Waitrose Saltash, Cornwall: Grocer 33 store of the week

This is your second Grocer 33 win in just over a year. How has your team received the news? Honestly we’re just so pleased and really overwhelmed, it’s great for the team to get the recognition and acknowledgement twice. From a personal point of view, for me it builds on the feeling of family that we have in the branch and that’s been really apparent. I’ve not been here for the last six months, but have been back for several weeks now, and the team have done an absolutely brilliant job of stepping up and working together. It almost makes me feel quite emotional about it.

What do you focus on as a manager to keep store standards high? There are lots of current challenges that are going on externally, but for me it’s always been about keeping it simple because there will inevitably always be challenges that are thrown at us as retailers, so I try and focus on the things that are in my control. If we delight our customers with excellent customer service while supporting the team, then that will help us face any challenges.

How does your location affect trade? We’re just on the opposite end of the Tamar Bridge, which is the link from Cornwall to Devon, and we are on an industrial estate, with a Lidl on the other side of the carriageway. But we’re very much a tourist destination shop, particularly at this time of year as people are coming down to Cornwall, so it’s a great position for us.

Has trade increased significantly this past weekend? We naturally see an increase in trade and football at this time of year, so that’s continued as tourists came down for the four-day weekend. We will see that climb between now and September – the hope is for a long summer.

Tell us about the Jubilee weekend at the Saltash branch. It was a great atmosphere! I’ve got to highlight a personal favourite of mine, which is the Buckingham Palace gin that we had on sale. We sold out, which was brilliant. We also had a very popular bottle of Buckingham Palace Moët champagne. And then of course you can’t celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee without some scones, jam and clotted cream, particularly in Devon and Cornwall. Fortunately the weather was good, so the barbecue range went well for us.

And what post-Jubilee offers do you have? We’ve still got some Jubilee promotions available, but we’ve cleared the stock in terms of the gin, so now we’ve moved on to our next promotion, which is buy six bottles of wine and save 25%. We’ve got our summer lines as well. Our picnic offer – three for £7 – is a popular one, because it’s got all the traditional British lines in there like quiches, pork pies and sausage rolls. The colours on there are really vibrant – they make me feel summery even if the weather isn’t so great. 

How has the online operation changed since we last spoke? The area we cover in terms of local deliveries is roughly the same – it’s about 750 square miles – but deliveries continue to be popular despite Covid having less of an impact on shoppers being able to come into the branch. What we find again at this time of year is that we get a lot of holiday home deliveries, so we will see a natural increase, as we did during half term last week.