Store: Morrisons Belle Vale, Liverpool
Store manager: Kelly Jackson
Opened: August 2003
Size: 35,990 sq ft
Market share: 6%
Population: 547,557
Grocery spend: £13,674,695
Spend by household: £58
Nearest rivals: Aldi 0.7 miles, Asda 1.9 miles, Co-op 1.4 miles, Iceland 0.2 miles, Lidl 2.4 miles, M&S 2.6 miles, Morrisons 3.1 miles, Sainsbury’s 0.9 miles, Tesco 1.2 miles, Waitrose 13.6 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 our service & availability report.
How long have you been at this store? I have been in Belle Vale for just a year, so I’m pretty new, but I’ve been with Morrisons for nearly five years now as a store manager. I’m really proud of winning the Grocer 33 – I believe this store has been surveyed quite a few times, so I’m happy the team have been able to deliver a really great shopping experience.
What’s special about the Belle Vale branch? Belle Vale is a more complex store as it is large in size and cash value. It’s a well-established store in the community of south Liverpool, so as an inner-city location, it faces the complexities of being a tougher store to run. We have a new concept in Morrisons that has been around for a little longer than a year in only a select few stores – it’s a single stem floristry department, in addition to our general flowers that come in bunches, where florists create bouquets for customer orders or create them for customers to purchase. You need a skilled person – it’s something that we can’t initially just ask anybody to come in and work on. The recruiting process is difficult. Then we also have a party section, which is only found in a select few stores. We’re generally a great community store and situated in the midst of a lot of housing estates, so having all those amenities for the customers to come in and do everything under one roof is great.
What is the key to widening the customer base in such a well-established store like Belle Vale? The local community is obviously paramount. My leadership team is driven and passionate to deliver a better service – whether that be from a service element, getting customers through the tills and having really friendly people on the checkout – or from a Market Street perspective, making sure the product is available at the right times of the day. But I believe that from a market share perspective, if we deliver the basics, we do really well.
Talk us through your Valentine’s Day campaign. We just launched our Valentine’s Meal Deal, which is great value with savings of nearly £20. We’ve got our seasonal aisles that have been on for the past two weeks, with a selection of items from cards to Nutmeg clothing, to wine & spirits and chocolates. And we have a really fantastic cake shop where we make large cookies and customers can choose what they want to write on them. Equally, we’ve got a great opportunity with the single stem florist, which will clearly be a big one for Valentine’s.
What’s the secret to excellent shop floor service? We create that [relaxed] environment by making sure our colleagues are adequately trained and have the skillset to communicate to our customers. We make sure the store is clean and clutter-free, that the right person is on each section, that the people on checkout are warm and friendly, and that the guys on the shop floor have great product knowledge. I think it’s really important to celebrate with your team as well because retail is a tough environment to work in.
How would you describe your management style? I encourage teamwork and like to promote work-life balance. I’m passionate about delivering great service to our customers, and that’s always at the forefront of what we do on the sales floor.
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