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M&S ditches teacups and saucers for mugs to save money on the washing up

Teacup and saucer
Teacup and saucer

Marks & Spencer will no longer serve hot drinks in teacups and saucers in a bid to save on energy and water.

The retail giant said it was more efficient to clean a single mug rather than two pieces of crockery, but it is still using teapots.

“We have started providing customers with china mugs rather than cups and saucers to reduce water and energy use,” the company said. “It reduces water as fewer items need dishwashing. We trialled it in 10 cafes and it is now being rolled out to a further 50. Customer feedback has been positive.”

While M&S said it was confident that customers were happy with the changes, some regular cafe attendees said they were disappointed by the change.

‘This could cost them a lot of customers’

Ron Moore, 86, who regularly visits an M&S in Longbridge, Birmingham, with his wife Jennifer, said: “We go to M&S once a week for our tea and toasted teacakes for breakfast, before doing our weekly shopping. We are very friendly with the staff and they informed us that cups and saucers were being removed.

“They are going to be replaced with just mugs and tea bags. This could cost them a lot of customers, especially as us pensioners love our pots of tea. They told us that they have had lots of complaints from pensioners.

“The staff think it’s the cost of the electricity to run the dishwashers, so it would appear it’s purely financial,” he told the Daily Mail.

Once a popular feature in British kitchens, tea cups and saucers have steadily fallen out of common use although they are gaining popularity in the small but burgeoning market for vintage crockery.

The East India Trading Company introduced tea cups to Britain in the late 18th-century, importing them from China during the reign of George IV. They were previously known as tea bowls but, in 1750, a gentleman named Robert Adams added handles to the cups to make them easier to handle.