Three months ago, Sainsbury’s supremo Justin King caused a few eyebrows to be raised when he claimed the Royal Wedding was “not a sales opportunity in any meaningful way”.

That view was in stark contrast to the prevailing wisdom at Morrisons, say, which was gearing up to run a celebration-themed April campaign, and Tesco, which called the nuptials as “a once-in-a-generation celebration”.

And King was uncharacteristically sheepish this morning when he revealed the Royal Wedding had helped Sainsbury’s notch up first-quarter like-for-like sales growth of 1.9%.

The supermarket sold 300 miles of bunting, 159,000 flags and 49,000 mugs. Champagne sales were its biggest-ever outside of Christmas week and it sold a year’s worth of Union Jack-branded Pimm’s in a fortnight.

“Luckily, my buying team completely ignored me,” King told The Grocer during a Sainsbury’s conference call today. “It was Easter, it was a bumper Bank Holiday, the sun shone – and had been shining for three weeks – so all of that lined up to be a very bouncy period for us.”

From astride his bouncy castle, King was quick to point out that he’s only wrong very rarely – he’s still counting vuvuzelas as a personal triumph, after Sainsbury’s sold out of the 50,000 it stocked for last year’s World Cup. Aptly, the supermarket was also the top retailer for sales of The King’s Speech, the middlebrow movie favourite released on 9 May.

Toss in yesterday’s less than majestic performance from Tesco and it was a very good week all in all for King, who picked up a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours last weekend for services to retail. With a royal flush like that in the bag, expect King to be stocking up on party poppers and paper plates for the Jubilee next year.

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