Store of the week: Morrisons Shrewsbury

This is your second win in the past 13 months - what is your secret? We have a great group of people here. I’d say we have one of the best retail teams in the country. There are 20 colleagues here who have been at the store for 20 years, so we have a very stable and up for it team.

What are the key things you focus on in the store? It’s all about good old-fashioned service. Our customers love the fantastic butchers and fishmongers on Market Street, while our fresh food is a real differentiator. We were one of the first stores to get the fresh format makeover three years ago and it still looks great - we are very passionate about it.

There is a lot of competition locally. How do you attract new shoppers? We have all of the other supermarkets and the discounters here in Shrewsbury so it’s a lot about word of mouth. There are 70,000 people in the town and we have over a third of them as regular customers. The main thing for us is that they leave happier than when they walked in.

Morrisons has reported poor Christmas trading figures. How was the festive period in your store? We didn’t see that in Shrewsbury. This was our best-ever Christmas, beating last year - which itself was a record. In fact, we sold more mince pies than any other Morrisons store in the country, which was fantastic. It was great all round - we had a fantastic Christmas dinner, where all the staff dressed up and the senior management served everybody, and our HOT service scores were great, showing we are at our best when its busiest.

So what’s next in the store? Well Valentine’s Day is only a few weeks away, of course. You are never too far from the next big occasion. We have been promoting our healthy ranges for January and this week we have a big babycare event in store. We have promotions and lots of great Kiddicare products in the store, which is great to see coming through.