Congratulations on your win. How long have you been running this store? I’ve been in Loudwater just under two months. I’ve been a store manager for 10 years and started my store manager career in convenience. I’ve been in larger stores for the past two or three years now. Most of my store manger experience has been in central London and this time I’ve ventured out.
How does managing High Wycombe compare with working in the capital? It is completely different. My last store was Brixton which, although it was very up-and-coming, was obviously also an area with a bit of a reputation. High Wycombe is a very upmarket store with upmarket surroundings. I get a lot of customers coming from Beaconsfield.
How does being in such an affluent area affect the store’s approach? Finest is a really huge part of the offer. From a traffic perspective and from a loyalty perspective, it’s more tailored towards that. I’m pretty much max Finest, all of the Finest products that Tesco sells we sell in Tesco Loudwater. I’m pretty happy with that because I’m probably shopping more Finest ranges myself. My wife’s not too happy because I’m probably going through two packets of Finest cookies a day.
How have customers taken to the frozen range relaunch? They really like the new products, and we’ve changed the layout as well. Customers have been very complimentary about the new Finest meal solutions we’ve introduced. When you look at our customer base a lot of them are cooking for two people and the frozen range is very handy for them. We have a lot of smaller households, a lot of elderly customers.
Are you finding affluent shoppers looking carefully at their budgets? I think that’s where the Clubcard makes such a difference. Seventy per cent of our purchases are through Clubcard. The economy is where it is, but with Clubcard and Aldi Price Match we’re as competitive as we’ve ever been.
When you first moved to the new store how did you go about learning about the new area? I live in Maidenhead, just around the corner from the shop, which is a help. Ultimately, I was a customer as well. In my 22 years at Tesco I’ve worked in a variety of shops. I also listen to my wife because she shopped in here before I started.
What’s next in the pipeline for the store? We’ve got a Yo Sushi opening up very soon. That’s going to go down great and open up a new category for our customers.
You mentioned getting sales off the back of social media. Can you explain that? Yes, we’ve had some great price points on some of the products that have been trending on social media. We have a great team in the office that constantly look out for what’s trending. For example, we had a three-in-one stool that was trending all over TikTok for a good couple of weeks. You could sit on it, store things in it and it was a footstool as well. That was on Clubcard Price. A few months ago a cinnamon bun was trending too.
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