El Cajon, CA - Grocery Observations

I visited El Cajon, CA last week and found the stretch in the middle of town to be an interesting study from a grocery standpoint.

First, there was a closed and out of business medium sized and remodeled in the past 5 years Ralphs. The store closed a year or two ago. Surprise? Probably not.

Next up was a Fresh & Easy. The Fresh & Easy appears to be one of their higher volume units judging by the high customer count I saw, significant number of out of stocks throughout the facility, and some other things. This was the first time I saw a variety of Fresh & Easy's new "initiatives" such as having doors over all of the refrigeration as well as their new in-store oven program.

The change of having doors over all of the refrigeration is, in my opinion, a poor move for this operation. As many of their stuff is already "packaged" a bit more heavily than similar items are in a conventional grocer, adding yet another "layer" for the customer to look through is questionable to me. For example, looking at their fresh meat, which is already in thicker and deeper packaging than typical conventional grocer meat, having to look at those already over-packaged packages through glass doors greates an even foggier view of a product that already appears somewhat foggy. Also it is somewhat difficult to read price labels on items through these glass doors, especially given the price labels at Fresh & Easy are already not always the easiest to read or locate.

Their new in-store oven program is also interesting. I noted the store had cut a little space into the back wall where pre-baked baked goods were and has a small oven. The shelving is still very high so it would be difficult for a customer on the sales floor to communicate with an employee back in this area, but not impossible. Anyway they have a small assortment of fresh breads, in varying sizes, with price points starting at $1.49. There are no single unit servings of rolls but there were some other loose items present. There are  some pastry type items sold in single units and it is unclear if these are baked in the store or brought in from elsewhere. The pastry items are packaged in a manner similar to gas station pre-packaged pastries or how Ranch 99 sells them, in sealed plastic and are $1.29 each or 3/$3.00. As most grocers sell larger and much more appealing looking single pastries that are obviously made fresh in the store at a $0.99 price point, I was not compelled to purchase anything here due both to the higher cost and my confusion over whether or not the item was freshly made in store, combined with my negative associations with pastries packaged in plastic vaccum packed bags in a gas station like manner.

It was also my observation despite how busy this store was, I only saw one employee who was working helping customer at self checkout and also mopping the floor up front between helping people. The cart areas in the parking lot were overflowing with carts. The store was not clean. Many produce items were out of stock with empty display cases. I was in this store during the 4:00 PM hour and to see it in this condition so early into the peak hours time shows a serious problem.

Next up was a visit to a Sprouts, previously Henry's. Not too much to report there other than a busy store, well stocked, adequate staffing, clean, and overall looked pretty good.

Down the road a bit more revealed a Save a Lot. The Save a Lot was a bit of a surprise, but it was there. The store was stocked pretty well, reasonably decent condition, but was certainly doing the least business of the three stores and was in my view the least desirable of the three to shop at. Although the prices here were probably better than the others, and they may have had a better selection of certain prepackaged processed foods than the other two, the general lack of fresh items and somewhat questionable appearance of what fresh items they did offer, made it a less than appealing place.

So this is a quick view of a few alternate formats to the conventionals in SoCal and how things appear to be going.