Waitrose Daventry: Grocer 33 store of the week

What has been your career trajectory at Waitrose? I’ve been with the partnership for nearly five years now and I’ve worked in three different branches. I’m just a few weeks into my first branch manager appointment.

What stands out about Waitrose Daventry? For me, it’s 100% the partners. I’ve not been with the branch very long and I’ve been bowled over by how welcoming the team are, the fabulous customer service they give and the passion they have for the partnership. I’m absolutely delighted with the result of the Grocer 33, I think it’s testament to the great hard work and commitment of the team of partners here to always put our customers first and be passionate about delivering great standards.

What kind of shoppers do you have in store? How do you cater to your shopper demographics? We have a real mix of different shoppers and we cater really well for them. For our shoppers that are really passionate about food and cooking from scratch, we have the great Cooks Ingredients range that relaunched earlier this year, which is featuring heavily in our recipe cards. It gives customers a real opportunity to try new flavours and experiment with their cooking. Then we’ve got some great ranges for customers that are more aligned for convenience: recently we’ve had our Pizza Meal Deal, which has gone down really well at a great value price point. It’s really easy for customers to pick up and have an easy tea, but equally it’s great-quality food.

What’s your approach to customer service in store? Customer service is absolutely integral to what we do in Waitrose and it’s what makes the partnership a great place to shop. It’s a huge point of difference for us. Great customer service is about empowering partners to do the right thing for our customers and just make sure that we are rewarding and recognising our partners, through praise and feedback, when we see them give great service and going the extra mile for our customers. It’s about doing even the simple things that have a big impact, such as smiling at customers as they come through our doors, helping them with any questions, and taking them to the product if they have any queries about where an item may be.

How have you found the rollout of MyWaitrose? The launch of MyWaitrose has been great, it’s gone down well with our customers. MyWaitrose gives them a lot more choice for offers: they’re able to pick based on their shopping habits. More recently, customers have had offers come through on some of our really delicious Christmas items as well. Building on that, with MyWaitrose in November we’ve brought back our free coffee, which has gone down really well. We’ve also built in a key point of difference which is that we are in partnership with Caffè Nero, which has great quality.

Have you found people have been buying Christmas food already? The Christmas range has been really popular and customers are excited to see the products that we have to offer and try new things. At the moment, customers are having the opportunity to use their vouchers with lots of Christmas offers in there as well. We’ve got some great offers on mince pies at the moment. Customers are certainly starting to stock up on festive items.