Have you ever shopped at a "Fresh & Easy?" No, me neither. (If you said "yes," you are an outlier, you are not representative, do not answer any more rhetorical questions.) You probably haven't shopped there because Fresh & Easy has "a novel store format that is bigger than a convenience store but smaller than a supermarket, and focused on fresh-food offerings." No wonder it's going out of business.

First of all, if Americans want convenience, we'll go to the "convenience store" (Lil' Champ), or maybe just eat the nearest package of processed cheez slices. And if we want a lot of food, we'll go to the regular grocery store, where we can eat deli counter fried chicken as we explore our shopping options. And we will never want "fresh-food offerings." This is America, for Chrissake. Any American could have told you that this store concept would fail. But not any Brit.

(We beat their ass in the Revolution.)

And this "Fresh & Easy" fiasco was the brainchild of Tesco, which is a big popular supermarket chain in England, but here in America, we can't even name our own Congressman. Now Tesco is being forced to close all 200 of its Fresh & Easy stores, because nobody went there. How could this have happened? From the WSJ:

"Our team went over to live in the U.S. We stayed in people's homes. We went through their fridges. We did all our research, and we're good at research," former Tesco Chief Executive Terry Leahy told The Wall Street Journal in 2007. He said the result would be "the perfect store for the American consumer in the 21st century."

You think Americans are going to tell you what they really want? They'd probably say anything just to get you stop going through their fridges. We have plenty of dirty bodegas and mediocre supermarkets here already, and they all sell food that is safely preserved with preservatives, to protect it from the elements (air conditioning). Take your shitty idea of "what we want" back to England, Tesco. You don't know us.

We kicked your ass in the Revolution.

[WSJ. Photo of what I assume is an expat Brit buying "fruit" items: AP]