Surfing USA

AMERICA has all too often turned into a graveyard for foreign retailers. But this week a British supermarket chain sped across the Atlantic to teach the Yanks a trick or two. On June 25th Tesco, Britain's biggest grocer, announced a deal with Safeway, California's biggest food retailer, to bring its successful Internet shopping service to the United States. Tesco is injecting both its technology and $22m into GroceryWorks, a loss-making online retailer that is majority-owned by Safeway, in return for a 35% stake. GroceryWorks will close its warehouse-based distribution network and replace it with Tesco's so-called “store-picking” system, under which orders placed online are plucked from the shelves of existing stores.