Tesco Warrington: Grocer 33 store of the week

You pipped Sainsbury’s in our mystery shop because of a better checkout score. What’s most important - queueing times or service? We have a golden rule that our cashiers should not go at a speed that is detrimental to service. Yes, it is important to be efficient but people expect staff at the checkout to be friendly.

It’s a massive store. What challenges does that present? Big stores like this can be quite cold in terms of ambience. Customers can find the store intimidating and we’ve tried to bring a more friendly feel to it by almost having different stores within a store with the different sections. For example, we’ll be having beauty treatments in the beauty department and tastings at the fresh food counters. It creates a much warmer atmosphere.

You have both Aldi and Lidl within half a mile. Does that present extra challenges? Actually we have two Aldis, a Lidl and an Iceland. A new Aldi opened just up the road, but the impact was not as great as we thought it might be. I think you can get too hung up on what rivals are up to - the most important thing is to concentrate on doing the best you can.

What impact has the heatwave had on sales? It’s been really boiling. Thank goodness the air conditioning in the store has done a good job. As for sales, it’s been really good and we’ve been doing really well on the areas you would expect like beers and barbecue items, which have been flying off the shelves. Being a big store helps us with availability because we tend to have a bit more stock than some smaller stores.

What has been the latest innovation in store? We’ve been taking part in a trial whereby the click & collect collection for Tesco Direct orders is outside along with the grocery collection. It’s proved very successful and it’s a lot more convenient for shoppers, who don’t have to go to two collection points.