A BAKERY giant with over 2,600 UK branches is set to close one of its locations in hours.
The popular pastry and sandwich chain is shutting the store inCambridgeon March 31.
The Greggs store on Fitzroy Street will close with staff relocated to nearby branches where possible.
Shoppers'nextnearest branch will be in Station Square just over a mile away.
News of the closure has been met with devastation from customers.
Posting on Facebook, one said: “I nearly cried at reading the news that the Grafton Greggs is closing.”
Another, tagging a friend, commented: “Actually what do we do during exams lad.”
Meanwhile a third simply added: “It's over.”
The Cambridge store is not the first Greggs branch to shut this year.
A location in Amersham,Buckinghamshire,closed for good in January.
Meanwhile, a Greggs shop on Foleshill Road,Coventry, shut its doors for the final time at the start of the year.
Despite these store closures the bakery chain is still eyeing up major expansion plans.
The chain, which currently runs just over 2,600 stores,is set to open between 140 and 150 shops this year.
Boss Roisin Currie said the chain would push forward with these plans despite financial pressures.
She said in January: “There are still places where you cannot access Greggs. We are confident in the continuing growth of Greggs.”
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
Flying Eze's business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Carpetright, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, Paperchase, Ted Baker, The Body Shop, Topshop and Wilko to name a few.
What's increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
Ms Currie added that while “consumer confidence has fallen, disposable income has actually improved so I think we will see an improvement when consumer confidence improves”.
The comments came as Greggs celebrated more than £2billion of sales in 2024, an 11.3 per cent increase on the previous year’s £1.8 billion.
Meanwhile, the firm opened 226 shops in 2024.
HIGH STREET STRUGGLES
Amid Greggs' recent financial successes however, is the increasing decline of the high street.
The most recent data fromthe Officefor National Statistics (ONS) shows online retail sales increased from 5 per cent of all retail sales in 2008 to 27 per cent in 2022.
Shoppers have also been feeling the pinch in recent years followinghigh inflation,which has dented wallets and purses.
A House of Lords report published last year admitted the dominance of retail on high streets was “something of the past”.
It said there was a greater demand forrestaurantsand leisure activities, as well as public services, such ashealthcentres and libraries, in town centres.
The Centre for Retail Research's latest analysis suggests 13,479 stores, the equivalent of 37 each day, shut for good in 2024.
Of those, 11,341 were independent shops while 2,138 were shut by larger retailers.
A higher number of closures is expected this year too, with the centre predicting store closures to rise to about 17,350 in 2025.
It said it expects closures to surge due to the April rise in National Insurance Contributions (NICs) and national minimum wage.
