<p><strong>London</strong><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market got a boost of confidence knowing that its stores are slowly but surely growing, earlier this week.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Its parent company, Tesco, says though the company is fairly new to the industry, Fresh & Easy is successfully expanding in a rather difficult market.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Earlier this summer, Tesco downsized at its Fresh & Easy chain at its California headquarters. An estimated 50 jobs were lost.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Speaking at the World Retail Congress here, Philip Clarke, Tesco's chief executive officer, said the U.S. chain is "fighting nicely" in a tough marketplace.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">"The stores we have continue to grow nicely, and the reason it's worth persisting is that the stores themselves fulfill a particular need for a particular group of customers," Clarke said, according to a Reuters report. "Fresh & Easy is only 5 years old, [and] it's playing in a playground with some very big and very old retailers who are very wise, and it's fighting nicely. Already the changes we've been making have gone some way to prove there's life in Fresh & Easy yet. We'll continue to hopefully see those sales grow [as] it moves towards profitability."<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">Tesco is scheduled to report Fresh & Easy’s first half results in early October.<hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding"><a class="btn btn-sm btn-primary col-lg-12" style="white-space: normal;" href="http://www.tesco.com" target="_new"> Tesco </a></p><hr class="legacyRuler"><hr class="invisible minimal-padding">
