IE Business Daily Business news for the Inland Empire.
Fresh & Easy will close 30 stores in Southern California, including six in the Inland Empire.
The El Segundo-based grocery chain will close about 50 stores California, Nevada and Arizona, or roughly 30 percent of company’s 167 stores, according to multiple published reports.
All of the stores are being sold, which will allow Fresh & Easy to pay for a new 3,000-5,000-square-foot store that will represent a new concept of for fast-food stores.
Fresh & Easy was originally owned by Tesco, the retail giant sometimes called the Walmart of the United Kingdom. It was Tesco’s entrance into the U.S. market.
The chain, meant to be a small neighborhood market, entered the U.S. market and immediately struggled to find a niche. It operated for several years in the red, at one point suspended development of new stores while it reassessed its place in the U.S. market and ultimately filed for bankruptcy in 2013.
That same year, Fresh & Easy was purchased by the Yucaipa Cos., which owned by grocery store magnate and billionaire Ron Burkle. Yucaipa Cos. recently started a new e-commerce service in Las Vegas that is being tested for possible wider use, the reports stated.
The Inland Fresh & Easy stores scheduled to close are the Chino Hills store at Chino Hills Parkway and Eucalyptus Avenue; the Corona store at Ontario and Rimpau avenues; the Upland location at Eighth Street and Mountain Avenue; the Ontario store at Euclid Avenue and Philadelphia Street two locations in Rancho Cucamonga, one at Foothill Boulevard and Vineyard Avenue, the other at Foothill and Day Creek boulevards, the reports stated.
