South L.A. gets a new supermarket
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With the opening today of a Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, the area around Central Avenue and Adams Boulevard in South Los Angeles has two new supermarkets. The Fresh & Easy joins a Superior just a couple of blocks away.
Customers lined up for a whole block before the 10 a.m. opening of Fresh & Easy -- accompanied by the Jefferson High marching band. The company now has 145 stores in California, Arizona and Nevada, spokesman Brendan Wonnacott said.
L.A. City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she was ‘overjoyed’ at the opening of the store along ‘an emotional historic corridor,’ the center of blues and jazz in the first half of the last century. Perry’s office worked with the grocery company to develop the corner site, which has apartments above the grocery store.
Wonnacott said the company is committed to opening stores in neighborhoods that have come to be called ‘food deserts’ for their lack of fresh, nutritious food. He said the produce and meat and poultry have been bestsellers in their stores, which are about 10,000 square feet big and boast of selling foods containing no chemicals or preservatives. The shelves are stocked with a combination of private label and national brand foods, with some of the products reminiscent of what’s sold at Trader Joe’s stores.
-- Mary MacVean
(In the top photo, customers line up before the store opens. In bottom photo, from left, store manager Aaron Davis, City Councilwoman Jan Perry and L.A. Deputy Mayor Austin Beutner at the opening ceremony. Photos courtesy of Fresh & Easy.)
