Marks and Spencer will close 11 cafes across its UK stores. The closures will impact smaller M&S Food halls to repurpose space and make room for more popular products.
The retailers stressed that no staff will lose their jobs, and they will be realigned in other parts of the shop. The closures will affect fewer than 4% of the group’s 316 food stores. As part of the store changes and wider £300 million investment, which could see M&S open around 100 new food halls, M&S announced it would also open new coffee shops, including at its new flagship store in Bristol city centre.
An M&S spokesperson said: “As we look to modernise our food business and offer the best of M&S Food to more people, more often, we’re investing in our store estate to give our customers the widest possible product range.”
“This includes opening brand-new coffee shops offering delicious food and barista-made fairtrade coffee, including at our brand-new Bristol Cabot Circus store.
“In some of our small Food stores, where customers want a greater range of M&S Food, our transformation also involves repurposing cafe space across 11 small food stores, out of over 300 M&S cafes, coffee shop and coffee to go locations.”
M&S has not yet announced exactly which cafés will be shutting, or when their last days of operation will be.
M&S has already converted a number of full-line stores into food stores as part of its redevelopment, and it plans to have around 420 food stores by the end of 2028.
Despite huge investments, the retailer is recovering from a major cyberattack that began in mid-April. M&S estimated that the attack would cost the business around £300 million.
The firm was forced to stop online orders for six weeks after hackers managed to steal personal details of potentially millions of its shoppers. The chairman of M&S told MPs that it felt like the hack was an attempt to destroy the business.
Co-op was also impacted by hackers, and some shelves were left bare for weeks. Harrods was also targeted in a cyberattack.
