The Budgens store in St Neots will close on Thursday (March 9) after an annoucement today that its operating company has gone into administration.
The supermarket, in Tebbutts Road, has been named as one of 34 across the country, operated by The Food Retailer (TFR), with a total loss of 800 jobs. Administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) is closing the convenience stores, just nine months after they were bought by TFR from the Co-op chain.
PwC, said it had failed to find a buyer for the TFR stores and were looking for other companies to take over the leases.
Nine of the 34 outlets closed at the weekend and the remaining 25 will shut for good over the next two weeks.
The Budgens brand is owned by food wholesale giant Booker, which has issued the following statement: “Budgens is a brand which operates 150 stores as a symbol group. The business is performing very strongly. In July 2016, TFR bought 36 stores from the Co-op and traded them under the Budgens brand.
TFR has recently gone into administration. This means they are currently in consultation with their 800 colleagues.”
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