Sainsbury’s people boss defends café closures

Sainsbury’s chief people officer Prerana Issar has defended the supermarket’s decision to close its cafes, saying it “just didn’t make sense” to keep them.

At the end of January the grocery giant said it was closing its remaining cafés, hot food counters, patisserie, and pizza counters, resulting in in 3,000 job losses.

Issar, who is also the grocer’s head of corporate affairs, said at the 2025 Retail Technology Show that “customers who are going to the café are not the customers shopping in our stores”.

“Why are we spending money on a space that doesn’t actually result in customers shopping at Sainsbury’s,” she noted, adding that the supermarket will use the space to house more of its food ranges.

While Issar acknowledged the hundreds of long-standing colleagues who have worked in its cafes, she said “it just doesn’t make sense from a customer perspective.”

Issar also spoke about the rise in crime against shopfloor workers, adding that Sainsbury’s reported 13,000 cases every day during 2023.

She said her experience of donning the maroon fleece during a one-time shift in stores left her shocked at the treatment of store employees from the public.

“I put on the fleece, I put on my badge, and I started stacking [shelves]…people were bumping into me, somebody yelled at me about why the price of coffee was going up.

“I was just so stunned by how, with that fleece, I became invisible. I became dehumanised, and people felt like they could treat me so badly. And this is just one day…it was quite shocking.”

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