Tesco Blandford Forum: Grocer 33 store of the week

Tell us about you. I’ve been with Tesco for 20 years, I joined when I was 16 and was doing my A-levels. It wasn’t my intention to make this my career path but I got into management training at 18. I’ve now been a store manager for five years – my first store manager role was Basingstoke, so a bit of a trek, but I was very happy to get on the ladder. I’ve been at Blandford for four months now.

What was it like when you joined? This is a really lovely shop to work in, a community store and it’s got a really good colleague and management base, so it’s a really tight-knit store. My priority has always been to deliver the best possible shopping trip for the customer by having good availability and highlighting value. Coming in to a new store, the challenge is always getting the colleagues on board, but this store was in a good place when I got here.

As a community store, what is the customer demographic? Quite a big chunk of the local demographic is retired, older generation, who have a bit more time on their hands and a little bit of expendable cash. But we’ve also got lots of housing developments, so we are seeing a lot of younger families come in as they’re buying the new houses. We are also on the way to becoming a holiday destination. Weymouth is not very far away, and we have a massive event every August, the Great Dorset Steam Fair, which is about two-and-a-half miles up the road and attracts thousands of tourists. There are also quite a few local festivals, and local campsites that attract the younger generation.

How do you go about maintaining store standards? Our standards are very high and rarely slip. The night team here are very good and follow directions really clearly. There are obviously times when we don’t get it all done, but we focus on areas that most impact customers – we don’t drop fresh, we don’t drop beers, wines and spirits, we don’t drop snacking. My stock control team are probably the best stock control team I’ve worked with in 20 years. They are all over every single gap to make it easier for the night team and for us during the day. And then every day I walk the whole shop and I will scan the gaps on my phone, so I can find out what the issues are. I spend 90% to 95% of my day on the shop floor. I can do a lot of the store manager-related tasks on my own phone, so I and the other managers spend very little time out the back. The team see us leading from the front.

How is trading changing with the nice weather? There is a definite uptick on hot weather lines, so salad lines on produce, bread, rolls and bakery, beers, wines and spirits, lots of sun cream sold on health & beauty. And ice – we’re having to fill up three or four times a day. We’ve also got a display of garden furniture, and so far that has been selling really well too.

You talk about highlighting value campaigns. How? We focus heavily on Clubcard Prices and Low Everyday Prices and we make sure they are well signposted for customers. Times are a bit tough at the moment, but we also find people want to spend as they are spending less on going out. We have garden furniture on Clubcard Prices, and we had a promotion of 25% off on six bottles of wine. We make sure to highlight these for customers.