FDBusiness.com

Tesco’s bakeries are an important part of the supermarket group’s offer for customers. However, over recent years, Tesco has seen a big shift in customer tastes and preferences. Customers are buying fewer traditional loaves of bread and are increasingly looking for a wider range of options, with sales of wraps, bagels and flatbreads growing.

In light of this, Tesco has undertaken a review to make sure its bakery operation is relevant for the way the market and its customers have evolved. From May, Tesco is making the following changes in its large in-store bakeries:

* Altering the space and range to cater to changing customer demand, including the increase in alternatives to traditional loaves.

* Tesco will continue to offer scratch baking in 257 stores but the retailer is making some changes to its other bakeries. In 201 stores the most popular products will continue to be baked from scratch with other products moving to part-baked. And in 58 stores Tesco is converting the bakery to full bake-off where all products are delivered pre-prepared, then baked and finished in store.

* Improving the customer experience by investing and continuing to roll out new, up-to-date fixtures as well as growing the regional bakery ranges in partnership with small local suppliers.

Due to some stores doing less scratch baking, as well as the simplified routines these changes will bring, Tesco will need fewer colleagues to work in these areas. As a result, there are 1,816 bakery colleagues being put at risk of redundancy. At this difficult time, Tesco’s priority will be to support those colleagues impacted, including finding an alternative role from the many thousands of vacancies available across its store networks between now and May.

Jason Tarry, UK & ROI CEO at Tesco, says: “We need to adapt to changing customer demand and tastes for bakery products so that we continue to offer customers a market-leading bakery range in store. We know this will be very difficult for colleagues who are impacted, and our priority is to support them through this process. We hope that many will choose to stay with us in alternative roles.”