Thursday, August 02, 2007

From Football to Food: Brits Invade Los Angeles!

Ever notice that the big grocery stores tend to stay away from the inner-cities? Enter the British!

Huh?

On the heels of David Beckham's triumphant, celebutastic debut with the Los Angeles Galaxy, British supermarket chain Tesco is coming to SoCal. This piece from NPR's Marketplace talks about how Tesco is expanding specifically into the US's supermarket-less inner cities, filling a need that the locals desperately need to be filled. Yes, operating costs tend to be higher for grocery stores in areas such as Compton and South Central LA (check out the story for why). But shoppers there usually have to travel several miles to get groceries, or else just go to the McDonald's or the Kwik-E-Mart at the corner, which tend to have junk.

So far, there is only one slated to open, in inner city LA, but they plan more. Anyway, welcome to the US, Tesco, and good luck!

Click here for the audio link to the story (Real Audio file).

1 comments:

jmc said...

Here's an article from The Economist about Tesco's expansion into the US. Looks like there may be more stores to come, at least on the West Coast.