Yucaipa Cos., owned by private-equity magnate Ron Burkle, is picking up approximately 150 Fresh & Easy stores, including most of the 19 Bay Area locations, according to Fresh & Easy spokesman Brendan Wonnacott. When reports surfaced in June that Burkle was interested in buying the chain, sources at Yucaipa said the stores would be rebranded as Wild Oats Markets, a Colorado-based chain in which Burkle acquired a stake in 2011. "Burkle will know how to grow Fresh & Easy, and he's very well capitalized," said Garrick Brown, research director at Cassidy Turley, a national real estate services firm. Not, unfortunately, in the Bayview - where business was "just OK," said the store employee - though hopefully in other underserved areas that could use talented purveyors of fresh food and groceries. "The real reason why our economy is doing well is that the growth of high tech generates wealth that supports the 65 percent of workers who are employed in local (nontech) services," says Enrico Moretti, a UC Berkeley economist who will give a presentation at the conference. Sure, there are issues, like affordable housing (the lack thereof), but as previous years' forecasts have concluded, San Francisco and much of the Bay Area live in an economic bubble, notably different from the rest of the country. According to Moretti's calculations, Twitter's 900 employees in San Francisco indirectly create 4,500 jobs, professional and nonprofessional.
Reported by SFGate 16 hours ago.
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