Store: Morrisons Stamford
Manager: Gary Perkins
Opened: 1988
Size: 41,602 sq ft
Market share: 35.1%
Population: 36,203
Grocery spend: £988,788.97
Spend by household: £62.21
Competitors: 6
Nearest rivals: Aldi 8.9 miles, Asda 9.2 miles, Co-op 6.6 miles, Iceland 8.9 miles, Lidl 0.4 miles, M&S 0.5 miles, Morrisons 9.2 miles, Sainsbury’s 0.4 miles, Tesco 0.5 miles, Waitrose 0.9 miles
Source: CACI. For more info visit www.caci.co.uk/contact. Notes: Shopper profiling is measured using Grocery Acorn shopper segmentation. Store catchment data (market share, population, expenditure, spend by household, competition) is within a five-mile radius. For CACI’s shopper segmentation of the other stores we visited this week see the online report at www.thegrocer.co.uk/stores/the-grocer-33
How long have you been manager of this store? I’ve been a manager of Morrisons Stamford for four-and-a-half years. I’ve been with the company for just over 20 years now.
Favourite aspect of the store? My favourite part of being in this store is that it’s the training store, so I get to influence and help the development of all the new staff and new-to-role managers in the region. There’s a structured training plan given to each individual, depending on their role. We obviously facilitate that. And as an experienced store manager, I’ll get involved in that and the coaching and development of the managers as they come through.
What makes a successful store manager? It’s all about teamwork. At the end of the day, I have to help the team deliver. A great working environment is also central. So it’s important that we have and are able to create a really good culture within the store. Communication is obviously really key. Teamwork, engagement at all levels. Obviously a lot of hard work. But above all, it’s passion for the job and I’m very, very passionate about what I do and how I do it. That goes a long way, I think.
Biggest challenge over the past year? With the cost of living crisis, we have looked to support schools, care homes and local charities more and help them through what is a difficult time at the moment. We have a great community champion called Jason and he’s been doing it for several years now.
What does the community champion do? He’s got great links within the community. He has a lot of connections with local schools and links in with their activities, and provides donations and support that are applicable to the activities they are currently doing. He also uses some of his community champion budget to donate fresh fruit & vegetables to schools. He has good links with several care homes in Stamford and regularly visits them and supports them with activities. He will donate raffle prizes, he’s recently donated some pumpkins for Halloween. He works very closely with the Stamford Food Bank and Second Helpings charity, too, and we donate a lot of our charity food waste to them. We also provide a lot of pick-up bags for our customers to purchase, which again are then donated to Stamford Food Bank and Second Helpings.
What are your plans for the store in the near future? Our thoughts are firmly on the local community and continuing to do the great work we do locally with Jason our community champion, but also looking for opportunities to do more where we can as well.
What would you like people to know about the store? I guess our business is heavily focused on service, and it’s what we are focused on every day – giving that consistent and really good level of service. We have a really core regular customer base who comes and shops with us. And we’ve got some great colleagues on the tills – a couple in particular stand out, Mel and Gary. We have customers who will come to see them and they want to be served by them at their till. So it’s really important that we can uphold that great service culture in our store and work really hard on it every day, which is what we do.
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