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British retail giant Tesco plans to invade California next year, probably locating its first U.S. store in Santa Monica, says Dan Glaister in today's Guardian. Local Brits are pleased, even though the plans are shrouded in secrecy. All that is known is the stores will be modeled on Tesco Express, a popular chain of larger-than-usual convenience stores. Glaister, the paper's Los Angeles correspondent, takes off from the news to fill in the U.K. on our supermarket scene and pass along some strong skepticism that Angelenos will embrace a new brand from across the pond.
The purchase of anything remotely fresh can only be had by getting in a car and driving to a large box with an even larger car park attached. Several players figure on the southern Californian grocery market: the recently sold Albertsons, and Vons, which are both rather dowdy retailers, more Big Lebowski than Desperate Housewives. Then there are smaller, more niche operations such as Gelson's (akin to a downmarket Waitrose), Bristol Farms and Wild Oats (think upmarket Waitrose)...Trader Joe's, which started life as a convenience store in the 1950s, has the air of something cooked up by a couple of surfer dudes...
The young hipster staff wear Hawaiian shirts, signs around the store are scrawled on blackboards in coloured chalk, and the own-brand labelling varies from Trader José's for chilli salsa to Trader Giotto for bolognese sauce. The funky chain is owned by the German retail group Aldi - a point lost, one suspects, on the majority of Trader Joe's highly loyal customers.[skip]
"The UK is a commuter society," says Neil Stern, an analyst with the retail strategists McMillan Doolittle. "Tesco could have gone to metropolitan New York or San Francisco. Nothing could be more different than southern California. Frankly, I can't think of a single location where a Tesco Express would work."
Stern reels off a daunting list of challenges facing Tesco as it launches its US operation: "The name doesn't mean anything, they have no recognition, they have no distribution system, they have no sourcing, they have no sites, they have no management structure. These are all fairly considerable issues."
Guess he finds it a bad idea.
Photo: www.yorkon.co.uk