Morrisons Eccles: Grocer 33 store of the week

How long have you worked for Morrisons? I joined Morrisons in 2005, two weeks after my last GCSE exam. I worked in the Cheadle Heath store for 16 years and moved to Eccles to be fresh produce manager just over two years ago. I became operations manager in May. In this role, you’re the safe hands when the store manager is on holiday.

What’s the area like? We’re a large store in the centre of Eccles. We have a bus station and a tram stop right next to us. With the store being central, we have a lot of colleagues who have worked here for over 10 years, which gives us a real connection to the community and loyalty to the Morrisons brand. I’d say around 70% of the people who work here live within a 20-minute walk of the store.

Our mystery shopper commended the store on its layout. What’s noticeable about that? We went through a refit 18 months ago where we put in a Market Kitchen and refreshed our Market Street offering. Eccles was chosen for the refit because of our location. There are lots of offices around, so between 11:30am and 2:30pm we get busy. We have that point of difference where people can come in and get freshly made wraps, and then we have a bakery on top of everything else.

How has the relaunched More card been received? Obviously with the cost of living crisis and us being in Eccles, which is a working-class town, we are very price-conscious. The More card relaunched at the right time and we’ve been pushing the offers available. We’ve also noticed a lot more uptake in our Savers line. It’s had a rebrand and is being pushed more in store – we have pallets with our Savers lines at the front of the store, then through the central aisle we have promo baskets with Savers lines ranging from things like pasta to ketchup.

Retailers have been reporting an increase in shoplifting. How are you trying to mitigate that? We have some new technology. We have double gates at the front of the store and the manager in charge wears a body camera. We’ve installed tech in other areas of the shop. For instance, the vape section now has a camera, and we have tech above our makeup section that detects excessive body movement to alert us to any possible thefts in action. It goes straight through to our security guards.

What’s the biggest challenge facing the management team over the next year? We have a big Amazon Flex operation that runs in store. That has its different challenges and rewards every day, but the sales opportunities online are only going to grow, and Morrisons being more competitive in that market is key to what we’re working on. When you pick from in store for both home delivery and Amazon, your stock management needs to be even more precise to ensure availability for the customer who’s physically in the shop, as well as the customer who has ordered online. When we’re picking, we treat online orders as if the customer is stood in front of us and try to treat them with the same respect and concern, and deliver the same level of customer service.

Why do you think the store has been so successful? It’s just working as that one team and pushing together. All the managers are open, I always feel that colleagues can go to them with any issues.