I understand you’ve been at this store for a long time? I’ve been here 15 years, 27 years with Waitrose overall. I actually won store manager of the year in 2014, so it’s nice to be awarded again. This is one of the higher profile branches within the Waitrose estate, so if you enjoy working in branch there’s nowhere else to go. It was originally built as a Food & Home branch, but the John Lewis department was taken out in 2019, when there was a standalone John Lewis built in town. That’s left us with a big store to fill and a huge range as a result. If it’s happening at Waitrose, it’s happening here.
What’s it like to be a retailer in Cheltenham? It’s a nice, quite large town on the edge of the Cotswolds. Lots of people travel in from the surrounding areas to shop here. Our store is in the centre of town, on the edge of an area called Montpellier.It means our shoppers are big foodies and have high expectations of what they expect of Waitrose. They’ll regularly challenge us on our products, or where to find them in store. It’s important to make sure all of our partners are able to answer those questions, which keeps us on our toes.
How do you ensure all partners are able to help them? If you’ve tasted something, you can talk with more authority about what it’s like, so we try to make sure partners have tried all of our new products and encourage them to discuss those products with each other, either at home or in the partner dining room when they launch. Of course, we have 300 partners here, so it’s not possible for them all to taste everything, therefore it’s important that we encourage partners to talk about the products they’ve tried as much as they can, either through social media groups, or in general conversation.
Cheltenham is known for its festivals – how do they impact trade throughout the year? It’s massive for the town, but actually we tend to be less busy during the festivals as a lot of the local people get away because it’s so busy. We’re busier the week before and after. So, it does affect trade patterns, but given the store has been here 23 years, we’ve learned to adapt.
Speaking of festivals, how is your Christmas prep going? We launched Christmas this week. You can already see the things that are going to sell. It’s the old favourites they’ve missed, like Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Toblerone and Christmas puddings. Of our new lines, the Christmas Chocolate Knots and No.1 Biscotti Italian selection are getting a lot of interest.
Waitrose’s investment in stores and tech seems to be really paying off given the recent results. What’s had the most impact for you as a store manager? The biggest thing has been the rollout of a new data system – the level of data it’s giving me is something I didn’t think was possible when I started at Waitrose. Now we have better data, we’ve been able to use it to ensure we have the right people in the right place in store. That has made such a difference with workload, and generally partners are happier because now they’re where customers most need them, and not just surplus as they may have been in the past. There’s been more this week, as we’ve just replaced all of our partner handsets instore for the first time in eight years. They’re much quicker, which will help us be a lot slicker when serving our customers at a time when it’s most needed.
How will you ensure standards stay high going into the golden quarter? Firstly, it’s important to talk about it, so everyone knows the challenges we’ll face and how we’re performing. It’s such a busy time, so it’s also important that we celebrate with partners to keep the Christmas spirit high. We’ll ensure partners have a great experience, too, which they can pass onto customers.
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