Which items have been selling well in store recently? The Sainsbury’swide promotion five family meals for £20 has been doing really well and we have got our colleagues really involved in it, too. We have been cooking some of the meals in our staff canteen so colleagues have a chance to try them and can recommend them to customers. We have also recently started selling all the Comic Relief merchandise and the red noses are doing really well.

As Sainsbury’s is the official supermarket of Comic Relief, how is your store getting involved in fundraising? As we are such a big store, we have loads of things going on. Jamie Oliver was in the store for an entire day last week filming the new Sainsbury’s Comic Relief advert, which will be on TV in March. We’re also having a charity football tournament, and an ‘apprentice’ day where I will be playing the role of Lord Sugar in store and doing a series of challenges with colleagues. 

Has your store been negatively affected by the Asda Price Guarantee? No, I wouldn’t say so at all. We have a lot of our own promotions and we are the highest-taking Sainsbury’s store in the country. We have a very good offer compared with Asda in terms of the quality of our products, too. 

What challenges do you face being the highest-taking Sainsbury’s store? I wouldn’t say it is a challenge but naturally we are very busy and we employ 800 colleagues at the store, serving 80,000 customers a week. That puts us in the top five Sainsbury’s stores in terms of customer numbers, so we need to make sure the shelves are well stocked and we look after every single one of those customers. 

Have you introduced any new lines in-store recently? We are about to start offering a range of cut and packed meats, which will be cut at the deli counter and then sold in the aisles. This has been trialled at a couple of new Sainsbury’s stores and we are the first store to start selling it officially. Another new thing we are doing is having a wine-tasting event in store in a couple of weeks. We have invited 40 customers and have a wine expert coming down from our head office. 

What do you like most about the store and what would you want to change if you could? I am fortunate in that we have a lot of space in store. Also, unlike some large stores, everything is all on one level, which definitely helps colleagues and customers. In terms of what I would like to change, I just want to continue to grow the store as I think there is more we can do with it. 

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