Sainsbury’s to cut 3,000 jobs as it shuts hot food counters and cafes

Sainsbury’s is to cut 3,000 jobs in the UK through the closure of its hot food counters and cafes and by reducing senior management roles by a fifth, amid rising labour costs.

Simon Roberts, the chief executive of the supermarket group, said he was making the job cuts as part of its already announced efforts to slash £1bn from costs as the business was “facing into a particularly challenging cost environment”.

“We have had to make tough choices about where we can afford to invest and where we need to do things differently to make our business more efficient and effective,” he added. “The decisions we are announcing today are essential to ensure we continue to drive forward our momentum.”

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The job losses come after Britain’s largest retailers warned they could be forced to cut thousands of jobs and raise prices this year as the industry braces for measures in Labour’s budget to increase employer

national insurance contributions

Most big supermarkets traded well over Christmas, however. Sainsbury’s, which also owns Argos and Habitat, announced earlier this month that it enjoyed its “biggest ever Christmas” with sales up by 3.8% in the six weeks to 4 January, while sales at its Argos stores rose 1.1% in that period.

The retailer will close remaining patisserie, hot food and pizza counters, shifting the most popular items from there into regular shopping aisles and offering “self-serve” bread slicing.

It will also close all 61 remaining Sainsbury’s branded cafes, subject to consultation, as it said “the majority of Sainsbury’s most loyal shoppers do not use the cafes regularly and cafes and food halls run by specialist partners are becoming more and more popular.”

The chain, which employs 148,000 people, has almost 600 supermarkets and more than 800 convenience stores.

Sainsbury’s is also reorganising departments at its head office to create “fewer, bigger roles with clearer accountabilities”. It said the changes would “drive faster decision-making and bring costs down” by reducing the number of senior management roles by a fifth over the next few months.

The latest closures come nearly three years after Sainsbury’s

closed 200 in-store cafes and 34 hot food counters

The company, which is headquartered in London, said it would aim to redeploy workers where possible and offer a support package to those affected that exceeds statutory requirements.