Grocer 33 store of the week: Tesco Extra Rutherglen

How long have you been with Tesco? For 26 years. I started working four hours a week on the checkout and progressed from there. I’ve been in my current role for seven years. I’m the lead manager – my manager’s on holiday.

What’s the appeal of working for Tesco? The progression and opportunity is phenomenal, for anyone at any level, from someone coming in as a general cleaner to a driver to anybody. I did an options programme to become a manager.

What’s new in store at the moment? We’re developing an urban fulfilment centre – the only one in Scotland. We’re going from 11 home delivery shopping vans to 23 in July and at that time we’ll be serving 900 orders a day. There will be electric delivery vans, so the car park is getting new charging points for those and electric cars. We’re creating 60 jobs for pickers and 60 driver jobs and it will be a 24-hour cycle. There are also team manager and shift leader jobs, so it’s an exciting time for the store. It’s reducing the store sales area from 78,000 sq ft to 59,000 sq ft but it will also take online picking away from the shop floor. The only thing picked from the shop floor will be frozen.

Our mystery shopper noticed a few pickers. How has it been managing online growth alongside the store operation? Occasionally customers want to know why it’s happening but once you explain that those trolleys are six people’s shopping, some of whom could be vulnerable, they are fine with it. We talk to the customers, so we’ll tell them this is what we’re doing, here’s what we’re building. We are happy to engage them with the changes.

What’s been selling well recently? We have a range called Firepit, including barbecues, burgers, steaks and kebabs. We have it every summer, and we could hardly keep up with demand in the recent spell of nice weather. There were queues for it. Even families that might not always want to come out to the supermarket were coming out to get that

Have you noticed customers spending more carefully because of inflation? Yes, I’ve had a lot of feedback from customers recently about Clubcard Prices. People aren’t so keen on deals like three for the price of two at the moment because it doesn’t mean spending less. But they’ll see Clubcard Prices in store and ask what it means and when you explain the Clubcard saving on a product, they’re amazed by it. A lot of managers in here have helped customers set up Clubcard on their phones for the prices. I think Clubcard prices is the best thing Tesco has done in a long time

Our shopper was very impressed with the service from staff. What’s the secret to that? Customer service is the biggest thing for colleagues. They have cards they can give to customers which say on them how to give feedback online. For example, a colleague might offer a customer help finding something and then go in the back and look for it – they’ve got an app on their phone that tells them if it’s there first. Then they might offer the customer a card with their name on it. The customer can win a £1,000 gift card so people are quite keen to do it. We can open an app and see every single comment, so we know how good we are.

Is there a reward for lots of good feedback? If someone is recognised a lot, they get a bronze badge. If they keep being recognised, they go on to silver and then gold. And the CEO takes gold super service colleagues from every store out for a meal about every six months. So the secret is recognition. And the team here is great. If you need help, they get on board.