This is your third Grocer 33 win in two years at three stores. That’s quite an achievement. I was on secondment at Otley and Wilmslow covering managers there, and then this job came up in June. As a shop, it’s got so many arms to it. We’ve got a huge on-demand channel, which lots of students take advantage of, and lots of smaller basket shops from local trade. Then we get people who drive from miles and miles away to come. Trade is a real mixed bag of diverse customers.
Does being the only Waitrose store in such a big city bring its own challenges? Yes, there’s that much competition, getting it right every day is a must. Our customer service is where we stand out compared to other retailers around Leeds, and the reason customers continue to travel to us, so recently we’ve rolled out our ‘passionate partners’ training again to make sure everyone is staying heads up. On top of that, we have a really big online offer that goes as far out as Doncaster, with a big, dedicated team. We do all of our picking at night and have invested extra resource in our night team, in order to protect the customer service and feel on the shop floor during the day.
Our shopper said one of the counters was closed. What happened there? It’s our hot rotisserie counter: it’s broken down, and we’re getting a brand spanking new self-serve counter in January. You don’t always need to wait to have major investment to give the store a refresh, so in my time we’ve really stepped up the standards and the cleaning. We’ve painted our café. It’s stuff that we can take control on, and it feels like the store has had a facelift as a result. We’re also getting a major tech update with electronic shelf edge labels in January. It’ll be a game-changer.
How have you been rewarding people over the difficult festive period? It’s something I talk to the team about every day. It can be a stressful job, so it’s really important to balance the need to trade with the need for people to spend time with their families and friends. I try to bring the energy and fun festive vibes. I’ve just come out of serving Christmas lunch for all of our partners, and we have the 12 days of Christmas coming up. Ultimately, it’s important that we’re just kind to each other and keep our eyes and ears open. This is the first year Waitrose will be opening stores on New Year’s Day, and so far uptake has been really positive.
Are you feeling ready for Christmas? The shop floor is looking really strong, because of how we’ve approached availability over the past couple of weeks. A lot of seasonal lines have been flying out a lot earlier than previous years: people seem to be getting into the Christmas spirit earlier. We get our final drop of fresh products on 15 December. Then it’s on us to maintain the top-up as footfall steps up.
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