Winner: Morrisons, Abbeyvale, Gloucester

Store manager: John Kervell

Opened: 2007

Size: 28,000 sq

Market share: 48.4%

Nearest rivals:

Tesco 0.8 miles,

Asda 2.9 miles,

Sainsbury’s 3.7 miles

Store data source: Analysis by CACI. Call the market planning group on 020 7602 6000

You have only been at the store for five weeks. How does it compare with your previous one? It’s very different. The last store I ran was in inner city Bristol and quite tough. This one is a bit nicer, with very friendly customers and great staff .

What was your priority when you first arrived? Having as many face-to-face meetings as possible with the sta – not always easy when there are 250. I wanted to be really focused on availability. I want everyone to take pride in this – having an empty warehouse and gapfree shelves at the beginning of the day and the end. The other important job was revisiting our major ‘Hot’ initiative. I started out on the shop floor so like to do lots of coaching in this area.

Anything new or exciting happening? We have a new garden centre opening at the end of the month. As we are not that big a store, it is being set up in the car park and will be a really good addition for us. The company announced its Fuel Britannia till voucher scheme last week and although we don’t have a forecourt here, there was still an increase in customer numbers coming in to take advantage.

There are lots of new ranges in-store as well? Yes, we had our new Oven Fresh food to go offer in this week. It seems to be going well. There are improved recipes and there is also better product identification for us – we have all had the odd customer coming back with a rhubarb pie that should have been apple. The range as a whole is something we really lead to way in – much better than the dried up chicken at some of our rivals.

And how is the new M Savers range performing? Very well – Morrisons has always been seen as very competitive and it’s important we continue to be so. There was a bit of stigma about the old yellow packs, but these have mostly gone and the new range seems very popular. It’s far superior and should do well across the whole estate.

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