Winner: Sainsbury’s Denton, Manchester
Store manager: Mark Edwards
Opened: 1989
Size: 42,500 sq
Market share: 5.5%
Nearest rivals: Morrisons - 0.9 miles, Tesco - 1.7 miles, Asda - 2.1 miles
Store data source: Analysis by CACI. Call the market planning group on 020 7602 6000

 

You’ve only been store manager for three weeks, so this must be great news? Yes, life doesn’t get much better than winning the Grocer 33 so soon. I’m also a newcomer to Sainsbury’s. I’ve been with the company for three months and before that was at Asda for 28 years. The right opportunity came along at the right time and I took it.

Our mystery shopper picked up on the ‘friendly feel’ to the store. How have you encouraged it? I’m so lucky to have colleagues that put the customer at the heart of everything they do. We are always talking about customer service in our daily huddles and I’m always getting feedback on our great service. We recently had an internal mystery shopper survey and scored 100%.

Have you made any changes since becoming store manager? I’ve only made a few tweaks to the team. The store got a refit earlier in the year and it’s now got a full food offer, food to go, pizza counters and meat counters, which are proving really popular with shoppers. So there really hasn’t been much need for changes.

What are the popular areas of your store? The counters have been hugely successful, and so has clothing. We recently had a 25% off clothing event and saw a 100% uplift.

Sainsbury’s performed particularly strongly in the Kantar data released this week - why do you think this was? It really has been a year like no other for Sainsbury’s. We sponsored the Paralympics, which was hugely successful. Brand Match has also been going for a year, which really highlights our value perception.

And when do your Christmas decorations go up? On Sunday night ready for Monday morning! The seasonal aisle is already being shopped hard and customers are getting ready for Christmas. Our customers will trade up for Christmas and I’m confident that it will be a good one this year.

Mark Edwards was talking to Beth Phillips

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