Tesco Cupar: Grocer 33 store of the week

Tell us about your background with Tesco? I started working at Tesco in 2005 while I was studying. I’ve been a store manager for four years, and I’ve been in the Cupar store for two years. Before that I was in Campbeltown, which is Tesco’s most remote store on the mainland in the UK.

How has the transition from Campbeltown to Cupar been? It’s been really good and I’ve really enjoyed my two years in the store. There’s a lot of long-serving colleagues that have worked here since the store opened 25 years ago. They’re passionate about delivering the best shop they can to the local community; they are real service superstars in the store.

Our shopper felt the atmosphere was ‘warm and welcoming’. How do you make that happen? I think the important thing is that when we get new members of the team they’re also brought up to that standard too. The more experienced members of staff are brilliant at integrating new members of staff into the team and ensuring they deliver the same level of customer service.

What’s been the most challenging part of managing the store against the backdrop of the past couple years? And the highlight? The main challenge has just been maintaining resilience, but we’ve done a brilliant job of navigating these challenges and the morale in the store has remained really good. The highlight for me was that, as part of our colleague survey ‘Every Voice Matters’, we learned 96% of our colleagues would recommend the Cupar store as a great place to work.

Tell us about the current displays you have in store? Our Fresh Five display - that’s the very first thing you see when you come in. First impressions are really important  to the customers, so that’s an area that we make sure it’s presented full and clean throughout the day. And of course we’ve got a very strong range of lines available for Mother’s Day this year. As the mystery shopper noticed, fresh cut flowers is something we [are] pushing hard. We’re making sure our flower display at the front door is absolutely spot on and we’ve got an excellent range. 

How do you make the most of your relatively small sales area in terms of product placement and promotions? That’s a very important point and something we’ve worked really hard on for the past couple of years, and something we constantly review. When you work in a smaller store, you have to get the space right in terms of the products you’re offering. You can’t stock every line that Tesco ranges, so it’s vital you stock the right ones for customers. We constantly ask for customer feedback about lines they would like us to integrate into our range. Local products would be an important thing to point out – there are requests at times for certain products, like unique Scottish lines, which is something we get behind and try to range as much as possible.

How are you prepping for the looming HFSS regulations? We are looking ahead to October and making sure the store will be lined up for when that legislation goes live. The first merchandising group we’ve had in the past couple weeks is frozen food, so we have been tinkering with that. As the changes are phased across the year, it’s not the case that we’re doing everything right now, but by October we will be in the right place.

You hold an impressive 39% of market share in your community. What is that down to, aside from location? I think it’s about retaining customers, we’ve actually picked up market share during Covid and things like Clubcard prices went down really strongly with customers in terms of their feedback. There are 3,000 products that at one time can be on offer as part of the Clubcard prices deal, and that’s helped us drive retention in the store.

How have people reacted to the price of the meal deal going up for non-Clubcard holders? It’s been 10 years that it’s been held at £3, but even at £3.50 it’s still very competitive. We’ve had no complaints – what we’re finding is more and more people are signing up to Clubcard so they can take advantage of it and our other offers.

You’ve just had a retail park open nearby. How has that affected the business and the customer demographic? It’s impacted us in a positive way, because it’s bringing people from different parts of Fife across to Cupar. Customers that would normally go outside of Fife to Dundee at the weekend have probably been visiting our new retail park next door, as well as popping in here for their shopping. So rather than impact sales in a negative way, it’s actually brought different kinds of customers to the store since it opened about two months ago. It’s brought younger people too as there’s a Burger King next door, as well as B&M… potentially these places attract a younger demographic.

How have your shoppers supported Tesco’s Ukraine relief efforts? On top of the group’s £1m donation to the British Red Cross, we’re also doing round-up at the self-service checkouts. As a local store, we’ve set up a donation area in our training room – customers can drop items in and we’ll drop them off at donation points.