Lead manager Kealan Randall on Dorchester’s unique, seasonal Tesco store

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Tesco Dorchester

Kealan Randall was talking to Stephen Jones

The store manager is away. So what’s your role? It’s a hybrid role that mixes days and nights. It’s important for me to see both sides of the business, to be a bridge between night and day teams, so my week can really vary between early starts and late finishes. I’m the only lead manager in the shop and there aren’t many within the wider group, so it’s a great opportunity for me to get experience under my belt and grow my career with Tesco.

I’ve worked in retail since I was 17, joining Tesco last year from Asda. I started off leading the night team in a really large Extra in Poole, then moved here three months ago for this opportunity. I feel fully embedded already. The team have really supported me to lead take on leading the store while the store manager is away.

What are your impressions of the store and Dorchester so far? There’s no other store like it. It’s 34 years old and a beautiful shop. Because we’re right next to the Duchy Estate, the outside lead-up to the shop has lots of fountains, trees and water. Dorchester is a stone’s throw from the coast, so we’re a very seasonal store, with lots of our customers coming to us from the surrounding villages.

Our e-commerce operation also delivers to a very large area, including parts of Weymouth, Bridport and lots of the surrounding villages. We don’t stock any clothing and have a fairly small non-food offer. However, because we’re so heavily food-based our food offer is varied and we have a great range. Our customers are quite upmarket, so shop a lot of Finest. As a range it drives a lot of our volumes, which we’ve been able to drive further through the Clubcard.

Availability was faultless this week. What have you done to ensure standards are so high? We aim to be at our best when we are busiest. That involves resource planning, but also engaging morale within our team. As a store we have availability champions, who help us to be the best in town. They are the point of contact for the wider store team who may have ideas on how we can improve. We have 270 colleagues here and everyone is uniform in their passion to deliver that.

Has there been any investment into the store? The business aims to have the best availability in the market. Our fresh produce department was given a new look and feel earlier this year. The aim was to make it easier for customers to shop, but ultimately to drive availability. It’s working well for us.

You’re a seasonal store so you must be going big on Halloween. How’s trade going? We’ve actually almost traded all of our Halloween stock out. It’s been steady, then a busy peak over the weekend. There’s nothing unique in what people are buying. Generally, in terms of seasonal events Dorchester is very traditional. So busy during summer due to all of the holiday makers visiting the coast, Halloween and Christmas. On that front, we’ve been planning for weeks; we’re in a really strong place.

Have you been doing any work to support the local community? During the summer the group did a large charity walk along the Jurassic Coast. It raised £29,000 so was a really successful event. Dorchester is not a big place, so even though we are a destination shop, we are really part of the community and feel intensely passionate about that.