BIG BARN - MINUS THE EXTRA - Change may cost 30 jobs

More than 30 jobs could go as The Warehouse pulls the plug on the supermarket wing of its Whangarei bargain barn.
The company's decision to bow out of food retailing comes amid intense competition for supermarket shoppers' dollars as tougher times start to bite.
Laila Harr?, of the National Distribution Union, said she was "extremely concerned" about the effect of dropping food sales from the Okara Park store - one of only three Warehouse Extra stores in the country.
She estimated at least 30 people would lose their jobs in Whangarei, but a clearer picture would emerge after a meeting on Wednesday involving management, staff and the union.
Warehouse chief executive Ian Morrice said the company would do its utmost to redeploy staff involved in food sales to other areas of the store.
The final decision to abandon fresh and frozen food retailing was only made on Thursday morning and meetings with staff began the same day.
"We've promised the team that we will have worked through the implications by this Wednesday.
"By then we'll have a better idea of what the new stores will take and what the level of sales will be after we have removed this category of food retailing.
"Then we will then sit down with our teams to discuss staffing."
Over the next few weeks the space becoming vacant at the Whangarei store would be filled with "all aspects of Christmas" along with gardening, fishing and watersports equipment.
The Okara store's pharmacy had been successful and would continue but no decision had been made on the future of liquor division Warehouse Cellars, Mr Morrice said.
The cost of going into food in 2006 had been $4-6 million per store. Winding up the operation at the three Extra stores - in Whangarei, Hamilton and Auckland - would cost around $12 million.
Food retailing had gone well in Whangarei but not well enough. It operated on extremely low margins in the hope it would boost sales of general merchandise and clothing.
"We are a very small player and we can't get anywhere close to the margins that Foodstuffs and Woolworths can make," Mr Morrice said.
"We knew we needed to compensate by making more from general merchandise and apparel."
He said the Whangarei store was one of the most successful in the chain, and bowing out of food sales was no reflection on the store's outstanding team.
A worker who did not wish to be named said the workforce of about 180 had been told some jobs would go, and "scaling down" would start within days. He believed The Warehouse had been "squeezed" by the two giants dominating food retailing, Foodstuffs and Progressive..