Farmer Lou's pulls out of Yamba

Kaitlin Sweeney is one of the six juniors whose job at Farmer Lou’s, Yamba, is gone.

FIRST of all there was a Farmer Charlies store in Treelands Drive at Yamba.

Then there was a Farmer Lou’s. Next Wednesday, the shop will be empty.

Farmer Lou’s of Grafton, which took over when Farmer Charlies folded at Yamba around 12 months ago, has decided to pull out of the town because trade is not up to expectation.

Farmer Lou’s Grafton and South Grafton stores will trade as normal.

A staff meeting was called on Wednesday night to inform workers that as of next Wednesday the Yamba Treelands Drive business is closing.

Six juniors from the Lower Clarence will lose their job.

“We did go into it thinking we’d stay for longer than this,” Farmer Lou’s Yamba manager Paul Felice said.

“But the trade wasn’t up to what we needed to carry on,” he said yesterday.

Mr Felice said in the 12 months, the business got to level and that’s where it stayed.

He said that Maclean shoppers were coming into their Grafton store, but weren’t using the Yamba outlet, despite prices coming in lower than that of BI-LO fruit and veg.

“We made them honest down there,” Mr Felice said.

“They’re (BI-LO) not attacking us in Yamba, but they do in Grafton,” Mr Felice said

Fourteen-year-old Kaitlin Sweeney said the loss of her job was like ‘losing a second family’.

The Maclean High School student worked up to 15 hours a week at her first job and said the pay was ‘really good’.

“I had just started to save up to buy a car and I don’t think other places will be as good to work at,” she said.

“Most of us cried when they told us they were closing.”