Years after U.K. grocery chains Sainsbury’s and Tesco took out their fish counters, Morrisons is following suit by eliminating fish counters in 35 of its stores.
The Bradford, U.K.-based grocery chain is also closing 35 meat counters, 52 cafes, all 18 of its market kitchens, 17 convenience stores, 13 florists, and four pharmacies over the next few months.
“A wide-ranging review identified a number of areas where the costs of operations are significantly out of line with usage, volumes, or the value that customers place on them,” Morrisons said. “We are making some necessary changes to the areas of the model which are simply uneconomic. In some stores where we are closing counters or cafés, we plan to work with third parties to provide a relevant specialist offer.”
This year marks the second year of Morrisons’ program of renewal, in which it is “making a number of changes and adjustments to its stores and operations to accelerate growth, to optimize its operations, and to help mitigate recent significant cost increases,” the firm said.
“The changes we are announcing are a necessary part of our plans to renew and reinvigorate Morrisons and enable us to focus our investment into the areas that customers really value and that can play a full part in our growth,” Morrisons CEO Rami Baitiéh said.
Although the significant majority of staff affected by these changes are expected to be deployed in “suitable [Morrisons] roles” elsewhere, around 365 employees will be at risk of redundancy, the company said.
“Although these changes are relatively small in the context of the overall scale of the Morrisons business, we do not take lightly the disruption and uncertainty they will cause to some of our colleagues. We will, of course, take particular care to look after all of them well through the coming changes,” Baitiéh said.
The new job cuts are in addition to Morrisons’ previously established plans to cut 200 regional people managers, store people managers, and case specialists.
Meanwhile, fellow U.K. grocery chain Asda is doubling down on its Rollback price program, cutting prices on 1,500 additional items after slashing prices on nearly 8,500 products since bringing back the program in January. This means that almost one-third of Asda’s entire range has been reduced in price since January, the retailer said.
“Nearly 10,000 products have now been rolled back, and we will continue to invest in lowering prices across the rest of the year and beyond,” Asda Executive Chairman Allan Leighton said.
Like other major U.K. grocery chains, Asda said earlier this month it would slash around 200 jobs while also eliminating around 6,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) over the next year.
