Tesco Solihull GSM Steve Ady

Steve Ady was talking to Stephen Jones

What is Solihull like and how is that reflected in your shoppers? It’s an affluent area. Our shoppers are very keen to tell us what they want, and can be slightly more demanding than I’ve experienced elsewhere – which is absolutely OK. They’re very good at pointing out when they think we’ve done better, or when they think we’ve got opportunities to improve.

Our location makes us a natural destination – I can chuck a stone out of the window and it would land on the motorway. So we are heavily weighted towards weekends and paydays. There’s a very big garden centre on the site, and that drives trade. We have a very big population of older customers on a Thursday. Our shoppers can tend to afford to buy whatever they want, and they do. I’ve never seen Finest go off shelves as quickly as it does here. Branded items too.

Finest sales are up across the business. How have you been trying exploit that? We are a bigger store, so naturally have more range. It sounds obvious, but you give more space to what you sell a lot of. All of our tastings are organised by head office but tend to be geared towards Finest. For me the big difference, and what we can control, is presentation. That’s making sure your steaks are standing up, customers can actually see the products, and your Finest bays look clean and full. It’s something we’ve tried to be more consistent with since I came in.

Yes, you’re new to this store. How have you handled the transition? I’ve been here 12 weeks. I was at my previous store in Telford for 13 years, so it’s taken a couple of weeks to find my head. I’ve been with Tesco 35 years, and the good thing is everything is the same in every store. Luckily, the bit I enjoy most is getting to know the people, what their strengths and opportunities are.

 

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I’ve made it my job to say hello to every person. We’ve got 450 colleagues here so it’s not always easy, especially those working nights, but it’s important people feel acknowledged. My management style is to be as approachable as possible, whether that’s not having blinds up in offices, or walking up and down the middle of the shop as often as I can. Other than that, I’ve concentrated on three key things: quality of product, tidiness of store and availability. None of it is rocket science, but is dependent on how you operate.

How have you exited summer and have successive heatwaves been challenging? As we all know with climate change, there’s a trend where our summers are hotter now. A few years ago it was a shock to the system, but now we’ve adapted to it. Our summer finishes the day kids go back to school, which was this week. Now it’s Christmas. We’ve got some lines coming in already.

What are your Christmas plans? Funnily enough, this is probably the only Tesco stores I know that doesn’t have a seasonal aisle. There was an agreement with garden centre (Nottcutts) when the store opened 35 years ago that we wouldn’t sell any Christmas decorations, Christmas trees and gardening goods and we never have.

Talking of innovation, what did you make of Tesco’s viral birthday cake sandwich? It was interesting. Me and my colleagues were talking about it a lot because it was so different. TikTok and social media have completely changed how customers hear about and talk about products. There’s been a couple of times when I’ve had shoppers ask me about a product that I didn’t even know we’d launched yet. It drives interest and enthusiasm across the store.

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