Tesco Extra Culverhouse Cross, Cardiff: G33 store of the week

How is Christmas going? I think customers are holding back a bit until the weekend and checking out what rival stores have to offer before the big shop. We’ve been planning Christmas for months and I think it’s going to go down a storm.

What’s going on in the store? Six weeks ago, we opened new Arcadia franchises on our mezzanine level to repurpose some of the space in non-food. We’ve got stores like Burton and Dorothy Perkins. It’s had a massive effect on the store. It’s turned it into a real browsing experience for customers.

Is there anything else in the pipeline? We’re soon going to be launching a service called PetDen. Customers will be able to leave their dogs at a booth when they arrive and they will get groomed while their owners shop. We’re the first store in the country to offer it.

How did Black Friday go? We opened at 5am but it was in the evening that our trade spiked and it set us up for a great weekend. We didn’t have any of the chaos that some stores had last year, though I must admit it felt a bit like a military operation.

How has Project Reset gone down in Cardiff? We anticipated there would be a lot of questions about changes to the range but we’ve had absolutely none. We’ve had vouchers to give out if people complained about products that were removed but we haven’t had to use them.

Our mystery shopper liked the freebies on offer. How has the sampling campaign gone down with everyone else? We’ve tried to make the tasting experience a natural part of the trip around the store, so customers are constantly being given a chance to try new things.

Is the Force with you? We had a Star Wars event, giving children the chance to build Lego toys like the Millennium Falcon, with masks for the adults. To be honest it was the adults who were into it: they were losing their children because they were trying to be Han Solo.