Fraserburgh Tesco wins UK’s best ‘extremities’ mystery shop

From the corner of Cornwall, to a remote north-eastern tip in Scotland, via the island of Anglesey in north west Wales, a fishing town in County Down and the UK’s most eastern point, The Grocer visited some of the UK’s most remote supermarkets this week in our first-ever ‘extremities special’ mystery shop.

Our winner was a 39,114 sq ft Tesco in the fishing port of Fraserburgh, a small coastal town with a population of 12,000 in Aberdeenshire.

It’s a “traditional, locally rooted community with above-average economic constraint”, according to CACI, and the store provides a vital service, with Lidl the only other supermarket.

So it was fitting that features and services made the biggest difference in its winning score of 84. While the store is “starting to look a little tired” our shopper “particularly liked” the layout and wide aisles, which “enabled a stress-free shop”. She also liked the “clean and bright” café, the key cutting service, and the fact the mobile phone shop was staffed throughout her shop and praised the “mostly excellent” customer service from “staff members that genuinely engaged with me”. Overall, our shopper felt she “would be more than happy to shop here if it was more local to me” even though it was smaller than the one she was used to.

Second place went to Sainsbury’s store in Lowestoft, a traditional seaside town in Suffolk on the easternmost edge of England. The 22,000 sq ft store tied with Tesco on availability, with three items not stocked.

Sainsbury’s excelled on in-store experience: our shopper praised the “high standard of presentation” with shelves “clean and well stocked” and “immaculate” toilets, though the shop floor was “uncomfortably cold”.  He found the store “easy to navigate” and praised staff, who all “personally guided me to the products I was looking for and clearly answered [my] questions or concerns I had”. The “checkout assistant was efficient, confident and very helpful with a smile”.

This week’s smallest store, at 11,883 sq ft, the Waitrose in Menai Bridge, a picturesque town on Anglesey, North Wales, struggled on availability with two items out of stock and four not stocked, but it performed well in most other areas.

Our shopper described the “great excitement” when the store opened, “as there is no other Waitrose in North Wales”. She liked “the local farmers market-type atmosphere” – perfect for its “obviously regular rural customers supported by an emphasis on fresh and healthy products” and she praised “the friendliness of the checkout operator” but disliked the small car park, which is “hard to navigate when the store is busy”.

The 25,809 sq ft Morrisons in Penzance, a small coastal town at the western edge of Cornwall also struggled on availability, with one item out of stock and six not stocked. Our shopper was an occasional Morrisons customer until recently, when he “decided not to shop at Morrisons as a result of their policy of firing staff for alerting them to shoplifters”.

On this occasion, though, he praised the “layout, reasonable prices and good quality products” and found the store “well presented and easily accessible”. However, “service was definitely a letdown” and our shopper would like to see an improvement to “the attitude of some staff members”.

In last place Asda’s 30,000 sq ft Kilkeel, County Down scored this week’s only zero for availability, with two out-of-stocks and nine items not stocked. Our shopper found most of the staff “friendly and helpful”, and easy to find, but felt one staff member “could have made more of an effort” to find a product rather than just saying “he wasn’t sure”.