A British company called Tesco is giving up and closing (or if they're lucky, selling) 200 Fresh & Easy markets they'd opened in California, Nevada and Arizona. The premise of these stores, in case you never went to one, was to offer a kind of friendly atmosphere in which you could buy a mix of familiar brands and products specific to Fresh & Easy. It was kind of like a combination of Trader Joe's, Whole Foods and Ralphs…and the first time I set foot in one, I wanted to like it. My big problem was that they just plain didn't stock a lot of the items I wanted. There's nothing "Easy" about a market when after you shop there, you have to then go to another market to get what you need. The "Fresh" part seemed to be true but again, they had a pretty sparse selection of produce. Also, the self-service checkout lanes were confusing and almost every single time I used one, it malfunctioned and I had to wait until a member of the too-small staff came over and put things right.
I'll give them this: The stores were clean and there was a friendly atmosphere in the ones I visited. I also liked their meat selections and if I still ate desserts, I would have loved the on-premises bakery at the Fresh & Easy out in Burbank. I just couldn't find most of what I wanted in them and it looks like I wasn't alone in that.