Poundland, which acquired the frozen food specialist in October 2020, recently said it had converted 11 Fultons stores to either Poundland or PEP&CO clothing and homeware shops but all those which have yet to be rebranded are set to close.
A total of eight Fultons Foods are set to shut across the city, including the ones at Manor Top, Haymarket, The Moor, Hillsborough, Darnall, Woodhouse, Firth Park and Crookes.
A number of stores are now offering special deals ahead of their closure.
According to shoppers, the Crookes store is offering 20 per cent off everything.
Poundland had announced plans last October to convert the Crookes store into a PEP&CO shop but said it concluded at the end of 2021 that it couldn’t make this conversion work.
A number of shoppers took to Facebook to express their sadness over the closure.
One described the store as a “lifeline in lockdown” and another added: “So sad we’re losing you. Staff are fantastic.”
Elsewhere in Sheffield, the store at Haymarket was offering similar deals.
The shop was offering up to 50 per cent off certain frozen goods.
Items such as Bisto ready meals were going for as little as £1.19, while Birds Eye meals were selling at two for £2.50.
A Poundland spokesman said earlier this month: “We announced to colleagues last month that Fultons stores that hadn’t already been converted to a Poundland format would sadly close, but we’ll do all we can to find the team there opportunities to transfer to a Poundland store or other openings elsewhere in our business.
“Just by way of a bit of context, over the past 18 months, we’ve opened chilled and frozen departments in over 250 Poundland stores and will open another 100 this year. By the end of September 2022, we expect that Fultons, the frozen food specialist we acquired in October 2020, will be powering the chilled and frozen offer in over 350 Poundland stores – and we aspire to have well over 500 in time.
“Over the course of the last year, 11 Fultons locations have also been given a new lease of life as either a Poundland or PEP&CO store. Having reached this scale at pace, we’ve now carried out a detailed review of the remaning 42 Fultons branded stores, of which Crookes is one.
“Sadly, we see no prospect of being able to convert it to a Poundland format in the near-term or that it will be able to continue to trade profitably as a standalone Fultons store and that’s why we shared with the colleagues in there last month that it will sadly close in the next few months.
“While Poundland is a growing business – the programme to bring frozen food to hundreds of Poundland stores and establish specialist frozen distribution capability in Barnsley and Harlow is creating around 1,000 jobs – we understand how disappointing this decision will be for the Fultons colleagues in this specific store.”
