Winner: Morrisons Hunters Tryst, Edinburgh
Store manager: Ian Spalding
Size: 24,000 sq ft
Opened: 1990
Market share: 6%
Nearest rivals: Tesco - 1.2 miles Sainsbury’s - 2.6 miles Waitrose - 2.7 miles
Store data source: Analysis by CACI. Call the market planning group on 020 7602 6000
Morrisons surprised us all with strong results for Christmas. How did the festive season go at your store? The Christmas period was really positive for us. Morrisons put together a great promotional package and it seemed to resonate both with our regular customers and new customers that it brought in.
What were the big successes in terms of products? Our Signature range did really well, our special fish products and our Made by Morrisons lines were also very strong. We sold our panettone and stollen by the bucket-load. It was positioned at the front of the store and it was on at a great price. Our availability was strong and customer orders were a big hit too.
Morrisons had trouble fulfilling some pre-orders. Was your store affected? We changed the offer quite a bit this year and orders at our store were up 30% . In most cases if there was an issue we were able to talk to customers to make sure we got them something close to what they had originally ordered.
How do you know you are attracting new customers? We are a real community store and so we know a lot of our regular customers. We want to make sure we give them all great service but we encourage staff to really look out for new shoppers and ensure they get great service. You can tell if they come in with bags for life from another supermarket or need to ask colleagues where certain products are that they are not that familiar with the store.
Is it tough to get back to normal after such an important period as Christmas? It can be, but we have put a big emphasis on the recovery period. New year is a big deal here in Scotland so we had to be ready for that as well. That set us up well for heading into January and we are seeing availability getting back to what it should be.
Is there a feeling Morrisons is heading in the right direction? I think so. The company is being very aggressive right now in its focus on customer service and there is definitely a good feeling. The new leadership team sees the issues we are facing and has been quick to fix them. They are also good at listening to what is happening at store level and react positively to the feedback we provide.
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