More on shopping at Tesco

Quite a bit more, in fact - and written a lot earlier than the me-too efforts in this morning's NYT and LAT. Forbes lays out details of Tesco's strategy in the magazine's June 4 issue (on newsstands in mid-May). For one thing, there's the brashness of the British food retailer - it plans to open a Manhattan Beach location in between a Trader Joe's and a Bristol Farms, which you would think already sell much of what Tesco intends to sell. Except that Tesco has an especially good handle on using technology to make its stores run more efficiently. For example, how many supermarkets do you know use electronic monitors to see how many people enter their stores and thus how many checkout lines will be needed once those folks are through shopping? A British college professor who studies retailers tells the magazine that "they want to get under the skin of their customers."

In 2005 it set up a faux store inside an old warehouse in Los Angeles and told those who asked that it was a movie set. It invited groups of 250 customers in order to watch how they shopped and ask for feedback. Then Tesco researchers moved into 60 California families' homes for two weeks, rifling through their fridges and cupboards, shopping and cooking with them, and keeping diaries of their every movement, from how they got their kids to school to what they did at night. Their conclusion: Americans may have more space, but busy breadwinners were short on time for shopping and preparing.

Famously secretive Tesco is mum on its U.S. grid, but liquor license applications and property managers reveal where it has lined up stores. They're often near office parks and suburban neighborhoods, and share parking lots with chains like Starbucks. The locations range from tony Scottsdale, Arizona to light-industrial areas like in Compton, California. Expect to see smart specialization among these different markets, Griswold says. Outward affluence doesn't seem to be a must. Thirty miles inland from Manhattan Beach, Tesco's Fullerton site is amid liquor stores, car dealerships and cheap motels. Twenty miles away Tesco has leased an old clothing shop in South Gate, a Latino city of compact one-story homes and Mexican markets. The shopkeeper at a tiny discount store next door says he's heard that a market with "expensive organic stuff" is coming. "People here won't want to spend too much money," he says.

But since Tesco wants to get under your skin, you can expect the South Gate store to stick with tomatillos and tamale corn husks. Already, the company has mailed out a promotional brochure in Spanish. Here are those aforementioned stories in the LAT and NYT