Tesco Dundee Riverside: Grocer 33 store of the week

Tesco claims to have outperformed its rivals on fresh food sales over Christmas. How did your store do? Our store performance on fresh was excellent. The Festive Five veg sold really well and being priced at just 29p meant it was superb value, cheaper than last year. It really flew off the shelves.

What were the standout performers in fresh food? We had a whole salmon at half price on our fish counter, which was our number one seller.

General merchandise didn’t sell so well though did it? Were there any bright lights there? We didn’t really have a big overhang on GM, it did OK. We had some fantastic sales on our Fox & Ivy range of products, which were perfect for Christmas gifts.

How do you motivate staff to get going again after such a busy time? The teams know it’s very important to have a quick turnaround and to make sure we don’t have a sudden dip in availability or levels of service. I think we’ve come out of Christmas as a store and as a company in really good shape.

Tesco this week launched a new partnership with charities to fight obesity. What are you doing to battle the bulge? We’ve just launched the second year of Helpful Little Swaps. We’ve got lots of round-pound deals in the power aisle, offering products and healthy alternatives that are reduced in sugar or salt. We’re also offering free fruit for kids again - I’ve never seen so much fruit go out. We’ve also had a lot of reformulated products like breakfast cereals and our new pasta sauces, which came out last year. I would definitely say there is a lot more choice on healthier products than we had three years ago

This is a hat-trick of wins for you in the Grocer 33. What is the secret? Yes, it’s the third time I’ve won it, the first was back in April 2015. The secret is always the same - just keep trying as hard as possible to improve service and availability.