What’s Letchworth like and how does the store reflect that? Letchworth is a busy town, just off the M1 with direct lines into London. It was the UK’s first garden city, so unsurprisingly our garden centre always does well during the summer. As we’re a town centre store, we get lots of smaller shopping missions alongside bigger shops.
Do you make an effort to stock any local Hertfordshire products? There’s not many here other than loose eggs, which come from local farms. But we’re a broad church in terms of the ethnicity, religion and affluence of our customers. A couple of months ago we had a full refresh of our world foods section, grouping different cuisines together in order to make it easier to shop.
Morrisons has launched a new ‘ultra-premium tier’ as part of the recent fresh relaunch. How has it gone down? We’ve tried to introduce new products that really make a difference to our customers. In that regard, the next level of The Best range has been really well received. There’s virtually no waste on those lines. There’s much more of a rationale behind the recent big moves we’ve made, be that on pop and waters, the world food refresh or the big fresh change. It’s designed to make everything easier for customers and is much more logical in terms of how it’s merchandised.
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More Card counter discounts also returned this week. Is that something customers asked for? Yes, we’ve brought back Fish Fridays and Steak Saturdays, which give customers a 20% discount with a More Card. The business was planning to end it, but we fed back that there was a real appetite for the offers to stay. The business has become very good at listening to its customers.
Is new on-demand service Morrisons Now live here? We don’t have a dotcom delivery operation, but online is a growing channel as a store, either through click & collect, on-demand partnership, and now, as of last week, our own Morrisons Now channel. It’s early days, but so far it’s slotted in perfectly to our operations.
What’s been your focus during your first nine months and now looking ahead? customer service. In terms of both winning the hearts and minds of customers but also making the shop operationally sound. We’ve focused on reducing congestion on the shop floor, ensuring the music is at the right level and that colleagues are always around when needed. We’re also driving harder on availability, using our new optic system.
We have a strong team of eight managers and 200 colleagues here. The level of experience and collaboration is probably why we’ve won this award. They deserve huge credit for the great job they’ve done improving customer service and the shopper journey. It’s showing, as some of our lapsed customers are coming back and the shop is getting busier and busier.
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