THE opening of a new food store has been delayed until next month.

The Food Warehouse was due to open its doors at St Michael’s Retail Park in early May, but the company has now confirmed it will not open until June 2.

It did not say why there has been a delay.

As previously reported in the Gazette, The Food Warehouse was given the go-ahead by Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council to vary the conditions of Unit 4 at St Michael’s Retail Park to “fulfil their longstanding requirement to open and operate a food store in Basingstoke”.

The shop, which is set to create between 20 and 25 new jobs, would be the first of its kind in the town.

Read more: All you need to know about The Food Warehouse 

The company, which is part of Iceland, offers a warehouse style format, designed to be larger than the company’s high street Iceland shops, offering a much wider range of goods such as frozen, chilled and grocery products.

Each store also has a range of bulk buy and non-food lines.

The store set for the retail park in The Harrow Way will have a warehouse type look with wide shopping aisles, polished concrete floors and no ceilings.

A 149 square metre mezzanine floor will be installed to be used for storage.

Currently, the nearest store to Basingstoke is 15 miles away in the Reading Link Retail Park.

The shop would open between 8am and 9pm Monday to Saturday, and 10am to 5pm on Sunday.