Around 200 jobs are at risk at John Lewis as the retailer prepares to close its in-store foreign exchange desks and dedicated gift wrapping areas, a signal of how quickly digital payments are hollowing out once-dependable high street services.
The employee-owned retailer is consulting on the plans, and no final decision has been made. If approved, the redundancies would take effect in the autumn.
The bureau de change closures will affect 30 shops, while dedicated gift wrapping areas will go in 25. Gift wrapping will not vanish entirely: the service will move to the tills, a change John Lewis says will make it more accessible.
The retailer said demand for in-store currency exchange had fallen as customers increasingly order foreign currency online and collect it in store, while others skip cash altogether and rely on credit cards or digital payments when abroad.
“As we focus on modernising this proposition to meet our customers’ changing needs, we’re proposing to close our in-store foreign exchange bureaus as well as our gift wrapping service,” a spokesperson said.
“As a result, we’re regretfully consulting with partners who currently deliver these services.”
The retailer added that it would support affected staff “throughout the consultation process and support redeployment where possible”.
For business owners, the decision holds a familiar lesson: when customers quietly stop using a service, sentiment is a poor reason to keep staffing it. If a retailer with John Lewis’s attachment to tradition is prepared to retire its gift wrapping counters, smaller firms clinging to loss-making offerings for loyalty’s sake may want to look again at their own numbers.
The episode is also a reminder of the process involved. Any employer proposing 20 or more redundancies at a single establishment within 90 days must follow collective consultation rules, with consultation starting at least 30 days before the first dismissal takes effect. Get it wrong and the penalties are steep, so SMEs contemplating restructuring should not treat consultation as a formality.
The proposals are the latest in a series of changes under chairman Jason Tarry, who took over in 2024 after a tough few years marked by job cuts and store closures, and a wider cull that has seen high street job losses climb steeply across the sector.
The partnership closed its housebuilding arm in February, a move that also led to some job losses. Yet in March it reinstated its staff bonus for the first time in four years as profits and sales improved. The bonus had been scrapped during the Covid pandemic, the first suspension since 1953.
John Lewis’s latest full-year results showed a pre-tax loss of £21m, driven by £120m of one-off costs relating mainly to write-downs on ageing tech systems. Underlying profits rose 6 per cent to £134m, while sales across the business climbed 5 per cent to £13.4bn.
Waitrose continues to outpace the department stores. Supermarket sales grew 7 per cent to £8.5bn in the year to the end of January, against a 3 per cent rise to £4.9bn at John Lewis.
The direction of travel is clear enough: fewer services that customers have drifted away from, and more investment in the in-store experiences, such as its expanding café and restaurant offering, that still pull people through the doors.
