Store manager: Tracey Peddie
Store: Asda Woking Sheerwater
Opened: 2014
Size: 39,900 sq ft
Market share: 5%
Population: 211,057
Grocery spend: £28,843,357
Spend by household: £348.28
Competitors: 66
Nearest rivals: Aldi 4.2 miles, Asda 0.8 miles, Co-op 0.9 miles, Iceland 6.9 miles, Lidl 2.6 miles, M&S 1.5 miles, Morrisons 1.9 miles, Sainsbury’s 1.5 miles, Tesco 1.1 miles, Waitrose 1.2 miles
Source: CACI. For more info visit www.caci.co.uk/contact. Notes: Shopper profiling is measured using Grocery Acorn shopper segmentation. Store catchment data (market share, population, expenditure, spend by household, competition) is within a five-mile radius. For CACI’s shopper segmentation of the other stores we visited this week see the online report at www.thegrocer.co.uk/stores/the-grocer-33
Tell us about your career in retail. I’ve loved shopkeeping since I was young. I joined Asda in Farnborough when I was 16 and have been with the business for 30 years. I spent 15 years in a regional HR role, then came back into stores three years ago. Asda is like a family to me, all three of my kids have worked for Asda over the years.
What’s unique about the store and who shops here? The store is over 10 years old, but it’s still a nice, fresh modern store. Customers like that we have a car park underneath the shop as they don’t get wet. We’re mainly a food store, although we have a small GM section. It caters for most, even though we don’t have the broadest selection of goods for a typical superstore. McLaren is nearby so you’ll often see lots of their employees shopping here. We have seven managers and 210 colleagues.
How was trade during the sunny weekend? It was beautiful this weekend, so we sold lots of beer – even though we’re not really a beer shop. Then it was salads, burgers, bakery items. As the weather has been better over the last couple of weeks, we’ve done a lot of work at the front of our shop, then linked those displays with items throughout the store.
Availability swung it this week. Is that something you’ve worked on? We switched to twilight refill hours a couple of years ago. We stock fresh overnight, but our ambient is all done on the twilight shift. One of the positives is that you get to see and work with all of those colleagues a lot more now. It’s also a win-win from an online point of view, because it means we’ve wound down the online fill and finished it before the twilight fill start. It means a lot less clutter on the shop floor.
What have you done to improve standards more generally? The new leadership has changed the dynamic over the past year. The most important thing has been just getting back to basics. It’s about availability, great service and shouting out value for customers. It’s really important to me that the shop is tidy, presentable and that customers can find what they are looking for and that’s something we’ve worked on. Our colleague base is very diverse, English isn’t everybody’s first language. So some of that has just been making sure everybody has the right knowledge and equipment of where to put the products in the right place. But as a day team, we’ve been working to make sure we better support the twilight and fresh fill.
Is that something you attribute to the change of leadership? What are your thoughts on how the turnaround is going? One hundred per cent. I was chuffed to bits when Rollback came back. It’s that uniqueness that Asda is known for. As a store manager, the biggest impact has been having a clear strategy. We’re very clear about what we’re focusing on, be that availability or customer service. Rollback has brought identity back to the stores, turned them green and customers understand what the message is.
How are you celebrating Asda’s 60th anniversary? We’re celebrating all through the year. Last week we had a dress-up day where all the colleagues dressed up in 1960s clothes. Our community colleague is also working with local people who have done a lot for the area, and will be celebrating with them in some way.
No comments yet