Sainsbury's Crystal Peaks, Sheffield: G33 store of the week

Your store won The Grocer 33 almost exactly a year ago. What has changed since then? The management team has changed and we’ve given the pharmacy to Lloyds, but fundamentally the direction of travel has stayed the same - there’s a drive to keep customers happy, with great availability, and helping everybody around the shop.

I understand your store has contactless technology now. Yes, it rolled out in early February. A lot of people were quite vocal - both colleagues and customers - saying why on earth don’t we have contactless? The corner shop has got it so why hasn’t a major corporation like ours? So it’s brilliant: I’ve noticed over the past few weeks the number of people using the self-service checkouts has increased by as much as 5%.

When we last spoke, the plastic bag charge had only recently been introduced. How have customer attitudes changed since? People have accepted it and are prepared now when they come into the store. Uptake of our bags is quite high, not just the plastic 5p bags but the £1 bags for life, and we have some Red Nose bags going very well.

How is Red Nose Day going? We’ve sold 3,500 Red Noses since we started putting out the merchandise four weeks ago. It has recently been half-term so we’ve had kids coming in and filling their boots, and looking for the elusive Gold Nose.

Mary Portas will be working with Sainsbury’s to make Tu a destination clothing brand. To what extent is it a reason to visit your store? We’re lucky in that we’re based in the Crystal Peaks shopping centre. We have Next, M&S and New Look and various independent clothes stores nearby, and there are a group of customers who come to us especially for the clothes. What we’re managing to bring is high-street style into Sainsbury’s, particularly with the frequency of ranges - we get a new collection every two weeks.