Store of the week: Asda Cardiff

This is your third store of the week win. How does it compare with the others? This win is extra special as it is at Christmas. I’m fortunate to say I’ve been manager of three different Asdas - the other two were in Bodmin, Cornwall and Weston-super-Mare - and have managed to win at all three.

Our shopper was full of praise for the level of customer service. What’s your secret? I think service nowadays is a massive way to differentiate yourself from the competition and as a store we are not looking to meet expectations but to exceed them. There is a great culture here of staff rising through the ranks and this creates a solid foundation.

The store has been a bit of a guinea pig over the years with several trials. How have you found it? Over the past two years or so, we’ve had a massive revamp and there’s a Disney store here, a tech centre and an event zone. Even if some of these concepts haven’t been widely adopted, they’ve gone down well and make the store really unique to the locals.

With less than a week to go, how are things shaping up for Christmas? We’re still benefiting from the momentum of Asda’s Black Friday, which was a real footfall driver and had a halo effect on other sections of the store. We had 20 pallets of stock gone within 20 minutes and people outside at 2am. I’ve heard a lot of reports of customers buying earlier than ever before but we are seeing them leave their Christmas grocery shop later than before. I think this will also be a record year for home delivery.

Just how much has the growth of online shopping affected the store? If this year is anything to go by, it will grow and grow. Home shopping has grown 33% this year while click and collect will be more than that. We have an in-store ordering point where people can order out of stock items in store, which has been met positively. Our multichannel offer just keeps on growing.