Tell us more about Harborne and the role of your store. Harborne is a fairly small sub area of Birmingham, just on the outskirts of the city centre. It’s relatively affluent, but at the same time, because of our closeness to town and great transport networks, our catchment covers a lot of demographics. We’re 15,800 sq ft, so typically do a lot of multiple small trolley shops. fruit, veg and fresh is the destination – increasingly so now the weather is improving.
What makes this store unique to you? I’ve spent 35 years in grocery retail, but Waitrose, and particularly Harborne, is where I feel most at home in terms of the way I manage and lead. The team (of 106 partners) is extremely warm and welcoming. Most have been here since Waitrose acquired the store 19 years ago and have a genuine passion for the community.
You were the only grocer to deliver a full basket despite being half the size of all of your competitors. Why is it so strong? It’s not reinventing the wheel, it’s just doing things right. One of my mantras is to ‘make progress every day by being a strong team’. Our ambition for the store is to be ‘fit for the future, and love where we work’. That’s built on a foundation of predictability, ensuring we’re operating in the right way 24/7 and doing it consistently. At the same time, the team have to feel supported by me and the leadership team.
A partner gifted our shopper a free product ‘on us’. Is that something you encourage? That’s awesome to hear, because that’s exactly the type of thing I want the team to feel comfortable doing. Waitrose has had ‘It’s on us’ stickers for a few years, so the team have always had the opportunity to do so. However, over the past month or so we’ve had days where we try to almost challenge the team to find chances to ‘wow a customer today’.
Electronic shelf edge labels have been in the news this week. When do you get yours? We’ve got them coming in August. The business has a long-term investment plan and we were lucky to benefit with a refurb in 2024. It focused heavily on customer experience. We got a new look front of store, a fresh counter proposition and more ways to pay.
Transitioning after Easter can be a challenging time for stores. How’s it going? Smoothly. Our focus now is what summer looks like. Picnic and BBQ ranges have started landing in the shop. We don’t have the biggest range of plants or outdoor, but we’re starting to get a few more in as well. Coming out of Easter we’ve started stepping up some specific promotions which so far have been a real hit. Last week was the Ottolenghi range – this week, helped by the burst of nicer weather, it was on summer fruits. The next big event we’ve got landing is called The Big Clean. We want to showcase our value across home, health and beauty ranges.
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