Duty manager: Douglas Currie
Store: Tesco Old Swan, Liverpool
Opened: 2002
Size: 37,876 sq ft
Market share: 4%
Population: 664,086
Grocery spend: £72,348,139
Spend by household: £247.02
Competitors: 129
Nearest rivals: Aldi 0.2 miles, Asda 0.3 miles, Co-op 1.1 miles, Iceland 0.4 miles, Lidl 0.5 miles, M&S 0.4 miles, Morrisons 3.4 miles, Sainsbury’s 0.8 miles, Tesco 0.7 miles, Waitrose 11.4 miles
Source: CACI. For more info visit www.caci.co.uk/contact. Notes: Shopper profiling is measured using Grocery Acorn shopper segmentation. Store catchment data (market share, population, expenditure, spend by household, competition) is within a five-mile radius. For CACI’s shopper segmentation of the other stores we visited this week see the online report at www.thegrocer.co.uk/stores/the-grocer-33
Have you always worked for Tesco? At 17 I had my heart set on being a footballer, then when I was released by Tranmere I started working part-time with Tesco while I did a law degree. Things developed, and by the time I was 30 I was running Homeplus stores. I’ve spent the last 15 years as a store manager, and been here since March last year.
Tell us about Old Swan. Being Merseyside, this is a hard-working community – they’re passionate about everything and fiercely loyal. Our shop reflects that. I’ve got 217 colleagues who care passionately about Tesco, but more importantly Old Swan as an area. And as we’re in Liverpool it’s done with a smile, and humour as well. Old Swan is relatively price-sensitive, so we do the basics really well, in terms of Aldi Price Match execution and the emphasis we put on Clubcard Prices. In price-sensitive shops we look after frozen and give it the love and attention it deserves.
Did Old Swan feel the effect of Storm Éowyn this weekend? Luckily, we weren’t impacted massively, and there weren’t many stores closed in our area that I know of. We had a fairly busy weekend.
Despite the win, your availability was the lowest of the week. Why? It could have been down to the time the shopper came in. As far as I’m aware, there weren’t any issues with availability as a result of the stormy weather. As a business, the distribution teams do a fantastic job for us. At a store level, we try to keep it simple and get the product out on time.
You got full marks for service. What makes those standards so high? I’m passionate about making sure colleagues love coming to work. My strapline is “I really want to make sure this is the best job you’ve ever had.” If people love coming to work, they will naturally give great service. We just empower our colleagues to go and do what they do best, and to bring their own personality to it. On top of that, the team here are so passionate about this shop, they treat it like it’s theirs and it makes my job so easy. We talk about doing the basics to an elite level. To me, that’s a clean store with the right prices, and the shop is full.
How do you put that into practice as a leader? I talk about servant leadership. Tesco regularly has forums, but I also have what I call the ‘cultural review club’ – we meet informally and just talk about things that are important to my team. It might be something basic, like the TV in the break room that isn’t working properly, but it’s important that people feel listened to. Ninety per cent of the time it’s really simple things that affect the colleagues in store but aren’t appropriate to bring up in the company-wide forums.
Has anything changed in store since it last won in 2022? We’ve got some fabulous new low-level produce fixturisation. It really emphasises the products and customers can see everything now. We also completely revamped our deli section. As a business, we’ve worked on congestion and tried to let the shop breathe. Alongside that we’ve done a massive amount on work on quality routines and now have a really robust review process. For example, in our fresh and bread departments, if we wouldn’t buy it ourselves, it gets whizzed away off shelf. It’s a non-negotiable.
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