Sainsbury’s to cut 3,000 jobs by closing cafes and counters

Argos is also due to announce some cuts, surprised it didn’t get bundled in with this story since they’re Sainsbury’s owned.

What I find interesting (and I’m not sure this is the same at every branch), but my nearest Morrisons has loads of different counters for pizza, fried chicken, bakery, salad bar, fishmonger, cafe etc.. yet all the other major supermarkets seem to be cutting back on these services. What are Morrisons doing differently that seemingly make them able to afford these things where the others cannot?

But didn’t super markets have record profits? 

Higher tax shouldn’t really force this, but I guess they need to have profit and increased dividends every year?

The Sainsbury’s near me closed its cafe years ago — I thought they all had. There’s now a Starbucks on site, but that won’t be costing Sainsbury’s anything. It might even be a source of revenue.

They make it sound like they need to do it, but the intention is keep exponential profit. Their YOY repots keep increasing.

The fundamental issue being that business regardless will use any opportunity to make profit. Chances are this would happen regardless, they just use whatever current circumstances to justify it their end.

We were able for a while to use new tech to drive growth, before that wasn’t effective enough and cost cutting measures started being made to increase profit exponentially. When that isn’t possible anymore they will throw businesses away and gut them to squeeze every last pound out, before focussing on something else.

If they have any sense they’ll rent the space to a Costa or similar and get an income in without any of the crap.

Aldi and Lidl have never really been that popular in the past. Their off brand products originally tasted pretty terrible across the board, and they were the last choice for the truly financially desperate.

Combine that with the fact that the UK traditionally has had cheap food prices, even for recognised brands.

However, today, it’s a very different story. Many supermarkets have priced themselves out of the range of ordinary people. Off brand products from Aldi and Lidl have drastically improved to the point where branded food just isn’t worth it anymore.

So why on Earth would you still go to Sainsbury’s? Well, I still see people in there, but it’s becoming the preserve of people in good jobs who can afford to waste their money (like my ex). But this demographic is declining.

Thus, you end up with cutbacks as they try to maintain their profit margin.

But I wouldn’t say that Aldi is that cheap anymore. The cheapest option available possibly, but suppliers are exerting a lot of pressure on them, too.

Shame the one near me the cafe is upstairs and has amazing views of local moorlands . It always seems busy

Im not surprised – supermarkets are low-margin, high headcount enterprises that are going to get absolutely hammered by the NI increases.

I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation that their profits will be significantly impacted by that increase. It’s the opposite of what this country needs – genuinely disappointed in Labour for that.

Won’t be going there much then, only decent thing was the Cornish pasty and pizza and cafe, tbh self service machine charged me X2 for something last night only realised when I got home, don’t think they will honour their mistake . The supermarkets killed of the local bakery butcher fishmonger greengrocer now they’re killing of their own product lines.

The nearest Sainsbury’s to me closed its cafe and replaced it with a Starbucks a while back and I really dislike it. The cafe was great. Starbucks is overpriced and not at all a replacement for a supermarket cafe which did full meals for a reasonable price.

I know it’s been happening for years now even pre-Covid, but it’s really such a shame that supermarket hot meat counters are largely becoming a thing of the past. They were such a fantastic convenience – cheap, hot food you could pick up on your way home and throw together some vegetables and have a relatively rounded dinner/meal out of. I actually liked the fact the meat was pretty bland, it made it easy to adapt and throw together something out of it quickly when you got home (throw it in a stir-fry with a sauce of your choice, chuck it in some bread if you just wanted something *really* quick for dinner…).

Annoyingly, I have a food intolerance to garlic, onions, and all alliums, which are basically in every microwavable ready-meal ever, so Sainsbury’s hot counter plain chicken, or Tesco’s bacon joint, ended up serving as a great low effort source of hot protein for dinner (then reheated pretty well for lunch the next day). And I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one who used the hot counter this way; a cheaper, simpler alternative to takeaway when I was too exhausted from work to cook the bulk of a hot meal.

Now, if a supermarket has a hot counter at all, there’s only a fraction of the food available there that there used to be, they seem to only make it in really limited quantities now, and the price has gone up to make it more worth just splashing out for cheap takeaway.

Also, I miss the “Chinese Chicken” flavour that you seemed to only ever get at Tesco and Sainsbury’s hot counters – never found anything that tastes like them, Chinese or otherwise, and have tried to re-create them myself, but to no avail.

Genuinely baffled that they’re getting rid of the hot food counters?

My local one is crazy popular and it’s basically a race to get to get food from it at lunch. No other supermarkets around here do ready-to go hot food as they all got rid of theirs and it was the last surviving one.

A sad goodbye to the garlic chicken thighs, you were the best.