Ellen DeGeneres 'Goes Bananas' At A Fresh & Easy Store in Burbank

On Sunday, February 5 we reported (see the story and photos below on the blog or here) on the new "Scan As You Shop" hand-held customer scanning system Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is testing at its store at Olive and Verdugo in Burbank, California.

Our reporting included a visit to the grocery market last week.

But today the Burbank Fresh & Easy store had a much more famous visitor - at least by proxy.

Television talk show host Ellen DeGeneres sent her writer, Amy Rhodes, to the Burbank Fresh & Easy market, where she posed as the produce manager, for the "Hidden Camera Pranks" segment of the show.

Hidden cameras were placed throughout the store, and the writer, who Ellen sends out on various adventures, was equipped with a hidden earpiece in her ear, which allowed the comedian and talk show maven to interact with customers by instructing her - like trying to convince customers to purchase bananas, for example - through the earpiece, as you'll see in the video of the segment at top.

By the way, that's one of the "Scan As You Shop" units the customer in the produce department is holding and using at the start of the video segment.