Congratulations – why do you think you won? We’ve got a great team of people! We won in 2009 and have tried to maintain momentum since then. And the new CEO has instigated some strong changes with lots of focus on HOT. We offer natural personal service, nothing scripted. It could just be a “Good morning”, or maybe the customer wants advice on how to cook a piece of meat. There is a really good buzz around the company at the moment. 

You are situated between a Tesco Superstore and a Tesco Extra. How do you cope with that level of competition? We fight for it. We have to be good at what we do in order to attract customers and that is what we are doing. We are getting strong y-o-y growth here, double-digit growth for the second year running. Our fresh team are seeing 25% increases y-o-y. We are very proud of the skilled people that we employ with our fresh food offering. 

How big a difference does having a skilled butcher and fishmonger make? It is a massive strength for us. I know hundreds of people that come to this store from 20 or 30 miles away because our butcher knows his stuff. If a customer needs a certain cut or a specific size of beef fillet he will bring out a whole fillet and cut it to size. The bottom line is we sell great quality meat and fish. It is as good as you can buy anywhere and that is why we are gaining 2,000 customers a year. 

What do you think of Morrisons’ ex-Netto store acquisitions? The acquisitions are great. Morrisons need to continue to expand and the focus on the M local convenient store operation is going to be good for us. 

What is selling well in store at the moment? We have rebranded our own-label frozen food, and we are seeing double-digit sales increases in return. It’s all about refreshing the range, the packaging and the price points. And our burger promise – that we will never run out – is going really well at a great price. You don’t see that offer elsewhere and it enhances our already very good base offer. 

We’ve just had the fifth bank holiday in seven weeks. Will you be sad to see them go? It is a different and unusual trading pattern which throws up interesting challenges, and the store performed really well. But it’s good to get back to normal so we can plan things better, like making sure we have strong availability and staffing levels. And it has given us a great experience in unplanned bank holidays.

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