Marks & Spencer is to open a new food hall in Hale village.
The British retail giant is to move into the Ashley Road unit currently occupied by The Co-operative and once home to Safeway.
The Co-op is to vacate the plum site next month, with boards outside the store confirming it will close for good at 6pm on Friday March 25th.
The 24 Hale-based staff currently employed by The Co-operative are to have one-on-one sessions with M&S management to learn whether they will be kept on by the new tenants.
M&S has enjoyed a boom in demand for its food in recent years, out-performing its clothes division. It currently has a larger unit on George Street in Altrincham, with both food and clothing departments.
In fact, although the retailer remains Britain’s biggest clothes retailer, it has only enjoyed one quarterly rise in clothing sales in the past five years.
Earlier this year it was revealed that M&S had begun a trial to increase the size of its food halls and cut back on the space it devotes to fashion, and has also increased the rate of closure of its less profitable stores.
The central Hale site would appear to complement M&S’s food offer very neatly – although there are already Tesco and Sainsbury’s outlets in the village, M&S has no direct competitor at the more premium end of the market.
The opening date for the new store has not yet been revealed, but the shop is unlikely to need more than a week to rebrand and fit out for M&S.
