Tesco Whitfield, Dover: Grocer 33 store of the week

Matt Polson, Tesco Whitfield, Dover

You achieved top marks for the car park, checkout and shop floor service. What’s the secret?

I’m very proud of the team, it’s a fantastic achievement. We gets loads of positive comments from customers. We’ve even helped a customer change a tyre in the past.

How do you reward good customer service?

We’ve got 430 people working in the store. When we see someone doing really well we recognise it and make it quite public that someone’s done a cracking job. We have an internal values award, like a birthday card, that we give them to say well done. No one comes to work to do a bad job and if someone’s not doing something quite right then we need to help them.

What advice would you give to someone looking to become a store manager? Be yourself. Be adaptable and just enjoy.

How did you deal with the recent campylobacter cooked chicken scare that affected Tesco stores? As soon as something comes down from head office we deal with it. We remove products that shouldn’t be on the self and we destroy them if that’s the instruction. Also, there’s an automatic ban on them going through the tills.

Do you have any interesting trials going on? We’re a dotcom store and we’ve just started same-day delivery. It was a trial but it is now permanent. It gives customers an extra opportunity to order up to 1pm on the same day.

What items are selling well at the moment? BBQ products, beer, ice cubes and ice cream. We’ve recently had a deal offering 25% off any six bottles of wine purchased - that’s done very well.

How often do you visit the competition? Every week. The quality of the produce at M&S and Waitrose is generally very good. We aim to match that.

What’s the biggest challenge you face on a day-to-day basis? Trying to do better than we did the day before.