A West Yorkshire cafe chain that has been in business for 60 years has announced its has closed its doors.<\/p>\n
Merrie England, which has branches in Huddersfield, Halifax and Brighouse, said the closure was due to a combination of rising costs, falling footfall and reduced customer spending.<\/p>\n
Founded in 1966, the company said it had been an “incredibly difficult decision” and that “we are truly grateful to have been part of the community for so long”.<\/p>\n
In a separate post on its Facebook site, Merrie England said its “thoughts are especially with the teams across our seven shops who have lost their jobs”.<\/p>\n
In a statement on its website, the company said the decision to close had been reached “after facing a sustained increase in the cost of goods, business rates, energy costs, and the wider rising costs associated with staffing and government policy”.<\/p>\n
It added: “Alongside these pressures, we have also seen a reduction in footfall and customer spending, with many people understandably unable or unwilling to pay the prices that businesses now need to charge in order to survive.<\/p>\n
“After 60 years of serving our customers, we want to express our heartfelt thanks to everyone who has supported us over the decades. <\/p>\n
“Your loyalty, kindness, and custom have meant so much to us, and we are truly grateful to have been part of the community for so long.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A West Yorkshire cafe chain that has been in business for 60 years has announced its has closed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":715391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-715390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=715390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/715390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/715391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=715390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=715390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=715390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}