By Jessica Wohl
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Tesco Plc's (TSCO.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) entry into the United States will influence how other retailers stock their stores and how American consumers shop for groceries, the top executive of U.S. food group H.J. Heinz Co. (HNZ.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Tuesday.
Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer, is set to open its "Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market" stores this year. The stores will be much smaller than supermarkets or mass-market stores and will initially target the greater Phoenix area, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego.
"We'll be very interested to see the Tesco experiment on the West Coast, very interested, because I think Tesco is an outstanding retailer. It will be interesting to see how that plays out," Heinz Chairman and CEO William Johnson said at the Reuters Food Summit in Chicago.
"It's going to be an evolution in the way that American consumers buy products and that the retail trade is going to have to address."
Johnson said for now, Heinz plans to sell "fundamentally" the same products in Tesco's U.S. stores as it now sells in other U.S. locations. But he hinted that different products for Tesco could be in the works.
"We've got some other things we're working on that I'd rather not get into at this point because they haven't been announced," he said.
Many grocers in Britain now place prepared meals, fresh pastas and other chilled foods toward the center of the store, rather than in the back, as is common in the United States.
"We'll sell some of the center of the store products we sell in other parts of the world. In addition, we'll have products tailored for the chilled aisle in the perimeter that they are well-known for," Johnson told Reuters Television. Continued...
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