Martin Cawdry, Sainsbury's East Grinstead: Grocer 33 store of the week

Congratulations on winning - and it comes on your last day at the store. Yes! This is my last day and what a brilliant sign-off it is to win store of the week. I’ve been here nearly two years and had some great times, and this has been the icing on the cake.

Today is also the first day you have to charge for plastic bags. Have you seen the predicted ‘chaos’? I can say with confidence that there are no riots, no chaos and no bedlam here! It’s funny as we have been putting newspapers with screaming ‘bag chaos’ headlines into bags that people have been happily paying for. We’ve had no complaints at the service desk and in fact people started coming with their own bags at the weekend.

Your store scored well on customer service - are there policies in place to ensure this? There is no big secret to good customer service - it simply must be the number one priority, and you have to ensure that your staff feels proud of helping every customer who needs it. It’s a big focus, and this is borne out by our internal mystery shopper scheme, which has shown us to be the best Sainsbury’s store in the country for customer service.

You also scored top marks for your store layout - have you had any recent changes in-store? We had a major refurb last year where we focused heavily on adjacency flow after feedback from our customers. There isn’t much competition near us so we have to get the refurb right, or risk upsetting customers. I think the high scores show we got it right.

You appear to have forged strong community links - last year you allowed people to throw custard pies in your face in front of the public in the name of charity! I actually asked my colleagues what we could do for charity and funnily enough, they seem to have come back with that idea! It was a great deal of fun and fantastic to raise money for Jigsaw, our charity.