Whole Foods is axing its line of luxury products for an expanded range of discounted items at its London stores, as it looks to recover from widening losses.
The Amazon-owned supermarket has scrapped its ‘cheese vault’ – a designated room for fine cheeses inside its Kensington flagship – and line of eco-friendly, packaging-free grains and nuts, the Evening Standard reported.
The retailer has also replaced much of its checkout staffing with self-service checkouts, cutting the number of in-store staff by 24.
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‘Low prices’ signs have been introduced across its seven stores in the city to promote the new batch of discount items.
The focus on value comes as Whole Foods posted a pre-tax loss of £26m from its seven branches, up from 52% the previous year, while its sales dropped 2.9% to £91.6m.
The upmarket grocer blamed falling profits on “decreased demand driven by higher costs caused by inflation”.
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We were regular Wholefoods customers for years, it isn’t that we cannot afford to shop there now but it has become so ridiculously expensive we could shop for less at Fortnum and Mason, which we do for our cheese now. Wholefoods need to look at their pricing to retain their client base, whilst we are mostly well off, we don’t like being taken for mugs!