Store of the Week: Tesco Extra Slough

You scored top marks for shop floor service. How do you maintain such high standards? We encourage employees to be confident around customers and also be themselves. We help them really focus on doing the right thing for the customer, and they are rewarded on a daily and weekly basis for great shop floor service.

You’ve recently gone through the store refresh programme. How is that going? It’s been great. As well as just generally brightening up the store, the purpose of the remodel was to provide a much more diverse shopping experience. As well as groceries, the Slough Extra has a Harris + Hoole coffee shop and a Euphorium Bakery. We’ve tailored the store ranges to our local community - we’ve provided a local Polish delicatessen and increased our world food selection by about 400 lines. The remodel took 13 weeks in total and touched most aspects of the shop: I have certainly noticed more old customers coming back after the remodel. Footfall has returned to previous levels.

Is there still a place for massive superstores like Extra? I think there’s still life in these formats, yes. We’re starting to see more growth and we’re tailoring our stores more to the right customer thanks to improved market research. For example, we host a community room where local projects run things like mother and baby classes, zumba and agms. We keep this space stocked up with free tea, coffee and stationery, and generally ensure it’s a nice place to meet for the community.

Were you shocked by the sudden departure of CEO Philip Clarke last week? It’s not normal to have a change at the very top, but the store had a business plan and a remodelling plan, and this is what we will follow and continue to work with. We’ve been seeing great performance as a result of the remodel and at this store, we believe in that.