BUTCHER-GROCER SHOPS

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29273, 3 August 1960, Page 18

BUTCHER-GROCER SHOPS

Compliance With Award "Th. Preus" Special Service FEILDING, August 3. The two Feilding butchergrocers who are selling groceries at cost are to alter their shop hours to comply with the retail grocers* award. One of them, Mr E. Deslandes, received a letter from the Department of Labour, Palmerston North, which stated that it had come to the department's notice that Mr Deslandes was engaged in selling grocery lines outside the closing hour provisions of the retail grocers’ award. Under this award, “no groceries other than goods on the exempted list may be sold or exposed for sale before 8 a.m. on any weekday. I trust, therefore, that you will see that such provisions are complied with in the future to comply with the retail grocers’ award,” says the department’s notice. Mr Deslandes has decided to open at 8 a.m. and dose at 5 p.m. on week days and observe the usual butchers’ hours on Fridays, namely, 6.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. He will reopen on Fridays from 7 p.m. until 8.30 p.m. for the rale of groceries exdusively. The other butcher-grocer, Mr K. Woods, will observe the same hours. Mr Deslandes says that he commenced selling groceries at cost in retaliation to the grocers who were selling sausages at Is 7d per lb while the butcher himself had to pay is lid wholesale for sausages. He says the Farmers* Co-opera-tive Distributing Company, Ltd, was cutting meat prices by advertising forequarters of mutton at 7s 9d.

On Friday, the butcher-grocers sold four and a half tons of sugar to cash customers, and then supplies from the wholesale merchant in Feilding ran out. A wood and. coal merchant said that carbonettes were being sold in Feilding by three grocers. The supplies were being drawn from their grocery merchant. In retaliation the coal merchant in Feilding had decided to offer his carbonettes to grocers and five grocers had agreed to stock them as from next' week. They would be packed in handy sized containers.

It is all rather bewildering to the public—buying meat from the grocers, firing from the grocers, and groceries and fresh meat from the butcher.