"UK supermarkets rapidly abandon 24-hour opening"

[dutchman]

The time that stores are closed is being used to pick orders for booming online delivery services



UK supermarkets are rapidly abandoning all-day opening, forsaking the incremental spending of night owls in favour of using the downtime to pick orders for booming online delivery services.

Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco chief executive, told the FT Future Forum that large hypermarkets “sell very little during the night” and that closing them at midnight did not have a big financial impact.

“But you can then pick [orders] from that store much more intensively than you would have done before,” he said.

Just nine of his former employer’s 173 largest stores currently trade for 24 hours, along with 33 of its Express convenience stores, which are not used for picking online orders.

Asda, which was also in the vanguard of 24-hour opening after its takeover by Walmart in 1999, has cut the number of stores open round the clock from 200 to 106.

“This change reflects the way that customers are now shopping with us, such as the shift online and changes to working patterns,” the company said.

J Sainsbury said it had a “very small number of filling stations” operating 24 hours along with a couple of city-centre convenience stores. “We regularly review store opening hours but haven’t announced any changes,” it said.

Wm Morrison has never opened stores for 24 hours, nor have Waitrose or the discount chains such as Lidl.

The reduction in 24-hour operation was already well under way before Covid-19 struck but the pandemic has accelerated it, according to Steve Dresser at consultancy Grocery Insight.

Heavy demand for essentials in the early days of the pandemic meant that the night-time hours were needed for restocking and to give exhausted staff a reprieve. Once that died down, the rapid expansion of home delivery and click-and-collect meant the night hours were needed for order fulfilment, almost all of which is done from stores.

Tesco became the first supermarket to open stores for 24 hours outside of the peak Christmas period in 1997. By the millennium, more than half its large stores were open all hours of the day. “It was a bit of a novelty back in the 1990s after the law on opening times changed,” said Dresser.

“Managers thought that since the store was staffed anyway for restocking, it might as well be trading. But it was never big business,” he added.