Ciara Mullen’s rise from university graduate to running one of Morrisons’ most critical stores has been swift. A mere five years since she joined Morrisons’ graduate scheme, she is now 10 months into running its critical Croydon store in London.
Now the “ambitious” 26-year-old faces her next challenge: launching a major new home delivery operation at what is already one of the company’s busiest stores for online sales.
Fresh from securing the win in this week’s Grocer 33 mystery shop in Croydon, Mullen talked about how ‘goalkeepers’ have helped customer service, boosting online shopping and what a career in retail has meant for her.
How does the store’s location influence trade? We’re a five-minute walk from the train station with lots of offices and schools nearby, so we get very busy with lunchtime and after-work trade. We take around 19,000 transactions a week, but our average basket spend is £26, so it’s somewhere in the middle of a weekly shop and a top-up shop.
It’s heavily weighted to online sales. Croydon has one of the largest online operations (click & collect, immediacy) in the country. It’s number one for Uber Eats and Deliveroo. We’re getting home delivery literally next week and will be the second store in London to be able to offer that, which will allow us to grow our online customers further.
What will the home delivery offer add to the shop? We’ll be going out as far as Epsom, Cheam, Warlingham, Wallington and other areas. We’re starting with six vans and looking to evolve it from there. We’re currently recruiting for new drivers and pickers to expand our team, which is currently 200.
We’ve been really focusing on our availability to try and improve the experience for online customers so that we’re ready. It’s become almost like a store competition.
How have you worked to improve customer service? Our shopper was impressed. We’ve done a lot of work promoting customer service and improving the ease of shop. Everyone is really engaged, not just on checkouts, but all across the store with our security and cleaning teams and we’re proactive in a lot of ways throughout the store. For example, during the hot weather we were handing out ice pops.
We have a colleague at the till called a ‘goalkeeper’ with a giant arrow who will guide customers to where the next available till is. They’re also then on hand to help customers and we can resolve any issues before they leave the shop.
A perception of Croydon is that it can be a challenging area to run a shop in, do you agree with that? I’m from this area, I spend 99% of my day on the shop floor with my team and only have positive things to say about my customers and Croydon.
A lot of that is down to having a really good security team. They’re not just security, they’re there to greet people. That acts as a deterrent in itself. There’s a lot of investment going into the local area, so we should see a benefit in terms of more passing trade.
How are you planning to drive sales during the World Cup? We’re expecting a lot more trade across our immediacy channels and will be extending the cut off until later.
Morrisons has launched a sweepstake on the More Card app, which is giving rewards and free products like Sweet Clems, Doughnut Box, Custard Tarts and Gingerbread cookies. As a store we’re also going to be giving out oranges to children at half time during the first three matches.
Father’s Day is also big. We’re offering a 4.5kg Toblerone on More Card for £50. Unsurprisingly, it’s getting a lot of attention.
Graduate roles have been in the spotlight recently, what has a career in retail meant for you? I worked in hospitality while at university and was drawn to how social the role was, so I applied for the Morrisons graduate scheme in 2021.
It was geared to getting graduates ready to be store managers, so I worked in lots of different store roles, learned lots of skills all at once and had lots of good mentors around me, which set me up for where I am today. I became store manager in Larkfield in July last year then joined Croydon in October. It’s a big store for me to have, but I have a great network of supporters around me.
I graduated from The Ken Morrison’s Leadership School in April. It taught me how to adapt my leadership style to different situations and better understand the bigger picture and how decisions are made across the business in addition to the technical skills I’ve picked up in store.
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