Store manager: Liz Fry
Store: Tesco Tidworth
Opened: 2007
Size: 25,067 sq ft
Market share: 12.6%
Population: 97,816
Grocery spend: £31,991,849
Spend by household: £852.03
Competitors: 24
Nearest rivals: Aldi 6.6 miles, Asda 8.0 miles, Co-op 2.2 miles, Iceland 8.0 miles, Lidl 0.2 miles, M&S 11.2 miles, Morrisons 16.4 miles, Sainsbury’s 5.7 miles, Tesco 2.3 miles, Waitrose 8.0 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
Are you new to the store? I’ve run the store for a year now, but Tidworth has always been a special store for me. I joined Tesco in 2007, the same year the store opened, and I did my first team management placement here. It’s my third spell here in a different capacity.
The last store manager described the store as unique, because it’s a military town. Do you agree? It’s one of six garrison stores, and the main challenges are our peaks. In a typical store, the weekends are busy and the start of the week quiet. Here, a lot of single army personnel go away for the weekend and come back Monday, Tuesday – and we get a real uplift then. We have approximately 150 colleagues, 90% of whom are army-affiliated – wives, spouses or children. Shift patterns can change quite often. We can have a last-minute call that 20 people are going to need to change their hours because of an exercise that wasn’t known about. It’s about being reactive, agile and providing for our colleagues so they can provide for our customers.
So, what are soldiers typically buying? They do love a Pot Noodle, I can share that, and Lucozade. We serve so many different nationalities, so it’s not a typical shop. Single army personnel tend to shop more frequently during the week, whereas families will follow a more normal shopping pattern and come at the weekends.
How was trade for Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day? What was really sweet was watching a lot of the army personnel include their children as well as their partner in Valentine’s Day. They were buying cards and gifts for their kids to make them feel included. It was a real family occasion, which is different to other stores I’ve worked in. Then on Mother’s Day it was flowers and chocolates.
Do you go quite big on flowers generally? Our shopper noted the displays. Yes, it’s quite traditional for Tidworth, where a lot of the spouses can be on their own. A few of our regulars are quite keen gardeners – they’re always onto us about when the new gardening lines are coming in. It’s still quite early, so the range will grow over the next four to five weeks. I’ve got one colleague who is really passionate about gardening, and he really takes ownership of the outside and the car park.
The sun was finally out this weekend. What is your sense of shopper sentiment going into the rest of the year? There’s a lot of excitement for more sunny days. It certainly brings a different atmosphere and an uplift. We saw lots of conversation about our BBQ ranges over the weekend. We’ve got some exciting new meat ranges coming in, as well as a lot of new gardening ranges, including the return of our good old favourite gnomes. We love a gnome in Tidworth.
How are you marking 30 years of Clubcard in store? For customers, there are some fantastic additional savings, which you’ll see promoted really strongly, while our colleagues have had a £30 voucher to spend with Clubcard partners.
Tesco won in nearby Andover earlier this year. What is it about this region that makes standards so high? All of us in the group are very committed and want to be the best in town. It’s a little bit competitive, but we all just want to do the best we can to serve the customers in our town.
No comments yet