Is the High Street doomed

[cupid_stunt]

I won't mourn a single closure.

I will, for the staff.

 

[PR1Berske]

I will, for the staff.

That's the thing, it's hard (impossible?) to separate feelings towards Spoons and those who work for them. But let's not pretend that they have ever been a great employer, or look for staff who care about beer. Tim Martin only cares for profit and his staff could do a lot better than work there.

Wetherspoons accelerated the death of the traditional pub long before social change/drinking culture had its way.

 

[newme]

Here all the big stores are closing, Wilkes is off, boots are closing. Its 50% charity shops, then betting and vape places, cafes and restaurants. They want to close the main car park and have already started charging for free ones then made them more expensive. Foot traffic is unsurpringly down. So they rolled it out to more towns. Nighttime economy is already fucked and every club I ever went to is closed. Now they are charging at that time too. Every week I see another pub or restaurant close or go up for sale, even award winning ones.

Given up on actually buying anything there except the chemist and occasionally the butchers, we have a closer one but they do good bulk deals sometimes.

 

[Elpenor]

I am not certain this necessarily means anything, but I’ve seen Ikea on cashback rewards sites for the first time I can remember, offering 3% back for any purchases made.

This usually indicates that a retailer is trying to boost their revenue as it’s looking ropey for the quarter / year.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Both retail and online have had a really shit autumn and winter. Everyone I know in fashion trade has too much winter stock left. One of my clients said to me, ‘you can tell when people put the heating on, because the sales drop.’ But I don’t think I’ve bought any actual fashion full price for at least a year? Almost everything from the charity shop.

 

[Cloo]

Our surprisingly-crap-for-such-a-pricey-area-to-live-in high street seems to be perking up again with several long-term empty shops reopened or about to. Former Barclays has become a homeware place, former McColls about to open as (another) bakery/cafe, former hearing aid shop as plants/ home accessories joint, former Chinese as (another) local groceries shop. Dunno how any of these will do or why now suddenly I wonder if landlords have just dropped their prices. Just glad none of them are more charity shops or bookies.

 

[Humberto]

This gives some clues about the pressures small independent restaurants are under.

This is the reality of running a small restaurant in Britain right now. It’s a miracle we survive | Mandy Yin

Sales may be back to pre-Covid levels, but inflation is eating into our tiny profits. Here’s how the finances work, says Mandy Yin, chef-owner of Sambal Shiok in London

www.theguardian.com

As a recent headline in the trade publication Restaurant magazine put it: “Hospitality faces ‘record insolvencies’ as businesses continue to be battered by a ‘perfect storm’ of cost pressures.” But the picture isn’t the same for everyone. Gordon Ramsay Restaurants was able to triple its turnover in its last financial year (£78.9m in 2022 up from £26.2m in 2021), having taken over sites from struggling rival burger chains, like Byron Burger.

Many big players can afford to be bullish in rent-review negotiations as they are a safer bet for their landlords. They have much easier access to more funding, be it from their shareholders or banks. They have greater buying power over their suppliers and economies of scale, which lead to being able to offer lower prices to their customers. Lower prices mean more customers, which means being able to pay staff more.

And on the other side? We have had two years of fighting landlords, only to be forced to pay full rent; losing staff and having to hire and retrain a brand new team; upwards-only rent reviews and business rates increasing; staff wages being 25% more than pre-Covid; and the perennial problem of labour shortages exacerbated by Brexit.

Sales at the restaurant may be back to pre-Covid levels, but inflation continues to eat into what little profit there is. Cooking oil now costs £36 for 20 litres, compared with £15 pre-Covid. Basic ingredients such as coconut milk, dried shrimp, chillies and eggs have all increased by at least 30%.

Utilities costs have, of course, skyrocketed. There is no energy price cap for businesses. I took out a bounce-back loan during Covid to survive, and monthly repayments are £1,000. Every quarter there is £12,000 in rent and at least £20,000 in VAT to pay.

 

[skyscraper101]

Increasingly I find that the cost of eating out isn't even worth it anyway. I'm tired of getting measly portions of food in not even that fancy restaurants, and paying upwards of £30/40 a head for what I could knock up for less than a tenner. So many people seem to love paying through the nose because 'it's about the experience' but most of these places aren't even that great.

 

[BusLanes]

Paying 16 or 17 for a burger and chips at pubs in London is becoming a bit much as they're decidedly average. Used to be paying 15 or so meant something reasonably nice

 

[skyscraper101]

You can get a decent size main meal at Wagamama for between £12-15 - I rate that as worth it. I've never had a bad experience there. For my money, Asian style food generally seems better value to me because it's cooked with ingredients that tend to be less easy to get and/or take ages/stick the whole kitchen out so I wouldn't go in for making it at home anyway. That generally applies to Indian, Thai, Chinese etc.

What I do not rate as worth it is paying upwards of £15 for a burger and chips, or a pizza which I can knock up at home for a fraction of the cost.

 

[PR1Berske]

Perhaps this year is the death of the mega-burger.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Our surprisingly-crap-for-such-a-pricey-area-to-live-in high street seems to be perking up again with several long-term empty shops reopened or about to. Former Barclays has become a homeware place, former McColls about to open as (another) bakery/cafe, former hearing aid shop as plants/ home accessories joint, former Chinese as (another) local groceries shop. Dunno how any of these will do or why now suddenly I wonder if landlords have just dropped their prices. Just glad none of them are more charity shops or bookies.

Not so in Pontefract, the nearest useful town to me. Ok there aren’t a huge amount of empty shops although the closed Poundstretcher and Wilko have left big gaps. Until last year we had a great Barclays, I would take my father there, to help him with his banking. The branch has now closed and is unoccupied and 3 days a week they park a Barclays van outside there instead. Insane.
The Yorkshire bank branch in my hometown closed at least 10 years ago and has remained unoccupied ever since. I think banks can be expensive to reconvert to regular use.
The shopping parade in my hometown is postwar and although it was all built by one builder it now has a mishmash of owners. The road, the old bank and a couple of other units are owned by a London based hedge fund and those units are empty and decaying because the rent is too high for this area. It took our local councillor over 2 years to persuade the hedge fund to fix the road infront of the shops. It was incredibly potholed and dangerous.

 

[Cloo]

The mixed ownership is a massive problem with local high streets, sadly.

 

[lazythursday]

Similarly my local high street has a number of dilapidated properties owned by absentee landlords and despite the council gaining funding to improve the high street - free money for the landlords - they couldn't get them to apply / cooperate.

But on the local Facebook groups everything is blamed on the council. People have such a misguided idea of where actual power lies.

 

[skyscraper101]

Similarly my local high street has a number of dilapidated properties owned by absentee landlords and despite the council gaining funding to improve the high street - free money for the landlords - they couldn't get them to apply / cooperate.

But on the local Facebook groups everything is blamed on the council. People have such a misguided idea of where actual power lies.

My gut feeling is there should be some sort of law designed to prevent this sort of thing happening. If you own a commercial property which has not been utilized or maintained upto certain standards then there should be some sort of compulsory order which can be enacted to return it to better use. I don't know how this would or if its practical, but that's my gut feeling.

 

[pinkmonkey]

Similarly my local high street has a number of dilapidated properties owned by absentee landlords and despite the council gaining funding to improve the high street - free money for the landlords - they couldn't get them to apply / cooperate.

But on the local Facebook groups everything is blamed on the council. People have such a misguided idea of where actual power lies.

And they don’t understand the difference in the roles of politicians and councillors. Up here, everything is Yvette Coopers fault.

 

[editor]

Amazon Fresh, the supermarket with no tills and you just walk in, get stuff and walk out again - has closed three stores in London.

Three Amazon Fresh stores have closed in London

Is till-free shopping going out of style?

www.timeout.com

TBH I've used them like 4 or 5 times and its the most underwhelming supermarket with only the pure basics and no particular price incentives or other specialty products. The novelty of feeling like a shoplifter wore off very quickly too. Especially because whatever faff you save by not having to check out at a till, is probably made up for with the faff of getting the barcode on the Amazon app to display and 'scan in'. Give me a well stocked Nisa Local or Happy Shopper anyday.

ETA - they were actually quite useful for returning Amazon stuff, so I'll give them that much.

I had to use the Amazon Fresh service today as it was the only way I could order a certain type of cat food (don't ask me why). Turned out to be an infuriating process. Waiting in for the two hour window, only to receive two one second phone calls (that you can't call back) followed by an email saying my stuff was undeliverable.

I'm now 25 mins into support emails/calls with blood pressure rising accordingly.

 

[Elpenor]

Welcome to the future

 

[hash tag]

I see the Body Shop got bought out by a private equity firm a short while ago and they are now about to call in administrators

 

[Artaxerxes]

Oh ffs

 

[cupid_stunt]

I see the Body Shop got bought out by a private equity firm a short while ago and they are now about to call in administrators

That's sad, they have a big warehouse just down the road from me, in Littlehampton, so that'll have a big impact locally.

Looks like it had been struggling since L'Oréal sold it for almost £900m about 6 years ago, with this latest lot paying only about £200m for it, sadly their USP of not testing on animals and sustainability, is no longer very unique, with plenty of 'newcomers' in that space.

The Body Shop was acquired in November by Aurelius, a private equity firm, in a deal it said was valued at £207m.

Retail sources said that after the deal closed at the start of this year, the new owner concluded that the company had insufficient working capital and was trading more weakly than it had anticipated.

WTF happened with their due diligence?

New Body Shop owner to call in administrators for UK chain

The chain founded by the late Dame Anita Roddick is preparing to appoint administrators as soon as next week, putting significant number of jobs at risk, Sky News learns.

news.sky.com

 

[Cloo]

WTF happened with their due diligence?

New Body Shop owner to call in administrators for UK chain

The chain founded by the late Dame Anita Roddick is preparing to appoint administrators as soon as next week, putting significant number of jobs at risk, Sky News learns.

news.sky.com

I'm sure they bought it with this in mind. Close shops, break it up, sell on the name and other intellectual property and trade on the 'good will' towards the brand

 

[MickiQ]

The Body Shop is one of Mrs Q's favourite shops, it will be a major bummer if it closes

 

[mojo pixy]

I had a feeling something like this would happen, and stocked up on my favorite body shop smelly oil the day after the sale went through. I reckon my supply of Black Musk will now outlast the company

 

[BristolEcho]

I used to love smelling the soap as a kid, however they also have an MLM arm which is really shitty and I hope they dies.

 

[cupid_stunt]

When I first moved from Somerset to Sussex, I took a temp job at their warehouse in Littlehampton, a lot of the products had hemp in them, and carried the leaf design on the packaging. I used to joke that half the products had alcohol in them and half had cannabis in them, but you couldn't drink or smoke any of the bastard things.

Mind you, you could score decent hash and acid in there, which was an unexpected perk of the job.

 

[Silas Loom]

I used to love smelling the soap as a kid, however they also have an MLM arm which is really shitty and I hope they dies.

Didn’t know that. In which case, fuck them and their jojoba nose balm.

 

[danny la rouge]

I used to love smelling the soap as a kid, however they also have an MLM arm which is really shitty and I hope they dies.

I didn’t know that.

 

[Orang Utan]

Now Lush, please

 

[BristolEcho]

I also didn't know that until I started learning more about MLMs. They've even got a classic "were not a pyramid scheme honestly" part on their site.

https://tbsah-gb.thebodyshop.com/hc/en-gb/articles/4406446758289-Is-The-Body-Shop-At-Home-a-Pyramid-scheme#:~:text=The%20Body%20Shop%20At%20Home%E2%84%A2%20is%20built%20around%20the,marketing%20(MLM)%20distribution%20method

Ruined my childhood memories forever.