Fresh & Easy Chain Will Be Sold: Mountain View Store to Stay Open

Fresh & Easy, the British-owned supermarket chain that opened a store in Mountain View last year, will be sold.

Parent company Tesco made the announcement Wednesday, and Fresh & Easy said it wouldn't close any of its existing stores.

"While we don’t yet know who our new owner will ultimately be, Tesco has already received interest from a number of parties including groups looking to purchase Fresh & Easy as an operating business," Fresh & Easy said on its Facebook page.

Fresh & Easy, which also has a store in Saratoga, came to the United States in 2007 and was immediately hammered by the economic recession. 

An analyst told the BBC that the stores were poorly suited to the U.S. market.

"Fresh & Easy was very confusing," International Marketing Partners' Allyson Stewart-Allen told the BBC. "You had champagne next to ready meals next to merchandising. It was a very confused proposition for Americans who couldn't work out what exactly they were."

However, residents of the Monta Loma neighborhood where the Fresh & Easy is located on the corner of W. Middlefield Road and Rengostroff Avenue enjoyed having a local grocer.

"I was pleased when the Fresh & Easy store opened on Rengstorff, a short walk from my home,"Harry Gordon shared in comments. "I still do my primary shopping at Whole Foods but alternate fill-in trips to F&E."

Another resident enjoyed the savings. "I absolutely love Fresh & Easy. My husband and I shop there almost exclusively now and it will be a huge loss to us if they close," said Annamaria Farbizio. "Their prices and selection are excellent. We've saved over $50 a week on our grocery bill since we started to go there regularly a few weeks after they opened."

None of the Fresh & Easy stores have turned a profit, the BBC reported.

The Los Angeles Times and NPR reported that Tesco has 5,000 employees at 200 stores around California, Nevada and Arizona. 

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