Tesco Says it Is Cutting Over 1,800 Bakery Jobs Because Customers Just Want Bagels

Supermarket’s bread lines are getting shorter

Retail giant Tesco will make over 1,800 in-store bakery staff redundant because, it says, customers just want to buy pre-packed bagels instead. The change in baking volume, which will start from May according to the Guardian, happens in the context of several significant rounds of job cuts. Tesco closed almost 90 fresh food counters last year — at the cost of 9,000 jobs — and cut 4,500 more last August after diagnosing its smaller, Metro stores as not suitable for customers’ weekly shops in 2019. While the company attributes the bakery decision to changing customer habits — with a strangely specific focus on bagels and wraps outpacing bakery bread — retail analyst GlobalData says that its proximity to past rounds of cuts suggests that “the move is likely more as a result of yet another bid to reduce operating costs and protect margins in the face of greater competition from the discounters Aldi and Lidl.” [Guardian]

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