Store: Sainsbury’s Lincoln
Store manager: Matt Bingham
Opened: October 1998
Size: 75,678 sq ft
Market share: 19%
Population: 148,146
Grocery spend: £3,781,984
Spend by household: £61
Competitors: 41
Nearest rivals: Aldi 1.2 miles, Asda 1.2 miles, Co-op 0.6 miles, Iceland 0.1 miles, Lidl 0.1 miles, M&S 0.1 miles, Morrisons 1.7 miles, Sainsbury’s 2.2 miles, Tesco 0.8 miles, Waitrose 4.0 miles
Source: CACI. For more info visit www.caci.co.uk/contact.
Notes: Shopper profiling is measured using Grocery Acorn shopper segmentation. Store catchment data (market share, population, expenditure, spend by household, competition) is within a five-mile radius. For CACI’s shopper segmentation of the other stores we visited this week see our service & availability report.
How long have you been with the Lincoln superstore? I joined Lincoln last May. I came across from the Mansfield store. I’ve done four stores as a manager and they have gotten bigger. This is now one of the largest stores we’ve got.
What exactly differentiates this store from others? We’ve got a large online operation that’s double the size of my previous one. We currently run 15 online vans. Our clothing and GM range is a lot larger than any store I’ve been in before, featuring one of the largest ranges in the region. We’ve been slowly integrating Habitat products, especially over the past 12 months. The home accessories section is really popular, from ornaments to bedding and fragrances. We’ve got eight Argos order devices across the shop floor in the GM and clothing sections, and we have an Argos hub so we do the home delivery for Argos from this store as well.
How is the decision to close down the in-store cafés affecting your branch? We’ve got no impact at this store at all so I’m extremely pleased. My café is one of the ones that’s staying open for the foreseeable future and our bakery will continue to make everything from scratch.
What we’re doing with the Restaurant Hubs is obviously quite hard on colleagues and customers, but it’s also exciting and helps make Sainsbury’s a one-stop shop so customers will be able to come in and have great food at great prices and then also do their shopping.
You’re also one of the HFSS trial stores. Yes. We’re changing the layout of our seasonal display so that we only have the Easter products in that section. Every store has a dedicated aisle for Easter but with the change in the law, we will only be able to display it in that area, so we’re trialling extending it for the Easter period and keeping it in one location. We’ll have no end-of-aisle displays, plinths or bulk stacks around the shop, no boards of Easter eggs at the front of the shop… it’ll all be from our seasonal display, which will look fantastic because of the way we’re displaying intersections and it’s going to be easier for customers.
What other changes have you had to make as part of the layout modifications? At the moment we’re completely changing the layout of our food halls, so it’s a two-pronged attack. Firstly we’re doing it to be ready for the HFSS regulations – we’re rolling out the candy and Lindt pick and mix within aisles, so everything that’s HFSS we’re moving in-aisle – and then we’re also introducing over 153 innovations across the store. We’ve got 80 new Inspired to Cook products, we’re bringing in more of the continental foods and the world foods. That’s all across the front of the food counters that were closed, so we’re introducing 24 new bays in the store.
How do you explain that nearly a fifth of your demographic is price-led convenience? We are very much focusing on price at the moment for our customers. We’ve just reduced over 150 items by up to 34% as part of Aldi Price Match. We really focus on giving the best value for our customers at quality prices. Yes, we’ve had to increase some of our prices, but we are below inflation, and looking at my demographic of customers I want them coming back and getting our quality products at an Aldi price.
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