Waitrose voted best supermarket in our Harrow Grocer 33 mystery shop

With nearby Harrow-on-the-Hill famous for its elite public school and historic village setting featuring narrow, winding streets that are home to boutique shops and cafés. it’s no surprise that Harrow in north west London overindexes massively (27.4% vs a national average of 3.4%) with ‘prosperous professionals’, according to CACI Acorn shopper demographic segmentation. This plays out in the area’s weekly grocery spend per household of £126.89.

Nevertheless there’s a wide range of supermarket options as the town itself is culturally and ethnically diverse. And the town centre offers numerous pubs and a high concentration of QSRs – doubtless aimed at serving the large student population from the nearby University of Westminster campus. The area, after all, is home to almost double the national average of CACI’s ‘tenant living’ demographic – students and young adults privately renting in house shares.

But it was the 23,553 sq ft Waitrose in Northolt Road – this week’s smallest store – that prevailed in our mystery shopping competition.

Read more:

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• What is The Grocer 33 and how does it work?

Our shopper is a regular customer of the store because of “the quality of the food” and “pleasant ambience” and “he even drives past a big Tesco Extra and a large Morrisons” to visit. He praised the “perfect layout” and “well-stocked shelves” full of “interesting” items that inspire customers to “try and cook new things”. Staff are “friendly and helpful” and “encourage sampling”.

He finished his shop “actually feeling happy” after a “very enjoyable experience”, which left him thinking “this is what supermarkets should be like”.

On the other side of Harrow town centre, and further north, Tesco on Station Road was second on 78 points. The 37,990 sq ft store posted this week’s best performance on availability, with two items not stocked.

The store excelled on customer service, with our shopper finding it “easy” to locate one of the “very polite” staff members who were “actively replenishing the shelves and showing care towards customers”.

She also liked the lack of queues, how easy it was to park and the “appealing” sushi counter. However, she found some items were in “aisles that didn’t make sense” and didn’t match the ceiling signage – for example, crisps being located in an aisle designated as ‘soft drinks’.

One point back in third, Morrisons at Trident Point is also located just minutes from the town centre to the west. The store gave the weakest showing on availability this week, with five items not stocked, but performed well on store experience and, once more, customer service.

The staff “could not have been more helpful” – they were “pleasant and friendly”, and our shopper joked that she “would still be in the store without their help”. She found the store “very well presented” with “clean and tidy” aisles, though she was less impressed with road access, “especially when exiting, as you have to drive all the way round a mini roundabout, which is dangerous”.

Located a stone’s throw from South Ruislip tube station, Asda on Old Dairy Lane took fourth. Appropriately for this week’s Halloween-themed shop, our shopper’s favourite thing was the Halloween display, which was “varied and fun” and created a “festive ‘Halloween Emporium’ feel”.

Also pleasing was “an excellent amount of parking”, along with “spacious aisles” and a “pleasant environment with music playing throughout”. Our shopper was disappointed by the “poor stock availability” and customer service that was “lacklustre” – they were given the wrong location for one product – and “lacked warmth”.

On 53 points, Sainsbury’s on Nash Way posted a poor score for availability and other areas weren’t much better. Our shopper found the store “really messy” with “cages and trolleys in practically every other aisle” and was “very close to being hit by a massive moving cage”.

The store was also “pretty dated” and, despite the efforts of one “friendly” employee at the checkout, our shopper “did not like the overall experience”.