Sainsbury's Darnley, Glasgow: G33 store of the week

Our shopper was very impressed by your staff, in particular some that were new to the store. Are you recruiting? That’s really great to hear. We have just added 16 new permanent members of staff and it is great to hear they are doing well. Last week was our busiest of the year so far, with our big toy sale as well as Halloween.

How much training do you have in place to get newbies up to speed? We have a really comprehensive programme and we do a lot of on-the-job coaching for the new colleagues.

Availability was very strong in such a busy week. How do you keep on top of it? It is really down to the passion of the colleagues all taking pride in ensuring good availability. When we get together in our huddles, we talk about customer availability rather than just having something in stock. We are an online store as well, so we get very detailed information on what we are selling.

On Halloween, how are you doing in terms of sales? Really well. Our non-food is proving very popular with customers. We have these great non-food pumpkins that light up, which are doing very well, as are costumes. Our LED tea lights are proving popular with parents.

Sainsbury’s has been working on switching to a more EDLP strategy. Is that working? The feedback we’ve had from shoppers has been fantastic since we started moving away from the multibuy offers. The latest categories we have done are the bakery, pizza and fish counters. It is about trust, and I think when customers see a lot of half-price wine deals they start to question if it really is half price. Now we have realistic prices, which customers appreciate.

What’s next in store? Obviously Christmas will be huge. But we also do a lot of work in the community such as careers events in local schools. In the first week of December we are hosting a charity event with lots of local craft makers coming in to showcase their work.