British (Grocery Store) Invasion Coming to Walnut Creek, Danville

It seems like it's been a long time coming, but a British grocery chain says that it will be opening seven stores in the Bay Area early next year, including one in Walnut Creek and one in Danville.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets will open in Walnut Creek in the Ygnacio Plaza Shopping Center at Ygnacio Valley Road and San Carlos Drive. The store in Danville will open on Diablo Road at Interstate 680. Both the Walnut Creek and Danville shopping centers have been without grocery stores since Albertson's closed 37 of its stores back in 2006. 

Reports of Fresh & East Markets coming to the East Bay have been in the news for the past several years. 

Fresh & Easy, with 5,000 stores globally, first broke into the Southern California market four years ago.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the chain aims to serve changing consumer habits. People want a more diverse selection of food from their local grocers. Customers are also looking for more fresh and prepared foods and are not necessarily loading up the shopping cart once a week, according to Fresh & Easy chief executive Tim Mason.

Fresh & Easy stores will feature prominent delis, called Kitchen Tables, stocked with soups, guacamoles and other prepared foods, made without preservatives in the company's industrial kitchen, the Chronicle reported. 

The company is betting that consumers will make more frequent trips to the market, also looking for stapes, pet supplies and beauty aids.

Fresh & Easy wants to compete with Safeway but with a strategy that is more like Trader Joe's, with specialty items that consumers can't find elsewhere, Mark Hamstra, retail editor for Supermarket News, told the Chronicle.