I love the Science Channel television show How It’s Made. I’m fascinated with how raw materials are transformed into finished product. And I’m constantly amazed at how much human labor is involved with some products. Those you would suspect as having totally automated manufacturing often require a great deal of human labor. When I walked onto the show floor at this year’s PACK Expo I was blown away by the vast exhibit hall floor filled with hundreds of machines. It was How It’s Made on steroids. There were box folders, bottle labelers, and assembly machines of all kinds. I was shocked at how specific the tasks were for each devise.

But my reason for attending PACK Expo was not what I could find on the expo floor but to deliver a keynote presentation with my client and good friend Steve Ryder, Store Design and Planning Director for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market. Steve and I were invited to give a modified version of our behind-the-scenes show documenting Tesco’s U.S. retail launch.

Four years ago I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Specifically, I was exhibiting with my former company Schorleaf at the Food Marketing Institute Annual Show. But we had picked the wrong year to participate. FMI had modified the show since I had been there last and the 2005 show was focused on food products. As a design and fabrication service provider, we stuck out vividly. When we arrived, we quickly noticed how we didn’t fit in, and were furious. But by the time we left, we had met a major international retailer looking for the very service we were showcasing. At the time, we didn’t know how important that first meeting actually was. Tesco, the largest food retailer in the UK and third largest retailer in the world, had come to the show looking for someone to help them create a new brand, a new retail concept, and prototype store design.

Two years of clandestine design, project development, construction of a fully functional mock store in a Los Angeles warehouse, and extensive customer testing led to the launch of the new company – Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market. Many key associates at Schorleaf, Steve Ryder of Tesco, the LA office of advertising giant Deutsch, the UK package design firm P&W, the Phoenix architecture firm KDRA (no longer in business), and myself worked diligently together to bring about a totally branded retail experience. Today, 130 stores have been opened, but Fresh & Easy has not stood still. In the two years since the first store opened, two full remodel programs and new advertising campaigns have been implemented to address constant customer evaluation. The store design has continued to evolve in response to lessons learned, feedback received, and changing economic times. The chain is currently focusing on the west coast – southern California, Arizona, and Nevada – northern California is next. California alone is like a small country with plentiful expansion opportunities.

Although our presentation wasn’t a package design centered show, our intention was to show how the Fresh & Easy brand was made, and continues to be remade. As someone who was involved from day one to doors open and beyond, I’ve been amazed at how many times some aspect of the overall project could have gone off the rails, but did not. That’s a real testament to the key players at Tesco, such as Steve Ryder, who worked incredibly hard to ensure that all brand venues were utterly consistent.

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