Store of the week: Tesco Silverburn

Well done! What is the secret of the store’s success? We’ve done some fantastic work on improving the service in-store. That’s involved taking every member of staff off rota for at least two hours to give them extra training on better service.

Is your store going to be part of the Extra revamp programme? Yes. We’re going to start a £7m revamp next week, which will kick off on 1 April and be carried out over 12 weeks. It’s going to be quite a big change.

So what do customers have in store? We’re opening a new Giraffe restaurant, which is licensed and is a real step change from the basic café we have at the moment. This is much more upmarket. We are also getting a new food-to-go area right at the front of the store, which will make our convenience offer much stronger.

Will the store stay open during the work? Yes, we’ll be doing most of the major work at night when we’re at our quietest.

Have you seen the changes at the prototype stores? Yes, we had a tour of the Coventry store, which was one of the prototypes. We’ve also been looking at the web tour online of the Watford store and the changes look very exciting. I think they are fantastic and represent the future of Extra stores.

Can the Fuel Save scheme help shoppers put off by high petrol prices? We’ve definitely seen a dent in shopper flow caused by high petrol prices and Fuel Save seems to have gone down very well with shoppers since the launch. They know now that the more they spend with us the cheaper their petrol is going to be; it’s very straightforward so hopefully it will help us to get that trade back.

One of the few criticisms from our mystery shopper was the lack of staff on the shop floor. Can you account for that? I’m surprised at that because it’s something we know is important and put a lot of effort into. I hope it was just a bad moment.