The San Fernando Valley is getting its second Fresh & Easy Express store, but don’t expect many more unless the chain can stop losing money for its British parent. The store, about a third the size of a regular Fresh & Easy grocery, is opening Oct. 24 at Ventura Boulevard and Haskell Avenue in Encino at the site of a closed Rite Aid pharmacy. Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Inc. opened its first Express store in West Los Angeles in November 2011 and its first in the Valley in February in Burbank. The newest location will give the El Segundo chain 10 Express stores. That’s on top of 190 larger stores in California, Arizona and Nevada, including eight in the Valley. But the chief executive of parent Tesco Plc, the giant U.K. grocer, said this month he was restricting capital for further expansion until the five-year-old chain could show profitability. However, Express stores such as the one in Encino on an upscale stretch of Ventura Boulevard are expected to play a key role in helping turn around the fortunes of the struggling chain, which only recently has begun to connect with shoppers. The stores are not intended to compete with full grocery stores, but rather be a place to shop for a meal or a few days’ worth of groceries — a popular type of market in Europe. Robert Kleinhenz, chief economist of the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation, said he hasn’t visited a Fresh & Easy Express but said smaller versions of groceries can be successful in upscale neighborhoods. “People might be wealthy and short on time,” he said. “They’re willing to pay a premium for convenience.” The Express stores carry about half the product selection of regular Fresh & Easy stores, which themselves only carry about 7,000 products, or less than a fifth of a traditional supermarket such as a Vons or Ralphs. But the Express stores carry a wide selection of essential groceries, including household items and produce and breads, while giving prominent display to ready-made sandwiches, lunches and dinners. It’s the kind of selection that might draw a shopper before and after work on a week night. “We feel this store will be a great fit for the neighborhood,” said Fresh & Easy spokesman Brendan Wonnacott. “Our Express stores have been well received. Our first several are growing well.” Crowded market Fresh & Easy could use a boost. Tesco, the world’s third largest grocer, established the chain as a way to gain a foothold in the U.S. market, which has been in flux as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest grocer, has taken away market share from traditional supermarkets. The Bentonville, Ark. retailer sells groceries both as its large big box stores and at its smaller Neighborhood Markets, one of which opened in Panorama City in September. At the same time, specialty chains such as Trades Joe’s of Monrovia have siphoned away customers. By one estimate, Tesco has pumped some $3 billion into the venture, including losses, since opening its first store in Hemet in 2007. As a result, the company in January issued its first profit warning more than 20 years. The expenditures have included building a massive distribution center near Riverside to service hundreds of stores. But expansion has slowed and the company has had to close 25 poorly performing stores over the past two years. In July, it also let 50 employees go at its headquarters. Tesco has repeatedly said that the chain needs 300 stores to break even. But Chief Executive Philip Clarke said on an Oct. 5 conference call that the chain had to deliver profits before “the next phase of expansion,” according to a British newspaper account of the call. Tesco originally expected profitability by the end of next year but now estimates it could take another year. What that means exactly for Fresh & Easy and its Express stores is somewhat unclear. The company had expected to have 230 stores open before the end of Tesco’s fiscal year in February, but Wonnacott would only say that it should have a little more than 200 by that time, including one in Venice. “We have additional sites we are working on,” he said. “Right now our focus is on our existing store network and bringing our existing shops to profitability,” Mark Lang, a former supermarket executive and now a professor of food marketing at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, is not convinced that Tesco can solve its problems by building more stores. He said the U.S. grocery market is currently oversaturated, and it’s difficult for a new chain to stand out. “Sometimes greater volume helps you by covering your overhead,” he said. “I’m not sure if more stores is going to solve a profit problem.” There will be 34 Fresh & Easy stores of both concepts in Los Angeles County when the Encino location opens, including stores nearby in Sherman Oaks and Van Nuys.