Tesco has revealed plans to scrap night-time opening at dozens of stores, in a move expected to lead to redundancies among night shift workers.
The retailer today revealed it was reducing hours at 76 stores around the country, nearly one in five of the stores currently open around the clock, claiming it would improve the shopping experience for customers.
The Grocer revealed in September that Tesco was looking at cutting 24-hour at certain stores including Salford and Redcar.
Tesco said the latest cutbacks would free up colleague time to replenish products on the shelves overnight, which would lead to better availability.
“We’re always thinking about how to serve our customers better in each of our stores and with the growth of online grocery shopping, these stores saw very few customers during the night,” said Tesco retailer director Tony Hoggett.
“It makes much more sense for colleagues at those stores to focus on replenishing the shelves instead and making sure they’re fully stocked when they open their doors at 6am. We’ll continue to make changes in store in ways that will make shopping at Tesco a better experience for our customers, at the times they want to shop.”
The changes will take effect between 14 March and 11 April 2016 and Tesco claimed there would be no other change to the night operation in these shops and that the impact to staff would be “minimal.” The stores will now open between 6am and midnight.
However, The Grocer revealed this week that Tesco was extending its programme of cutting 24-hour-opening to include staff operations, with workers at one of its stores in Manchester the first to be affected. As well as scrapping 24-hour opening at its Failsworth Extra store, all staff are switching to daytime and evening hours.
Tesco UK CEO Matt Davies has also written to staff warning there will be an impact on jobs, although he said the move would make shopping simpler for customers and make Tesco more effective.
“These stores have a particularly low number of customers shopping with them overnight, and changing their trading hours will help night teams to focus on replenishment and setting their stores up to deliver a brilliant shopping trip for our customers,” he explained in a message to staff.
“We’re continuing to review the way we operate all our stores across the estate, and some of the changes we need to make may have an impact on our colleagues’ roles in the short-term. While we’re confident we can keep any disruption to a minimum, I want to reassure you that our first priority will always be to make sure colleagues hear about these changes from us first, and we will work with impacted colleagues to help them find new roles wherever possible.”
Tesco began 24-hour trading in 1996, saying it wanted to help customers shop whenever they wanted to. There are currently 400 Extras and superstores offering the service, and Tesco sources stressed it was not considering ending all 24-hour opening completely.
However, the costs of the biggest stores have been a key issue for Group CEO Dave Lewis since he started in 2014. Lewis inherited what some regard as an albatross around his neck with Tesco’s huge out-of-town stores, which have been hit by the shift to online, the growth of convenience retailing and the rise of the discounters.
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