EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Inc. has confirmed reports by the independent Fresh & Easy Buzz blog that current Fresh & Easy chief retail officer Jeff Adams will become the CEO of parent company Tesco PLC's Kipa business in Turkey, and that current Tesco China CEO Tim Ashdown will move to the United States to succeed Adams.
El Segundo, Calif.-based Fresh & Easy operates about 150 small-format grocery/convenience stores in California, Arizona and Nevada.
"Jeff's experience of working in the U.S., U.K. and Asia makes him an ideal candidate to drive the growth of the Turkish business further. Tim is going into a strategically important role at Fresh & Easy. His extensive operations experience will help us move towards profitability in the U.S.," Fresh & Easy director of neighborhood affairs Brendan Wonnacott told CSP Daily News.
People familiar with the situation told the Financial Times in a separate report that there would be no change to the role of current Fresh & Easy CEO Tim Mason. The newspaper said the change means that a possible successor to Mason is no longer with the U.S. retailer. Adams, an American, had long been seen as a candidate to succeed Mason.
According to the blog, in 2008, Tesco transferred Adams, who at the time was the CEO of its Tesco-Lotus division in Thailand, to its then startup U.S. chain to co-direct retail operations with Bryan Pugh, who left Tesco and Fresh & Easy not long after Adams' arrival and currently is a senior retail executive with the Walgreens' drug chain, where he focuses on the food and grocery segment at its corporate headquarters in Illinois (see Related Content below for previous CSP Daily News coverage).
Following Pugh's departure, Adams was put in sole charge of Fresh & Easy's retail operations and given the title of executive vice president of retail operations.
Before taking over in China, Ashdown was COO of Tesco-Homeplus in Korea. Prior to that, he was operations director at Tesco's global headquarters in the U.K.
Tesco CEO Philip Clarke announced the changes in an internal memo to company employees obtained by the blog.
A Tesco source familiar with the reasons behind the move told Fresh & Easy Buzz that it in part has to do with Clarke's desire to bring in somebody new at Fresh & Easy whom he believes has a strong operational focus and isn't afraid to "crack the whip" on store operations.
Adams is the second senior executive to leave Fresh & Easy in six months. In early November, chief marketing officer Simon Uwins left the company (see Related Content below), the blog was the first to report.
Tesco, the world's No. 3 retailer, slashed expansion plans for its main U.K. chain and said it would spend more than one billion pounds ($1.6 billion U.S.) on improving stores and online shopping as it battles to recover from a profit warning. It also said it would rein in store openings at its loss-making U.S. arm Fresh & Easy, pushing back the expected breakeven point for that business.
It had predicted Fresh & Easy would be profitable by early 2013; it now says it will take about a year longer to reach breakeven.
Tesco, which predicted it would become one of the largest grocers in the United States when it started opening its first Fresh & Easy stores five years ago, has announced a far less ambitious plan for their growth and profitability (see Related Content below).
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