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11
May
M&S to close Oatlands café in Harrogate
Marks & Spencer is to close the café at its Oatlands foodhall in Harrogate, as part of a second store refurbishment in four years.
There was uproar in 2021 when M&S announced plans to get rid of the café as part of a new fitout of its Leeds Road site.
There was even a petition calling for it to be saved, and the company announced a U-turn in 2022 by incorporating a café into its new look store.
However, the new eating space is much smaller, uses disposable cutlery and crockery and has little space to manoeuvre between tables.
The M&S cafe at Oatlands.
Now M&S has revealed fresh plans to close the café as part of moves nationally to replace cafés at foodhall sites with more space selling food.
An M&S spokesperson said:
After reviewing our Harrogate Oatlands foodhall, we have some exciting new changes planned. We are re-purposing our café space to offer more fresh produce from our Select Farm partners and deliver an improved in-store bakery - we will share more details in the coming weeks.
All café colleagues will transfer to other roles across the foodhall and while we understand this will be disappointing news for some customers, our team will continue working hard to serve them in-store. Customers' nearest M&S café will be at our nearby Cambridge Street store in Harrogate town centre.
The Stray Ferret understands the café will close by the end of the year, but no date has been announced.
M&S announced plans in November to double the size of its food business, and said 500 UK areas were on a ‘potential location’ list.
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