Tesco Chesterfield: Grocer 33 store of the week

How long have you worked for Tesco? I celebrated 40 years in November. I’ve been in and out of stores in that time. I opened this store in 2009, from the old store that was just across the road. Then I had four years in distribution. I’ve done numerous roles as team manager and moved into the lead role over the last 10 years.

Describe the store. You can’t really miss us, we’re bang on the A61 roundabout in the centre of town. It was very much a concept store when it opened, as part of a joint venture with Chesterfield Football Club. It is on a mezzanine floor, with the car park underneath. A lot of the concepts have closed now, and we rent a lot of the space to third parties. We’re a very large home shopping store, and about 20% of the colleagues are part of that, either as drivers or personal shoppers.

What are people buying in Chesterfield? There are numerous lines that we’ve had over the years, but one that really sticks in my mind is tomato sausage. It was a thing that people only really wanted here – they wouldn’t even touch it five minutes up the road in Sheffield. The company stopped selling it a few years ago. Nowadays we’re pretty much a destination store, and we attract a lot of visitors in good and bad weather with the mezzanine. I wouldn’t say people are coming for any particular product, but instead for the service we give and the range we can provide. We easily have over 40,000 SKUs. Being so closely linked to the stadium, we can get a turn-up in trade on match days. It’s mostly snacking and water, but it varies. During winter matches people will tend to do their big shop after the game. We get a lot of visiting supporters as well.

Sunny weather seems to finally be here. Were shoppers in Chesterfield celebrating? We’ve definitely had a bounce. Regardless, we’ve already started trading summer products – be it charcoal, BBQs, or the new meat range, which is already selling well. People’s shopping habits have started to change and we’re seeing an uplift in certain lines more frequently than we have done previously. Another thing this year is the school holidays have been brought forward, so trading patterns are slightly different.

Our shopper noted lots of boarded-up areas. Are you undergoing a refit? We’ve got some areas that have gone out to tender. But saying that, we’ve got an awful lot of third parties in our foyer already: three concessions that sell food, one holiday shop and a beauty bar. We’ve also got a mobile shop, barbers and a Timpson, among others. We’ve also started doing Ikea collections from the car park. So there are a lot of amenities that pull our customers in.

Customer service was ‘excellent’. Is that something you’ve worked on? We’ve got 450 colleagues, a lot of whom came from the previous Chesterfield store. Lots of them have passed their 15 years’ service, so are naturally fluent in serving customers. However, we’re really pleased we scored so highly on a Sunday. It’s typically been one of our weaker days, and we’ve been working to improve it. It’s about not just ticking boxes, but delivering the best service we can. Rachel the store manager joined 10 months ago and she’s been introducing some ideas from her previous stores.