc., the former Tesco Plc-owned grocery chain that billionaire Ron Burkle bought in 2013, is preparing its second bankruptcy filing in two years, according to people familiar with the situation."

"An application could come as soon as next week, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process isn’t public. The supermarket company could still find a buyer for all or part of the chain, a move that may forestall a filing, the people said."

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/ ... tcy-filing

[BillyGr]

Seems to be a theme lately, particularly with this particular group.

[klkla]

That's too bad. I've had to go Las Vegas a lot lately because of a family illness and there is a Fresh & Easy nearby that was remodeled in their new test format and I have enjoyed shopping there. But the stores doesn't seem particularly busy. Their biggest issue has always been execution. They have a unique product assortment but merchandising is sloppy and they do not consistently keep items in stock.

[jamcool]

Could Aldi buy the F&E operation? Their stores get open sooner and you get locations in Vegas and Phoenix

[klkla]

Could Aldi buy the F&E operation? Their stores get open sooner and you get locations in Vegas and Phoenix

That could very well be a possibility. They wouldn't want them as on-going concern but would benefit from gaining that real estate and eliminate a competitor at the same time.

[veteran+]

Fresh & Easy's biggest asset is their distribution and production (dry and fresh) facilities. These facilities are state of the art.

Their stores (less than 100) are the problem. The interiors are very poorly designed and would have to be totally gutted. The majority of locations have access and egress issues as well as visibility concerns.

It will be interesting who will take the bait and why?

Aldi?
Grocery Outlet?
Lidl?
Save A Lot?
one of the dollar stores?

[storewanderer]

The prepared foods operation might be a good strategic buy for Kroger who has been trying a lot lately to expand its prepared food offerings at least in the Smiths and Frys divisions. Many items look just like F&E Items, but the quality is a step down from F&E and the prices are a step up from F&E (though they do frequently have items half price). These items are from a third party supplier in AZ and the quality is not very good. The deli salads used to be inedible, lately they reformulated all of them and they now range from acceptable to borderline inedible (and it seems the higher the price the item is, the closer to inedible it is). Smiths also replaced its in-store fresh cut fruit and vegetable program with products from this third party supplier and while the quality of the fruits are fine, the price is about double what it was when they cut the fruits in store and similar in price to the fresh cut in store fruit offered at Whole Foods.

Buying the F&E facilities would allow Kroger to get some control over the operation and, hopefully, get the quality up to an acceptable level. As it stands the program looks like shrink city.

The past few times I've walked F&E Stores, I didn't even buy anything. The merchandising was just not good; produce and bakery didn't look good or were too high priced, cold drinks were high priced, ready to eat items were very limited, and center store was too high priced. I gave them credit for keeping a pretty large private label program going through all this but I really am curious about Burkle's handling of F&E because I feel like they did not try to drive sales. They just tried to cut losses by ending the $$$ off coupons, bringing in less inventory to the stores to cut down on markdowns, and closing stores. The move to stay open 24 hours was a curious one and one I've seen employed by other struggling grocers in the past; between theft risk and safety issues the 24 hour operations are something that work in some locations and not others. Most F&E locations with poor access, not real visible, in second or third tier centers, are just sitting ducks in 24 hour operations.

[arizonaguy]

The prepared foods operation might be a good strategic buy for Kroger who has been trying a lot lately to expand its prepared food offerings at least in the Smiths and Frys divisions. Many items look just like F&E Items, but the quality is a step down from F&E and the prices are a step up from F&E (though they do frequently have items half price). These items are from a third party supplier in AZ and the quality is not very good. The deli salads used to be inedible, lately they reformulated all of them and they now range from acceptable to borderline inedible (and it seems the higher the price the item is, the closer to inedible it is). Smiths also replaced its in-store fresh cut fruit and vegetable program with products from this third party supplier and while the quality of the fruits are fine, the price is about double what it was when they cut the fruits in store and similar in price to the fresh cut in store fruit offered at Whole Foods.

Buying the F&E facilities would allow Kroger to get some control over the operation and, hopefully, get the quality up to an acceptable level. As it stands the program looks like shrink city.

The past few times I've walked F&E Stores, I didn't even buy anything. The merchandising was just not good; produce and bakery didn't look good or were too high priced, cold drinks were high priced, ready to eat items were very limited, and center store was too high priced. I gave them credit for keeping a pretty large private label program going through all this but I really am curious about Burkle's handling of F&E because I feel like they did not try to drive sales. They just tried to cut losses by ending the $$$ off coupons, bringing in less inventory to the stores to cut down on markdowns, and closing stores. The move to stay open 24 hours was a curious one and one I've seen employed by other struggling grocers in the past; between theft risk and safety issues the 24 hour operations are something that work in some locations and not others. Most F&E locations with poor access, not real visible, in second or third tier centers, are just sitting ducks in 24 hour operations.

I was in Fresh & Easy a handful of times in it's early days. To me, it appeared to be a Trader Joes with less private label and unique offerings and pricing that wasn't competitive for the lack of anything really special. In addition, I agree that a lot of Fresh & Easy locations were in areas where a pure discounter (such as Aldi) would've worked but not something more upmarket.

Smart & Final has taken over a handful of Fresh & Easy locations in Arizona, and to me, the Smart & Final format is more suited to the demographics.

If Aldi wants to expand to Nevada and Arizona, by all means, they should by Fresh & Easy. Between the open locations (as well as the closed stores) Aldi could develop a very decent store base.

One area where Albertsons / Safeway tends to beat Kroger on is prepared foods. Honestly, the physical assets (such as stores and distribution center) should go to Aldi and the intellectual assets would work well with Kroger.

[veteran+]

No surprise again!

Fresh & Easy filed bankruptcy today!

LOL

[submariner]

Just an FYI, with he chain's closure on Friday, I will close all topics on F&E and new topics regarding the chain will need to happen over at Groceteria.