Let me preface what follows by saying that I was an early fan of Fresh&Easy when it first opened its stores near my home in Arizona. This may have had something to do with the fact that I grew up in England and worked for Tesco’s (their parent) on Saturdays while still in school. (The pound I earned in the shirt department may have bought my loyalty - so full disclosure here.) On the basis of what I was reading before the open, I certainly liked the concept of a chain of 10,000 sq ft “neighborhood” markets focusing on fresh, affordable food. I was thinking Mark & Spencers food department meets Trader Joes.
I would have checked them out anyway but they sweetened the deal by giving me a coupon for $5 off a $20 purchase. Then another. And another. In the mail, in the newspaper, at their check-out counter, even online. And better yet, I discovered that if I spent more than $40, the system would accept a second coupon - a whopping 25% off already low prices. I’ll take that. And so apparently did many of my neighbors. When the researcher in me asked them what they thought about Fresh&Easy, the answer was usually along the lines of: “Oh, that’s the store with the coupons I get all the time.” Nothing about the bright interior, convenient locations, everyday low prices, fresh foods… almost always it was all about the coupons. This got to be quite a personal project for me. (Note: Fresh&Easy is not a client and, after this, will probably never be.) I asked a lot of people what they thought of them - my hairdresser , the guy who trims my trees (hey, this is Arizona), a woman sitting next to me at the car wash, and lots of friends. Always the same answer - the store with the coupon, or maybe the green coupon. In short, Fresh&Easy had done a fantastic job training its customers to expect great coupons, consistently and often.
Well last week, it stopped. No more free coupons at the check-out counter. No more in the morning paper or in the mail - at least not in my mail. Not to be outdone, I went on the web and hunted for Fresh&Easy + coupon on Google and found one for $6 off a $30 purchase buried in their website. Off I go to the store, coupon in hand, and found three cars in the parking lot at noon on a Wednesday. More staff than shoppers. Maybe a coincidence that the dearth of shoppers coincided with the dearth of coupons - but a correlation if ever I saw one.
Ok, now I’m curious. I went to their website to see if there was any discussion of the disappearing coupon and clicked on a link on the home page to “Get all the latest news about fresh&easy™ - check out our blog”. Which I did. Well seems that their blog posts are not as fresh as their food. The latest one was September 14, 2008 - and it still is the latest as I write this. The blog is written by Simon Uwins their CMO. A good start, seems like a nice guy, likes Radiohead and the Chili Peppers so shares my taste in music. But where was he? So I headed over to Twitter to check out the Fresh&Easy tweets there. Oops, the first one I came across was an offer to get the $6 coupon, but only if you signed up. Seems I circumvented that one. Still in search of an answer I asked @Fresh_and_Easy “Have you abandoned your blog? Says to go there for ‘latest news’. Last post was 9/14/08“ A little while later I got back this: “no, blog is going to get updated, soon. (Simon has been out on Paternity leave)”.
Now on one level, this is rather charming. But on another level, the one on which the marketer in me works, it seems to be just one more example of “death by expectations”.
(fresh&easy™ is a registered trademark)
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Hi Frankie,
Ironically I was just having this conversation with my Assistant Manager after reading an ariticle in the AZ Rep about Fresh and Easy loosing money. They mentioned their marketing research had been off and they didn’t understand American’s obsession with price. Once the coupons stopped coming so did the customers. I hadn’t even realized it, but that was about when I stopped going too. So Marcia (my AM) just happened to bring me in some she just received. She is up in your neck of the woods and I figure you must have a newer store there that she received the coupons in the mail. I live next to one of the originals and we were cut off months ago. It seems their new way will be to have weekly flyers instead with some low cost bargains to get us in the door and they are going to try and bring in some name brand items that they didn’t realize we were so obsessed with. Overall I am certain there is tons to learn from their launch. They also happened to stop selling their incredible chocolate silk pie which hurt my love of them too!