Chris Stewart of Tesco Extra Gorton on winning Grocer 33 store of the week - again

You became the youngest store manager for Tesco at the age of 21. You’re 28 now and have just won our store award for the second time in 18 months. What would you say to people wanting to enter retail as a career? I started when my dad got me a job as a trolley boy when I was 17. I’ve since gone on to work in nearly every form of Tesco store it’s a great career.

How is the store responding to the shift to online shopping? We’re getting an extra dotcom van and in January we’re launching a drive-through click and collect service. Dotcom is very strong, it’s where a lot of our growth is coming from. We’re seeing 20% like-for-likes.

Where are the biggest changes taking place? Clothing in-store is the biggest growth area. The F&F range that we’ve got is really very strong now and I’ve been displaying it in other locations in the store to give our customers a taste of what they might be missing. The new range gives me - as a store manager - a lot of confidence in the product.

What about food? We’ve done an awful lot with our fresh food line-up. We have new signage for our dairy, meat and poultry and have had a huge push on Tesco Finest. The like-for-likes on Finest are really flying and this is an area where the majority are value customers.

Is it really true that hundreds of people queued at your store for two hours to get their hands on personalised Coca-Cola bottles? We were chosen as one of the launch stores for Coke’s idea and we had people queuing all day long to get their names done. We shifted 4,000 bottles. I’ve not seen anything like it before.

Speaking of busy times, how has the run-up to Christmas been so far? I feel it has started earlier this year. Last year, people left it late. The message I’ve been giving to staff is that it doesn’t matter how busy it gets, it’s very important to smile our way through it.