Tesco, Britain’s supermarket chain, is looking at a major revamp of its operations, which may result in about 1,600 workers being rendered jobless. As part of the exercise, it has closed Jack’s, its discount chain, which operates about a dozen stores. Additionally, about three dozen of the Company’s gas stations are being turned into pay-at-pump facilities, for the night.
The chain will also be shutting down its meat, fish and deli counters at over 300 stores, due to low demand. These changes are going to result in job cuts. However, the employees will be offered other roles, which they may take up if they so wish, as the chain has about 3,000 openings presently.
The retailer’s recent push towards omnichannel retail was realised with the support of Tesco’s technology team at Bengaluru. The firm maintains that the lay offs had to be resorted to because shopping behaviour has changed due to the pandemic and the market has become highly competitive.
Only about 279 stores will continue to operate their meat, fish and hot deli counters, while half a dozen Jack’s outlets will be turned into Tesco superstores. Of late, the chain had shut quite a few bakeries in its stores too.
With the help of its tech team in Bengaluru, the retail company has been able to invest significantly in cloud technology and methodology to enhance its technology stack. This has placed it in a better position to fulfil customer demands and requirements. During the heavy shopping season of Christmas in 2020, they witnessed more than a million online orders on a daily basis, and over 7,000 orders were being received every minute.
