LOS ANGELES, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Britain's upscale grocery chain Tesco, the world's fourth-biggest retailer, next year, will begin to roll out stores in the western United States that will specialize in fresh food and prepared meals, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.

    The global retail giant has taken the initial step of its forayinto the U.S. market by opening its U.S. headquarters on Monday here, according to The Daily Breeze.

    Tim Mason, Tesco USA's Chief Executive Officer, said the first stores will be opened in late summer 2007 here, and his company has a plan to serve every community in the U.S. West Coast.

    According to a company spokeswoman, Tesco plans to spend 400 million U.S. dollars a year for the next few years in its expansion drive.

    Mason said the new stores will each have an area of about 10,000 square feet (900 square meters), but he declined to say exactly where the first stores will be located and how many stores the company will open in the Los Angeles area.

    While Tesco operates some stores in Europe that are as big as aWal-Mart, its planned stores for the U.S. market will be modeled after the company's smaller 3,000-square-foot (270-square-metres) convenience stores, with some modifications specific to the American consumer, said retail industry analysts.

    Tesco hopes to repeat in the United States its dramatic growth in Europe, where it started in 1919 as a market stall in London.

    The company currently has more than 2,800 stores in Europe and Asia with a total of 370,000 employees.