Sainsbury's The Galleries, Washington: G33 store of the week

Your store will mark its 40th anniversary this year. How will you celebrate? We’re having a big party with both staff and customers. We’ve got a lot of colleagues who have been here for the whole 40 years so we will make a big fuss of them.

Have you got any exciting changes coming up in store? All Sainsbury’s branches are being given iPads so management teams will be able to access everything we need on the shop floor. As store managers, it will just allow us to spend more time with colleagues and customers.

Talking about technology, Tesco has announced a nationwide rollout of a same-day delivery service this week… I think it’s something that’s got to happen, hasn’t it? That’s where the future is, I think it’s what customers want. Some Sainsbury’s stores are trying this already and we’ll wait and see if we get a same-day service in our branch. A big part of our operation is online and we’ve got to move with the technology.

Is anything performing particularly well in your store at the moment? We’ve recently introduced some new own-label gin lines. Gin seems to be the ‘in’ drink at the moment. Another area we’ve done well in is non-food. The weather has been quite kind to us so far, which has driven sales in out garden and outdoor ranges, as well as summer toys.

Speaking of toys, the school holidays have just begun. What is your store doing? We’ve got our back-to-school range in store! If you’ve got kids at school, they want orders for the uniforms before they even break up and customers want to know they can get the right sizes, so it has to be done.

You have quite a few rivals nearby. Who impresses you most and why? I think Aldi. They have just opened a bigger store about a mile-and-a-half away from us and one of the attractions is price, but also I think just being able to go in and do your shop quickly.