[easyFoodstore]easyFoodstore The billionaire founder of the airline EasyJet is getting into the discount grocery business. Stelios Haji-Ioannou is launching a chain called easyFoodstore that sells non-name-brand groceries at cheap prices. The first store opened this week in West London. For the month of February, everything in the store costs 25p, or about $0.36. Haji-Ioannou has indicated in previous interviews that prices will eventually rise to about 50p, or $0.71, on average. The no-frills store is stocked with items like coffee, pasta, cookies, bread, soup, canned vegetables, potatoes, orange juice, and sugar. It's advertised as a cheaper option to Aldi and Lidl, the most popular discount chains in the UK, and it's intended to serve the poorest neighborhoods in the UK. Aldi and Lidl have upended the grocery market in the UK in recent years, forcing the nation's largest supermarkets to dramatically cut prices and lay off workers to stay competitive. [easyFoodstore]easyFoodstoreThe CEO of Asda, the UK's second-largest grocery chain, has called the new competitive environment created by Aldi and Lidl "the worst storm in retail history." Now Haji-Ioannou is trying to shake things up further in the grocery market with EasyFoodstore. The new chain's slogan is "No expensive brands, just food honestly priced." Haji-Ioannou told The Guardian in 2014 that he decided to launch the business after reading about the growth of food banks in the UK. [easyFoodstore]easyFoodstoreHe said he plans to keep the new chain in operation even if it runs at a loss, if it meets a need in the communities where it opens. "This is another way the easy brand can serve the less well-off," he says in a statement on easyFoodstore's website. "Given my experience in distributing food for free in Greece and Cyprus, this is a more commercial attempt to sell basic food for 25p per item to those unwaged or low waged living around Park Royal." Haji-Ioannou has distributed food to the poor in Greece and Cyprus through a charitable organization. [easyFoodstore]easyFoodstore NOW WATCH: This 28-year-old lawyer quit her job to make kale popsicles
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