How long have you worked for Sainsbury’s? This year marks my 27th year working for Sainsbury’s. When I was 18, I was a produce manager, at 20 I became a deputy manager, and I’ve now been a store manager for the past 13 years across eight different stores. As of next week, I will have been store manager at Crayford for a year.
This is the largest Sainsbury’s store in the country. What challenges come with that? One of the biggest challenges is the focus on a shop of this size – and it is phenomenal. You receive a lot of high-level visits and have more contact with directors. A flagship shop like this can have a big impact on the business and how we perform really does determine how well the business performs. Everything I say has a huge impact on the 470 colleagues that we have here, so you really have to be more mindful about how you act, how you behave and what you demand.
Have you had any recent investments or made any changes to the store? In October, we moved ‘Food On The Move’ to the front of the store. We invested in a few new cabinets and fresh, clean, new fixtures, and customers have seen the difference. But we’ve made a lot of tweaks to serve the customer the best we can.
Read more:
-
Tesco comes out on top in tight Grocer 33 pricing battle with Asda
-
Sainsbury’s Crayford crowned king in battle of the UK’s biggest stores
-
What is The Grocer 33 and how does it work?
Has Sainsbury’s work on value made it easier for you to compete with the discounters? It has helped hugely. Our Aldi Price Match is absolutely phenomenal, and in the shop, it’s about the visual display. We’ve got some brilliant Aldi Price Match on jams and marmalades – staple lines for customers – and I have virtually a whole shelf of it. Nectar is also phenomenal, and we’re seeing about 93% better participation with it in this shop.
How was Christmas trade in the store? Hard but brilliant. This Christmas we put great offers on, secured our turkeys before anyone else and had a 20% uplift in our turkey orders. Wastage was also minimal, and you can really see that we were aligned in the shop this Christmas.
What did you do to capitalise on Dry January? Low & no-alcohol is taking off. I made a conscious decision before Christmas to move my low & no-alcohol and expand it to further bays. Whether you drink or don’t, everyone deserves to celebrate at Christmas, and you see that in our sales of low & no. Then afterwards, why would I move it back when everyone wants to start that healthy new year?
What are your biggest priorities for the store in the year ahead? As a business, we’ve got to keep working on value, and in this store I’ve got to execute that. Availability is key, and that never goes away, but this year I’ll be thinking about how we can be even better. We’ve really started looking at how we can improve that shopping experience for the customer, and I’ve already made space changes in the shop since Christmas.
No comments yet