WELWYN GARDEN CITY, ENGLAND — Global retail giant Tesco is closing meat, seafood and hot deli counters in 317 of its stores. 

“In 2019, we announced a simplification of our counters business,” according to Tesco. “Customer shopping behaviour has changed considerably over recent years which has led to a decrease in the number of customers using counters on a regular basis in some of our stores. This has made it necessary to review the relevance of each counter within our stores.”

“Over the last two years, as we’ve responded to the challenges of Covid, our business has changed faster than at any other point in our history. Our customers are shopping differently, and many of our colleagues are working differently too,” according to Tesco. “This means we need to continuously look at how we can run our business as simply and efficiently as possible, so we can re-invest in the things that add most value for customers.”