Tell me more about Huyton. What’s trade like? We have a lot of housing estates around the store, so people treat us almost like a big corner shop. They tend to pop in four or five times a week for things like milk and a newspaper. It means we have high footfall, with a lower basket spend. There are probably 5,000 extra customers a day coming to this store than you might see at another local store. Our challenge has been to tease those customers who just come in for a newspaper to buy a sandwich as well.
How have you tried to grow those sales? We had a rejig 12 months ago. We spent £1m to enhance the layout, with a particular focus on growing impulse sales. We refreshed and added more space to the George department,improved the flow of the store and moved things like food to go into the main shopper flow. A lot of our customers only ever shopped the bottom floor, so we also relocated our seasonal GM aisle downstairs. It’s changed the demographic of the store and encouraged shoppers to shop a bit differently. It’s been a massive sales driver – our basket spend has grown from £23 to £29, which is a big step on.
This week’s G33 is an inner city special. What are some of the challenges of running an urban store? When you are inner city the range of the store has to be perfect, because I’ve got four or five direct competitors within two miles. It’s about asking: have I got the right level of world foods? The right mix of fresh and ambient food? Our shoppers come daily so tend to buy a lot of fresh food. Our bakery and pizza counter are staples here. It’s also about knowing your customer when the weather spikes. At my previous store in Aintree, which was more of a destination, lots of shoppers drove so visited one or two times a week in.Lots of ours walk to the store, so are not going to carry a barbecue home. It makes selling big-ticket items more challenging.
Read more:
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Asda Huyton Liverpool wins best inner-city supermarket in Grocer 33
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Asda cheapest supermarket but rivals keep pace with tight margins
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Asda GSM Lee Keeling on turning round its Huyton inner city store
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What is The Grocer 33 and how does it work?
Is crime also a bigger problem? Yes, crime was one of the main reasons I was brought to this store four years ago. One of my strengths is making the store stable. We’ve introduced a ‘Fortress’ setup, which makes the shop one way in, one way out. It’s much easier to manage, in a way that doesn’t make everyone feel like they are being treated like a thief. The biggest issue in this branch was people pushing full trolley loads of stock out of the store, so we introduced a system called gatekeeper. If the trolley hasn’t been through a checkout point it will lock on the way out. It’s been fantastic.
A big complaint among retailers has been the lack of police response, have you worked to build relationships with them? When I joined, I engaged with all the local police stations and asked them to meet me halfway. They now regularly park their cars in our car park and are much more of a presence. The store acts as a hub for them now – if they need a training room or a store to conduct an exercise, we offer that to them. I speak to other store managers fairly regularly, but GDPR holds us back from sharing more information between each other.
This win is quite a turnaround story. Huyton was one of the Asda stores fined last year for selling out-of-date food, but your standards were excellent during our visit… Yeah, historically this store has struggled with standards. It was down to poor performance of a small number of colleagues, who weren’t doing their jobs properly. We’ve started with going back to basics, focusing on the shape of shop, availability – that naturally takes you closer to the shop floor. We’re going in the right direction. The rest of the team have reacted well and been brilliant. No one individual can do this on their own, that’s for sure.
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