Groups Protest Tesco’s Fresh & Easy

0

The British owner of the new Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery chain had to contend with uninvited guests Monday, when about 100 activists from a coalition of community groups protested outside a meeting with investors, the Los Angeles Times reports.


Tesco, Fresh & Easy’s parent company, had hosted U.S. and British institutional investors and money managers at a Santa Monica hotel to update them on plans for the chain, which began opening stores in Southern California this month.


The stores debuted to crowds of curious and excited shoppers, many of them welcoming the stores to their neighborhoods and cheering the chain’s convenient locations and selection of fresh and prepared foods.


The Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores, which comprises 25 community groups, was protesting Fresh & Easy’s refusal to meet to discuss a proposed “community benefits agreement.” It sought to bind the food retailer to certain wage levels, affordable health benefits and greenhouse gas reduction.


The coalition also has questioned Fresh & Easy’s commitment to open stores in under-served and low-income neighborhoods.


“Financial analysts and investors from all over the world have been gathered here by Tesco so that they can tell them how profitable Fresh & Easy will be,” said Elliott Petty, a retail policy analyst at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy. “However, we are also here to educate — and make absolutely certain that those men and women understand that Fresh & Easy will face incredible resistance if they continue to refuse to engage this community.”



Read the full L.A. Times story

.(registration required)

No posts to display