Store of the week: Asda Oadby

Has your store been affected by the 4,000 redundancies announced last month? Yes we have - we’ve been in consultation. But I’m pleased with where we’re at and the team are upbeat and understand the needs of the business. Clearly it’s emotional for some people, but I’m proud of the team. To win something like this shows how professional they are. I have 16 managers involved in the consultation and according to the new structure I would go down to 10 - but three would potentially move to a new store.

Has England’s early exit from the World Cup hit sales? We did quite a lot around the World Cup but now we’re promoting on more of a Brazilian theme. Sales have dropped slightly around beers, wines and spirits since England were knocked out. But we’re also focusing on Wimbledon. We’ve seen 30% uplift in strawberries, 10-12% uplift in cream and 55% uplift in Pimm’s.

Last weekend, the weather was good. Did anything in particular fly off the shelves? Our Extra Special sausages and burgers did really well - the quality is really good. Other BBQ goods like charcoal also did well. And it’s been a good year on garden furniture. We’ve got a bigger range this year and it’s high quality.

Is there anything in the pipeline you plan to capitalise on? We’re quite high ethnic minority in the area, about 65%. So while a lot of Asda stores will be running holiday shop promotions, we’ll also be running Ramadan too. We’ve set up a full aisle with 18 bays - and promotions will last for four weeks.

You have a fairly affluent demographic. Who do you see as your competitors in the area? We have a Sainsbury’s and a Waitrose a mile and a half away but they are smaller than us. A new Asda has also opened in Abbey Lane - and we thought it would impact us but it has impacted Waitrose and Sainsbury’s more. I visit the competition once a month.