Tesco has continued its recent spell of Grocer 33 dominance with a victory for its Neath store.
The branch picked up 73 points, marking three wins in five weeks for Tesco. In a low-scoring week, the win was helped along by zero out-of-stocks. However, four not-stocked items left our shopper “gutted”, as she had planned a meal around the basket.
The store scored highest on shop floor service. Our shopper saw plenty of staff around and was “pleasantly surprised” by the speed at which shelves were being restocked, especially given she’s “used to stores being a bit of a mess on a Sunday”.
She was also “amazed” to see seven checkouts open, one of which was free. Despite this, our shopper said the store was still “way too busy for me to consider going there again on a Sunday”.
With 61 points, Waitrose Crewkerne took second spot. For a small store, it performed relatively well on availability, with one out-of-stock and three not-stocked products. Our shopper noted a “good selection of items” and a “nicely displayed” Valentine’s Day dine-in offer.
However, staff were not easy to find, which led to our shopper having to help a customer who could not reach an item on the top shelf. That customer told our shopper she would have given up trying to buy it otherwise. When staff were located, their helpfulness was “rather questionable”.
Furthermore, the freezer section was near the entrance to store, which puzzled our shopper. She ended up doubling back after completing the majority of the shop “as I didn’t want to carry around frozen items from the beginning”.
Just one point back on 60, Sainsbury’s in Preston claimed third place this week. That was largely thanks to being the best-performing store on availability, with just one out-of-stock and one item not stocked.
Service was also good. One employee, named Wajid, was singled out as “extremely helpful”. An enquiry about paté was also well handled: a picker pointed our shopper to a more senior member of staff, who took her to the item.
Overall, though, the store felt “a bit dated”. Our shopper noted a trolley in the snacks aisle that was “taking up half of the available space”. Finally, only two staffed checkouts were open, with queues at both.
In fourth place this week was Asda in Telford with a score of 47. Availability was reasonable: there were two out-of-stock items and one not stocked.
The store was well stocked overall, but our shopper noted plenty of restocking going on. That resulted in “quite a lot of empty trolleys and abandoned cardboard boxes” – giving the store an air of being “generally quite messy”.
On service, the store had “some good staff and some not so good”. However, “the general vibe was sad and fed up, which doesn’t bode well”. Our shopper felt the store needed “a bit more oversight” and “a bit more love” and “things would improve massively”.
Bottom of the pile this week was Morrisons in Redditch with just 43 points. That score wasn’t aided by picking up a paltry two out of 20 for availability thanks to four out-of-stocks and one not-stocked item.
Staff were neat and tidy, and helpful when asked for assistance, but the aisles were quite cluttered.
Lots of cages, trolleys and pallets were left out. Our shopper noted aisles 31 and 32 were a particular mess, with boxes on the floor meaning “people struggled to get through”.
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