Sainsbury’s Hempstead Valley: Grocer 33 store of the week

What has been your career trajectory at Sainsbury’s? I’ve worked in retail for about 27 years now. Sixteen of those have been at Sainsbury’s, and 15 of those have been as a store manager: I’ve managed across multiple sites in the Kent area. I started here at Hempstead Valley about 12 months ago. I really like working here and it’s a great team of people. There has been a lot of capital investment put into the store over previous years. The store had a major refit, which changed the whole layout completely – new fixtures and fittings – and it made the store look great. It’s a real destination shop – we have a large general merchandise section with clothing, we have a busy café, a nice fresh bakery and hot food counter, as well as an Argos store and a petrol filling station.

How has the store changed over the 12 months you’ve been store manager? I can’t remember the last ‘normal’ year – every year something seems to happen and the environment changes really quickly. So we’ve just learned to adapt to these changes as they come and roll with the punches. One of the key changes we’ve had to implement with as little impact to our customers as possible would probably be the legislation on HFSS products. We’ve also dealt with the well-reported industry-wide supply challenges, and we’ve been dealing with the cost of living challenges for our colleagues and our customers, and the consistently changing shopping habits.

What kind of shopper does your store cater to? It’s a very mixed shopping demographic within the store: a mixture of schoolchildren and then the more mature shopper base. But because we’re at the shopping centre, people come here for lunch or coffee. We see quite a big uplift in trade in December, because people come by for their Christmas shopping, and use us an opportunity to pick up additional gifts and food while they’re in the shopping centre as well. Trade patterns are slightly different from what you might see elsewhere. It’s sometimes weather-dependent because if it’s raining, that gives the customers the opportunity to park underground, and then they do their shopping all in the shopping centre. We generally tend to get busier when it’s raining.

Could you tell me a bit about the Prime launch in your store this week? Our Prime launch shows how we are actively seeking the latest product innovation for our customers. Prime was a great success with our customers and very popular with all the schoolchildren. We have had five different flavours in and when it’s gone, it’s gone. We had quite a large allocation, so we managed to fulfil quite a few customers’ expectations, which is great. I would say we probably had 300 people queueing when we opened the doors this morning, waiting to get the opportunity to buy the Prime drink. It was great to see their happy faces as they came through the store.

How do you deal with that logistically? We make sure we have the right team of people at the front of the store to support the customers, directing them to the product. Then we also have the right team to replenish it quickly. We had additional checkouts open and ready to get the customers through the store as quickly as possible.