Tesco's entering the U.S. market.
Now that's exciting! If you ever spot Grocery Chopin in a foreign land, it'll be in a foreign grocery store. Alas, Tesco is opening on the west coast and only opening convenience stores. Alasser, British supermarkets have an abyssmal record at operating in the United States.
I suppose I'll just continue to fantasize about the new Trader Joe's opening in Union Square.
i think that starting out with just convenience stores is smart on Tesco's part because, as far as super-grocery and everything stores go, Wal-Mart really has the US market cornered. on the flip side, Tesco does much better internationally than Wal-Mart. they were able to adapt to european society—where stores close early and don't open on sunday and labor laws are more restrictive—much better than Wal-Mart, which claims bentonville, arkansas as its birthplace (sam walton). in reality, it's just that tesco doesn't really need the us, they have the rest of the world. (Tesco is relatively well established in asia, too.) For more info, see the newsweek international article entitled "another giant on the rise."
ReplyDeleteWalmart certainly has the bare-bones no-frills market down, but I think there's room for a nicer chain. In fact I read something today that said that Walmart's dominance has created a push for all other grocers to be nicer and not just compete on price. Perhaps Tesco could become the Target of supermarkets. They'll have to move quick though before Target becomes the Target of supermarkets. I don't know if it's just me, but being a British brand gives it a certain cachet.
ReplyDeletei'll admit to being a bit of an anglofile myself, but target (a personal favorite) has already expanded into the market with supertargets. there's one at the turkey creek shopping plaza in knoxville, tennessee, that's for sure. target is definitely doing a lot to corner their particular aspect of the market with their spiffy new ad campaign. when i see their motto "design for all," i get chills. also, if i recall, they do advertise for grocery products such as campbell's soup in their tv ad spots. will we be seeing patterns of celery in the background of their chic commercials next?
ReplyDeleteOne of the google ads on the side of this blog was for Super Target's groceries. You can print out coupons right from the website.
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