Waitrose Comely Bank, Edinburgh: Grocer 33 store of the week

You got great marks for shop floor service, checkout and store standards. Have you done anything new recently? We had a Sushi Daily bar installed in late October, which has been hugely popular. It’s really been a great addition to the branch - we’ve had a fantastic response.

You opened a community room in your branch at around the same time. Which local groups can book for free? The community room opened in October, I think the majority of new Waitrose branches will have them. It’s a good use of space and enables you to give back to the community. We have a lot of people using it from young mothers to the church and educational classes with schoolchildren.

How have you been affected by the vegetable crisis? We haven’t been hugely hit, actually. We’ve had some problems getting hold of the obvious ones like spinach and broccoli, but stock seems to be on the increase now and it’s starting to reappear on the shelves. We do have lettuce!

You have quite a few competitors close by. How do you differentiate yourself? We’ve actually had no new competition open for about 10 years. It’s good to keep an eye on the competition but ultimately you need to focus on what you do. I think what separates us from the competition is the branch ambience, customer service, quality of the produce and the value message.

And Waitrose has an ad out that highlights your emphasis on sustainable sourcing. Yes, I think it’s sending a strong message that we’ve always been very proud of - it’s something we continually focus on.

Valentine’s Day is approaching. How is your store preparing? We have our gifting on display in our main display units at the moment, so we’re gearing up for the weekend. I think we will start to see sales on the Sunday; that will be the big push. On the food side, we will be doing the Valentine’s meal deal.