A MAJOR supermarket chain is shutting down yet another branch today — leaving shoppers gutted and one city with just a single store left.
Farmfoods, which has more than 300 locations across the UK, is closing its doors in Dundee’s Macalpine Road branch.
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The move has come as a crushing blow to locals, with one customer calling it the “end of an era.”
Another devastated shopper said: “Sad a shop I have used for years. I hope the staff will be looked after as they will help anyone who needs it good crowd.”
A third asked: “Who can tell me what’s going on at Dundee most of the shops are gone?”
And a fourth added: “Really going to miss Farmfoods.. why?”
The frozen food giant has launched a major closing down sale to shift stock ahead of the shutdown, which comes just a year after it axed another Dundee site in Cowgate in March 2023.
It means there will be just one Farmfoods store left in the city—the Lochee branch.
A spokesperson for Farmfoods previously told The Sun: “Our Macalpine Road shop will permanently close on Sunday April 6 after a clearance sale.
“We are grateful to all our customers who have shopped with us at the property during our many years of trade.
“Our existing shop nearby at Lochee is unaffected.”
It’s the latest in a wave of closures sweeping the bargain supermarket, with several sites across the UK already shut down in recent months.
Farmfoods closed its branch in the Calthorpe Centre in Banbury on February 2.
That was followed shortly after by the closure of its store in Greyhound Retail Park, in Greyhound Way, Southend.
In March, the chain pulled down the shutters on its Knightswood branch in Glasgow, with the store closing for good on March 9.
And back in October last year, Farmfoods shut its Sutton store in South London on October 5.
And it’s not just Farmfoods feeling the heat.
Morrisons has revealed plans to axe 17 convenience stores as part of a huge shake-up.
That will also include 52 in-store cafés, 35 fish counters, 35 meat counters, 13 florists, and all 18 Market Kitchens.
Elsewhere, Swynford Stores in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, also shut for good on March 28, blaming the “opening of the Co-Op” and “prices of stock skyrocketing.”
Farmfoods fans still have the Lochee store to rely on — but for many in Dundee, today marks a sad farewell to a frozen favourite.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than half of companies plan to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”
