Fresh & Easy’s efforts to reinvent itself after its sale to Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos. has taken an early turn.

The grocer late last month began offering breakfast items intended to entice hungry commuters away from drive-through restaurants.

The El Segundo-based grocer’s new offerings include a parfait wrap, open-faced salmon bagel and a vegetarian “soyrizo” and egg wrap.

The menu’s creation is the latest change for Fresh & Easy since Yucaipa acquired the struggling grocer from Tesco of Britain late last year.

Almost all Fresh & Easy stores have already switched to a 24-hour format in a process that began in March. By encouraging customers to stop in for morning meals instead of just coming by when they need groceries, Fresh & Easy is positioning itself at a halfway point between specialty grocers like Trader Joe’s and convenience stores like 7-Eleven.

“We’ve been shifting quite a bit. We’ve extended our store hours,” Fresh & Easy spokesman Brendan Wonnacott said. “If you’re open at 6 a.m., you’ve got to have breakfast.”

The morning move followed the chain’s addition of several ready-to-eat and frozen lunch items in May.

Tesco introduced Fresh & Easy to shoppers in California, Nevada and Arizona in late 2007. The stores, much more compact than American supermarkets, operated with minimal staffing and featured prepared food products.

But the British retailer had trouble connecting with American shopping habits and announced in April 2013 that it would exit the United States after reporting a pretax loss of nearly $2 billion.

– Andrew Edwards