More than 800 jobs will be lost with the closure of 34 Budgens convenience stores – about a fifth of the chain – after administrators failed to find a buyer.

The rest of the Budgens business, which is run by independent operators, is unaffected. Following the store closures, about 150 Budgens shops will be left trading.

The owner of the stores to be closed, Food Retailer Operations Limited (FROL), appointed administrators at PricewaterhouseCoopers last month after suffering “difficult” trading conditions. The stores were bought from the Co-op in 2016.

The stores, which trade under the Budgens brand, are spread around the country – from Aberystwyth in Wales, to Blackburn in Lancashire and Gillingham, Kent. The stores employ 815 people. Nine stores have already been closed, with the remaining 25 scheduled to shut over the next two weeks.

The Budgens brand is owned by food wholesaler Booker, which is being taken over by Tesco in a £3.7bn deal. Charles Wilson, chief executive of Booker, said: “The business is performing very strongly.”

FROL had a chain of 72 stores but the remainder were not trading. PwC is looking for firms to take over the leases. It said the stores struggled due to their location, fierce competition and pressure on prices.

Mike Denny, joint administrator at PwC, said: “Unfortunately, we have been unable to find a buyer and it is not commercially viable to continue trading the stores.



“We are working closely with the Co-op, [the shopworkers’ trade union] Usdaw and the relevant government agencies to ensure that all employees receive the maximum levels of practical and financial support through the redundancy process.”