A FREE bus service has been set up to take future Morrisons customers in Gorleston to a store in Lowestoft.The 24-seater shuttle service began operating twice a day on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at the end of April to ferry shoppers from the site of the former Somerfield supermarket in Blackwall Reach to Morrisons in Lowestoft.

A FREE bus service has been set up to take future Morrisons customers in Gorleston to a store in Lowestoft.

The 24-seater shuttle service began operating twice a day on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays at the end of April to ferry shoppers from the site of the former Somerfield supermarket in Blackwall Reach to Morrisons in Lowestoft.

Morrisons expects to re-open the old Somerfield store under its own name within the next few weeks.

Workmen are currently refurbishing the 24,000sq ft store space to prepare it for reopening.

The 115 Somerfield staff have been kept on by Morrisons and are being retrained at neighbouring stores in Lowestoft and Beccles.

The refurbishment work includes an extension to provide Market Street fresh food counters where shoppers can watch store specialists at work.

A new Morrisons My Café area will have capacity for 44 customers and offer hot and cold food, children's meals and hot and cold drinks. New checkouts will be installed, while the store will be relit and redecorated throughout.

Once the store reopens, specialist bakers and butchers will bake 80 types of bread and 150 cuts of meat from scratch, while customers can choose from 110 different cuts of fish from a fishmongers counter.

Sue Betts, store personnel manager for Morrisons at Gorleston, said: “We apologise we have to close the store for a period of time while works are conducted, but hope shoppers will make use of the free bus service which will run throughout the period of store closure.”

Morrisons is the UK's fourth largest food retailer with 376 stores nationwide and welcomes nine million customers through its doors each week.