The great thing about punditry is that if you do it right, you don’t have to do it alone. In fact, here at the Perishable Pundit we are fortunate to have input from knowledgeable and intelligent people from around the world.
You can get a hint of these interactions by looking at our round ups of Pundit Interviews and of Letters to the Pundit, but we also benefit from behind-the-scenes contact every day with really smart people.
One of the benefits of having such a diverse, far-ranging and knowledgeable readership is that if we make a mistake we typically hear about it in minutes.
So when we received a note from Lisa Reeder at H-E-B/Central Market and incorporated it in a piece we titled Pundit’s Mailbag — Early Sales Numbers For Tesco’s Fresh & Easy Hard To Find, we gave a lot of information but forgot about one piece of data that specifically addressed Lisa’s question. We soon were reminded of our lapse:
We met briefly at the Citi Conference in London at which you spoke.
Tesco did report sales for Fresh & Easy for the period Nov 07 to 23 Feb 2008 but only in its report at the end of the fiscal 2009 year. The sales figures are USD32m or GBP16m. The trading loss in the US for the fiscal 2008 year was GBP62m.
I hope that is useful.
— Charles Allen
Principal and lead, Food Retail Analyst
Consumer Equity Research
London, United Kingdom.
Useful indeed, and ten swipes with a wet noodle to the Pundit for not recalling that release.
Lisa, here is your info and many thanks to Charles and the mass of Pundit readers who never fail to help us provide the best and most comprehensive information and analysis.
