In last weeks Rye News there was a feature Shock news for local farmers which highlighted the issues facing the farming community due to the closure next month of the abattoir at Tottingworth Farm in Heathfield. There are concerns about animal welfare and also how the fresh meat supply chain to local butchers and wholesalers will be affected as a result of the closure.
You may remember that earlier this year, Tesco announced they would close 300 fresh food counters due to changing customer habits and Britain’s biggest supermarket is the only member of the current “Big Four” – Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Aldi – to still offer fresh food counters, which sell deli products, in 279 of its stores.
For years, staff in pork pie hats have sold portions of meat, fish, cheese and olives to order from the fresh food counters and bosses are considering closing all the remaining fresh food counters as part of a new cost-cutting drive which could lead to hundreds of further job losses, on top of the hundreds already axed in the last round of cuts.
The move away from deli counters comes as many consumers have made the decision to no longer use them. Many sell products that are now commonplace in fresh food aisles, from quiches, cheeses and salamis to dips – minus the plastic packaging. With competition growing from German discount chains Aldi and Lidl in recent years, Britain’s traditional supermarkets have been forced to find cost savings to remain competitive on price.
Clive Black, a retail analyst at Shore Capital, said that many big grocers had previously kept fresh food counters for their “halo effect” and a belief that they brought extra customers in. “But they did more in-depth research and actually found that not many people use them, with most shoppers buying their fish pre-packaged, for example,” he said.
Along with Tesco, that has prompted most of the major supermarkets to scrap deli counters in the past few years. Sainsbury’s announced it would not reopen its fresh food counters during the pandemic, while Asda said earlier this year that it would close most while replacing some with ready meals counters and food court-style areas.
Morrisons, the UK’s fifth-biggest supermarket chain since being overtaken by Aldi in September, continues to offer deli counters at many stores, as do Waitrose and Marks and Spencer. “Further closures at Tesco could be good news for independent fishmongers, and for Morrisons,” Mr Black added.
With fish and fresh meat counters facing the possibility of closure at many of our supermarkets, in theory, the numbers of customers returning to the traditional independent butchers and fishmongers should increase as a result, which of course is great news for our local shops. However, those shops need to be able to offer what customers want, when they want it and at a fair price but if the supply chain to local butchers is compromised the system fails.
This whole situation could have major knock-on effects for the farming community as a whole but for fishmongers, the supermarkets proposed plans can surely only mean increased sales, lets hope so.
Image Credits: Susan Benn , Simon Kershaw , Louise Chisholm .