Waitrose Horsham: Grocer 33 store of the week

I understand Horsham is an unusual format… We’re pretty unique as we are a combined Waitrose and John Lewis store. It gives our customers access to everything we offer. From a partner perspective, it’s great as well because it gives some people the chance to work across both brands at the same site. It’s my 20th year with the partnership this year and I’ve never experienced a site quite like it.

The partnership has been working to better integrate the two brands. What does that look like at Horsham? In terms of the shops, the two teams are run separately – I only run the Waitrose, but we do have some partners that work across both. We share back-of-house facilities so can support each other when we need to. It’s good insight as well to be able to see what each of the brands has going on and allows a lot of opportunities for seasonal events. We’ve got the Better Together range of kitchenware across a number of our stores. But the real benefit for Horsham is that if a customer isn’t able to find something within Waitrose, there’s usually a pretty good chance they’ll be able to find it in the John Lewis.

What are shoppers in Horsham putting in their baskets? We’ve recently launched a new bake-off bread range and it’s performing really well here. Unsurprisingly, our barbecue range is also doing well given the nice dry weather. British king strawberries are selling well too. So, it’s quite seasonal, but that’s been welcomed.

You have an Aldi directly opposite. What has that meant for trade? It opened late last year. From my perspective, we’ve just focused on what we do best, so that’s great availability and the service we provide customers. It’s going well for us. So largely no, we haven’t seen too much change in trade. Our customers tend to be ‘food lovers’ – they know what they can get from us, and we’ve got some great ranges that keep them coming in.

Any personal favourites among those new ranges? Without a shadow of a doubt, it’s the focus we’ve put on the No.1 Range. The investment over the last 12 months has been really positive, and led to some fantastic new products. No.1 pizzas are always an absolute winner here, and there’s a great dine-in deal on that as well. For me personally, the Salt & Pepper Flat Iron Steak is going down a treat.

Our shopper noted lots of in-store sampling going on. Is that something you’ve increased focus on recently? Getting customers to try our products is critical, and the business has put a real focus on sampling over the past year. Horsham has been involved in that work, in part because we have a wine bar. For example, when we relaunched No.1 we ran tasters of steak and triple-cooked chips from the No.1 range. Customers have definitely appreciated being able to try products, and see the quality. It’s given them some new favourites, if I can say it like that.

Any plans to mark the store’s 10-year anniversary? It’s next month, so this win is the perfect birthday present. We have 180 partners here, just at the Waitrose, and I’m absolutely thrilled to bits for them as there’s a lot of hard work that has gone into this. We’ve got some local celebrations planned with both brands, and a nice lunch, so it’ll be a good day.