Why are Morrisons and Sainsbury’s cafes closing?

It’s Friday lunchtime at a Morrisons in Queensbury, north-west London, and the in-store cafe is busy.

At one table, a teenager tucks into a ham sandwich while on the phone with a friend. She stays for well over half an hour.

At another, an elderly couple chat over a hot meal, while queue of customers steadily forms at the till.

But this is one of 52 cafes set to close – including others in London, Leeds, Portsmouth and Glasgow – announced this week in a cost-cutting drive that the supermarket chain says is designed to “renew and reinvigorate Morrisons” and focus “investment into the areas that customers really value”.

That came two months after Sainsbury’s said it was closing all 61 of its supermarket cafes.

While some see the decline of supermarket cafes as inevitable, shoppers around the country have told BBC News that these cafes give them a cheap, convenient and welcoming place to get a warm meal while catching up with friends.

Regulars at the Morrisons cafe in Queensbury say they’re surprised – and saddened – to hear it’s closing.

Philomena Hughes, 76, is having a meal with two friends, having just been shopping. The trio have bumped into a couple they know at the cafe, who move over to the table next to them and join in their conversation.

Philomena says she’s “furious” about the closure. “Morrisons was really the only place I would come,” she says. “We meet people we know in here.”

Other regulars at the cafe tell the BBC that the quality is good, prices are low, and it’s convenient to grab groceries beforehand. They point to offers such as a free kids meal with an adult’s one, free parking, and fish and chips with mushy peas for £8.50.

Morrisons says 344 of its cafes will remain open despite the planned closures but, according to its chief executive Rami Baitiéh, “a minority have specific local challenges and in those locations, regrettably, closure and re-allocation of the space is the only sensible option”.

Elsewhere in the country, Ben Hopkins, 32, feels his local Morrisons cafe in Meltham, West Yorkshire, is bustling every time he goes because “the food is typical of that you’d get in a traditional greasy spoon”.

It can come in handy for parents, too. Lisa Clavering, from St Albans, says she relied on Asda and Morrisons cafes for a “quick and cheap hot lunch” when her two sons were younger.

“As they grew, it was somewhere we could go together and share a meal without the stress of cooking it and cleaning up, where I didn’t feel judged by other customers if they made a noise,” the 42-year-old says.

Lisa says part of the appeal of a supermarket cafe is that they feel accessible and a “warm and welcoming place with no fuss and no surprises”.

“I do worry that once they go, there’s not really a like-for-like to replace them, and other alternatives are typically much more expensive,” Lisa says.

But other people question the need for supermarket cafes, pointing to changes in people’s shopping habits and the growing competition from high-street coffee chains.

The closure of Morrisons cafes “should come as no surprise”, retail analyst Natalie Berg tells the BBC. “The grocers are desperately trying to navigate significant cost headwinds, while simultaneously competing with discounters like Aldi and Lidl,” she says.

“This is a low-margin industry, so supermarkets need to be utterly ruthless when it comes to cost-cutting.”

When shoppers come into larger supermarkets, they “want low prices and they want a frictionless experience. In-store cafes work in certain locations, but they’re simply not essential for most stores,” Ms Berg says.

It largely echoes the reasoning Sainsbury’s has given for its closures – that “the majority of [its] most loyal shoppers do not use the cafes regularly”.

Ben Tinca, 19, a student living near the Morrisons store in Queensbury, says he usually meets his friends at fast-food chains like Nando’s, KFC and McDonald’s.

He’s only ever been to a Morrisons cafe once. “You usually only see older people eating there,” he says.

And back at the Queensbury store, Snehal Khimani doesn’t think people care too much about supermarket cafes closing, saying there has been no “outrage”.

“If it was popular, you’d hear about it,” like when Pret A Manger changed its subscription service, he says.

And besides, rival supermarket chains Tesco and Marks & Spencer – which have more than 300 cafes each – haven’t said anything about closing their cafes.

M&S tells the BBC that it’s continuing to invest in its cafes and plans to have coffee shops in the majority of its bigger stores. Last year, it announced it would try offering more takeaway food and drink to attract younger customers.

At an M&S Cafe in central London that the BBC visited, Matthew Wilsher has just got a cappuccino to go.

For the 62-year-old, the numbers don’t lie. His coffee cost £3.40, and would been less if he’d remembered his reusable cup. For him, “that’s cheaper than a Pret or a Starbucks,” he says.

Additional reporting by Charlotte Edwards and Faarea Masud.