Store manager: Kate Slater
Store: Waitrose, Romsey
Opened: 2000
Size: 20,800 sq ft
Market share: 8.4%
Population: 107,856
Grocery spend: £25,288,833
Spend by household: £567.03
Competitors: 25
Nearest rivals: Aldi 0.1 miles, Asda 4.9 miles, Co-op 0.1 miles, Iceland 5.3 miles, Lidl 4 miles, M&S 4.8 miles, Morrisons 4.8 miles, Sainsbury’s 4 miles, Tesco 4.2 miles, Waitrose 5.3 miles
Source: CACI. For more info visit www.caci.co.uk/contact. Notes: Shopper profiling is measured using Grocery Acorn shopper segmentation. Store catchment data (market share, population, expenditure, spend by household, competition) is within a five-mile radius. For CACI’s shopper segmentation of the other stores we visited this week see the online report at www.thegrocer.co.uk/stores/the-grocer-33
You’ve recently returned to the branch. I’ve been here three years, but came back from my long leave on Monday! I took 30 weeks off in November. We travelled for 19 of those around Australia, Asia and Europe. I started with Waitrose as a level trainee in 1991, and have been a store manager for the last 15 years. This is my only branch that has been ‘Grocer 33’d’ during those years so it feels like it’s been a long time coming. Adrian, the previous branch manager, has done a great job and has a lot to do with the win. But I like to think I set it up well before I left!
The middle of a heatwave is a challenging week to come back… It generally does us well – when the sun is out, the shoppers come. We trade very heavily here: shoppers will always fill a trolley, just what they are filling it with is very different. So we change our focus to make sure we are looking at the key summer lines. Rather than carrots, we’re monitoring the ice, salad, soft fruit and quiches. Ice creams are always a pleasure to try and keep on sale.
How does the store reflect Romsey? I’ve never worked in a store that sells as many meringue nests as we do, which is probably reflective of the age of our customers. Romsey is an Eton Mess town. Waitrose has been here for nearly 55 years. We get an awful lot of regulars – a lot of them we know by name. There are some whose children, and even grandchildren, are now also shopping with us. The branch is a very safe space for some of our elderly customers. There’s also a lot of passing trade from visitors to nearby Mottisfont Abbey, as well as Broadlands House. We also get a lot of cross-pollination from the farmers’ market on Sundays.
Availability was 100%, which is impressive for a Friday evening shop. Is that an area you’ve invested in? I didn’t leave the store until gone five on Friday and we were trading extremely heavily. It delights me to hear that availability was so strong. I’m personally very process-driven, so sticking to routines, reacting to off sales and stock availability is very high on my agenda, all the time. At the same time, there’s been an emphasis from the business. Supply has generally been very good, which has helped us.
Waitrose achieved its highest sales growth since 2021 in latest Kantar figures, which shows momentum in the turnaround plan. What has been the most impactful change from your perspective? It’s probably consistency of approach. The business is very clear about what we want to do and what we want to achieve at every single branch. When you’ve got that consistent approach, it propels you forward. Ultimately, we do what we are told, but every store manager puts their heart and soul into delivering that.
You’ve recently added more self-checkouts in place of manned tills. How have your shoppers reacted? We’ve now got 12 self-scan tills, and six mainline tills and two podiums. It’s been about giving customers choice. If people want to get in and out of store, you don’t want them to be queueing – and now they don’t. Overall, it’s been really positive. Even though I used to have more mainline tills, it’s actually quicker for the customers that still want to use a traditional checkout, which has to be a bonus.
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