Waitrose crowned the best Cheltenham supermarket in Grocer 33 mystery shop

With its elegant Regency architecture, wide promenades and green squares, Cheltenham is a picture of genteel England. Its rich cultural calendar includes not only the famed Cheltenham horse racing weekend, but also jazz, literature and science festivals – helping it punch well above its weight for a town of about 120,000 people.

It also boasts prestigious schools, boutique shopping and an upscale dining scene, with two of the town’s restaurants, Le Champignon Sauvage and Lumiere, awarded Michelin stars, so it’s perhaps unsurprising to find it overindexes (19% vs a national average of 13.1%) with the ‘Established Affluence’ demographic identified by CACI. Only 1.6% of its population are ‘Cash-strapped Families’ against a national average of 7.6%.

Read more:

• Sainsbury’s offers deepest discounts as guest retailer Iceland struggles on price

• How ‘high-profile’ Waitrose Cheltenham keeps shoppers and partners happy

• What is The Grocer 33 and how does it work?

How fitting then that upmarket Waitrose on Honeybourne Way was the winner of our Cheltenham mystery shop after picking up 85 points. The 40,944 sq ft store, located on the edge of town, scored well across the board, starting with a solid showing on availability, with just one item out of stock.

It excelled on customer service, with team members “always so lovely and helpful” and eager to help personally search for items. And our shopper also loved the “enticing” fish, meat and sushi counters, though the atrium entrance felt “quite empty and unloved”.

A 10-minute drive from town, the Gallagher Retail Park is home to the 54,979 sq ft Sainsbury’s that was edged into second place this week. The store bettered our winner on availability with just one item not stocked and did the same on experience, where our shopper ranked the store standards and fruit & veg section as excellent.

He also liked the size of the store, which meant “lots of available space” for promotions and “lots of staff on hand” who were “quick to help”. Our shopper did, though, plead for the store to “stop moving stuff around” – in this one visit, he “must have heard five people trying to locate items”.

Just one point back in third was Morrisons on Caernarvon Road. Located on a retail park a few miles outside town, the 35,499 sq ft store was “tidy and mostly well presented”.

Our shopper praised the “impressive” baby changing room and the staff member at the checkout who was “really friendly and warm and asked me about my day”, leaving our shopper feeling “really positive when I left the checkout area””.

On the downside, the sweets aisle was “chaotic” with “boxes in random positions”, and our shopper was disappointed to find most of the specialist counters closed during her visit.

Two supermarkets tied for fourth place this week with 69 points, the first the Asda on Hatherley Lane, three miles out of town to the west. The store performed best on customer service, with one “charming” member of staff “extremely apologetic” upon realising the nectarines were not available and our shopper praised the trolley collector who was “doing an efficient job single-handedly”.

However, he was “not keen” on the store’s layout and the tiny writing and “unintuitive abbreviations of item descriptions” on the shelf-edge labels.Far closer to town, less than half a mile from the winning Waitrose store, Tesco on Colletts Drive performed well on availability with just one item out of stock. The 55,020 sq ft store’s size proved both a blessing and curse, with our shopper praising the “very large range of goods” while noting “it was difficult to find things” at times.

This week also included a guest appearance for Iceland’s Food Warehouse – though, unfortunately, things didn’t go well for its 21,008 sq ft store on Tewkesbury Road. Almost 30 points back from its nearest rival, it scored zero for availability, and our shopper found the checkout staff “dismissive and uninterested” and “strongly disliked” the lack of high-level signage – she felt that its introduction would make “browsing far simpler and more enjoyable”. She did, though, find the store to be “mostly well presented” and liked the wide aisles, even if she did come across a “very large bag” in the centre of one of them, which appeared to be being used for waste packaging and was “sometimes left unattended”.