Asda, Southport: Grocer 33 store of the week

What do shoppers in Southport want? We don’t really have another Asda close to us, so our customers, I believe, are very loyal. Southport is a Victorian seaside town, and we pride ­ourselves on being able to deliver for the local community. Our pizza counter is a real point of difference from our competitors and gets really busy. We also have a great George clothing department and GM generally. But the thing that pulls people in is definitely price. We make sure we really focus on our value message across the store.

‘Rollback’s back’ – what’s been the impact? It’s brilliant. We are going back to our DNA, our ‘Asda-ness’ as I like to say. Some of the customers who might have moved away from Asda are being enticed back by some of the prices, some of which are industry-leading. We’re getting back to being the ‘cheapest’ retailer. You can see that customers are already spending much more time shopping the promotional ends, and that’s all down to Rollback. The new suite of PoS is uniform, and the green seems to have made the store brighter and the team feel more energised.

It seems like there’s positivity back in the business, what else does Asda need to do to get back to its best? You can see that colleagues are excited about what’s to come, especially those who have been here a long time. We’re still in the early days, but I can see a much more positive future. Our sales are improving day on day in Southport. I wasn’t in the business when Allan Leighton was here the first time, but since he’s been back I can see the respect the Asda family have for him. His passion for retail is infectious and has really energised the teams. We need to continue to invest in price, but you can be great on price and still have a really poor customer experience – we need to make sure we give the best customer experience as soon as someone walks through the door. That’s making sure stores are clean, availability is great, and that we give exceptional service at all points of the customer journey.

You seem to have nailed that already. What have you done to raise standards in Southport? Towards the end of last year we really stepped up our focus on availability, cleanliness and service. It’s been mostly about engaging and coaching teams more, especially our evening replenishment teams, who are imperative to store standards. We’ve been reminding colleagues what a ‘great standard’ is and what our customers expect – we’d probably lost that over the last couple of years. I have a fabulous team of nearly 200 colleagues and this win is a credit to the work they do. But another thing that has helped me personally as a leader is that Asda supported me to complete a level six apprenticeship degree in business management. I’ve been able to apply some of my learnings to help the team succeed.

Southport has been in the news for negative reasons this year, but there seems to be a real sense of community here… There is. It’s been a tough year for Southport in general, but we have really worked hard to make sure we are supporting and delivering for our people. Sharon, our community champion, has really gone out of her way to support the local community.