You won’t be able to get a cup of coffee. Nor will you be able to pick up something from the patisserie or the pizza oven. A trip to Sainsbury’s was hardly the most exciting thing in the world, but it is about to get a little bit duller, with the grocery chain set to get rid of its last remaining cafes, as well as speciality counters. And the Labour government is to blame for that.
Sainsbury’s had already closed its fresh meat, fish and deli counters, and announced this week that it was closing down the cafes and counters that used to be a regular feature of its stores as well, with the loss of 3,000 jobs. You can still trudge around and pick up some frozen pizza and washing powder, so long as you are happy to scan them yourself at the till, but that is about it. If you were looking for any retailing pizzazz, forget it.
The company argues that it faces a ‘challenging cost environment’, with the BBC reporting that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s decision to raise national insurance for employers was a big part of the reason for the decision. That sounds plausible. After all, selling a fresh pizza, or a latte, is not a terribly profitable business, and it is typically very labour intensive, often relying on modestly paid, part-time staff. If you significantly raise the employer taxes on those people it should hardly be a huge surprise if companies decide they can not longer make any money from having them on the payroll. They have to go.
The trouble is, that creates two big problems. First, 3,000 people will be losing their jobs, and as those roles disappear the Treasury will lose all the taxes they would have paid, and may also have to pay them benefits if they can’t find another one very quickly. Next, and this point is easily overlooked, customer service gets worse. A cafe or a pizza counter made the supermarket a bit brighter, offered greater variety, and was an inexpensive place to meet people. Without them supermarkets are duller and less friendly – and the government’s tax raid is to blame.
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