Daylight Savings Time Sucks. So Does Losing Your Neighborhood Market.

Fresh & Easy Store in Clovis. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I’m not up yet. I wrote this on Friday, before Daylight Savings Time robbed me of a precious hour.

When I do get up, I will be tired — and probably unable to string more than a couple of thoughts together at a time.

My favorite day of the year is the day we Fall Back. Getting an extra hour puts me in a wonderful mood, because no matter how late I am running (and for some reason, I am always running late!), when I glance at the clock and discover the time, I can relax a little, even if I have slept in.

I look forward all year to the day we move the clock back an hour. It’s better than Christmas.

But: Losing that hour every Spring hits me like a ton of bricks. It’s like having jet lag without the pleasure of having traveled somewhere. And for some reason, it lasts about as long. It takes me the better part of a week to adjust.

So I was thrilled when I learned of this thoughtful promotion in an email from my friends at Fresh and Easy Neighborhood Market:

Dreading losing an hour of sleep this weekend? We sure are! To make that “spring forward” a bit easier we want you to have breakfast on us. Come into your favorite fresh&easy Neighborhood Market on Sunday the 10th or Monday the 11th and get a FREE six pack of freshly baked Plain or Everything Bagels.

Just bring in the coupon available at here to get your free bagels. (You can save a tree and scan it straight from your smart phone.) There’s no purchase necessary.

Feel free to share the coupon with your friends, family, readers, and followers. As always, our bagels are only made with ingredients you can pronounce.

#StillFighting for more sleep the good food fight,

The Fresh & Easy Team

The coupon is only good today and tomorrow, so if you are fortunate enough to live near a Fresh & Easy market, go ahead and download it NOW.

My local F&E opened just last year, in a building vacated at the beginning of the recession by HOWS Market. And as Joni Mitchell said, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone: I had no idea how often I ran to HOWS for “one last thing” until it wasn’t there any longer and I needed to drive 3-5 miles every time I realized I was out of things like onions or lemons.

Our little local shopping center suffered for a couple of years without a supermarket anchor. Fresh & Easy was a godsend — especially as it opened the same week we lost our Northridge Gelson’s.

Fresh & Easy is not the same as Gelson’s — but in some ways, it’s better. Our family loves their fresh Il Fornaio baked goods, their own branded snack foods, and their fresh ready-made meals. (My daughter’s favorites are the delicious chicken soup and Asian-style beef and broccoli.) I especially like their selection of deliciously inexpensive wine.

Right now, the chain is trying to woo customers with the slogan “Still Fighting the Good Fight.” Those of you who follow the grocery wars will understand the double meaning: In December, Tesco (the British supermarket giant that owns F&E) announced that they were thinking of pulling out of the US market. Last month, they notified their customers that while Tesco is “looking at all options” for the chain, there are no plans to close… yet.

They’re doing a lot more advertising now, with more emphasis on low pricing than how fresh and easy their products are (I suppose that’s already stated in the company’s name). I want to see them succeed.

In the meantime, I’m going to walk over there and pick me up some free bagels. As soon as I wake up.

I received no compensation for this post. I just don’t want to lose another neighborhood grocery store.