Morrisons Letchworth named North Hertfordshire’s best supermarket in Grocer 33

Less than 40 miles from central London, North Hertfordshire is a quiet, rural area punctuated by thriving market towns and charming villages. With some of those towns less than 30 minutes from London by rail, the area is considered an attractive option to live and work for families and young professionals.

Hitchin and Baldock are charming towns boasting historic buildings and varied high streets, while nearby Stevenage is a larger, more urban settlement with strong local employment provided by the tech, science and engineering sectors – including GlaxoSmithKline, which counts Stevenage as one of its main R&D hubs.

Our winner this week, though, was located in Letchworth – the first ever ‘Garden City’, which was founded by urban planner and social reformer Ebeneezer Howard in 1903 with the aim of combining the best of the city and the countryside, providing work and housing alongside green space and a lower density of people.

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This social ideal seems to have endured, with Letchworth today renowned as an extremely green, safe and community-oriented place to live. And now, it’s home to the best supermarket in North Hertfordshire after the 33,604 sq ft Morrisons on Broadway made it back-to-back wins for the retailer, edging out second-placed Waitrose by a single point.

Located in the town centre, this striking store performed well across the board, but it was the “impeccable” customer service that struck a chord with our shopper. She gave special praise to one member of staff who was “absolutely exceptional at his job” and helped her locate several hard-to-find items.

Our shopper was also pleased to find out about the Morrisons More card, which has “encouraged me to visit Morrisons more often” for the “great deals”. She found “most” of the aisles well organised apart from one, which she felt had a ramshackle assortment of items and “let the high standards of the rest of the store down a little”.

Four miles away in Hitchin, Waitrose took second place this week thanks to an eerily similar performance to our winner. Both stores scored the same on most metrics, with the key outlier being a two-point gap on features & services. Waitrose did not perform badly in this area – our shopper praised its “logical” layout and “wide and clear” aisles – but a few congested areas were enough to see it score eight compared to our winner’s 10.

Our shopper also praised the “availability and neatness of the stock” and the “ease of access to products”, although they would like to have seen more checkouts open to “reduce wait times”.

Two stores tied on 77 points this week and thus shared third place. The first was Sainsbury’s in Letchworth, located a short drive from the centre of town on a retail park. The store took a hit on availability thanks to two items being out of stock, with our shopper noting the worst thing about his trip as “the empty shelves in the fresh meat section and the empty boxes on shelves”.

However, he was pleased with the customer service he received from the “helpful” staff members who were “keen to lead me to products and help me look for items”. This was made easier thanks to the store being “orderly”, “organised” and “well presented”.

Just two miles away in Baldock, Tesco also bagged 77, but outperformed Sainsbury’s on availability with just one item out of stock. The 61,761 sq ft store is found at the far end of the high street somewhat removed from the town’s other shops, and its best performance came on tills & checkouts, where there was no queue and “the checkout operator was friendly and careful with my products”.

Our shopper was also pleased to find that this large store “seemed to have everything”, meaning no nipping elsewhere to stock up on extra items, but “the downside is it takes a while to get around, and I usually spend more time [at this store] than I planned to”.

A full nine miles away down the A1, Asda in Stevenage took last place this week with 66 points. This week’s largest store at 62,819 sq ft, it nonetheless posted the worst performance on availability with three items out of stock and one not stocked.

That heavily impacted its overall score, with the store performing moderately well – if never outstandingly – in most other areas. Our shopper “really liked the spacious feel to the store” and was pleased to find “no queues at the tills”, though she did point out there was “rubbish at the entrance”.