Store: Waitrose Altrincham
Store manager: Amelia Seville
Opened: October 2009
Size: 19,600 sq ft
Market share: 4.3%
Population: 365,267
Grocery spend: £9,217,767.30
Spend by household: £60.72
Competitors: 77
Nearest rivals: Aldi 0.8 miles, Asda 0.5 miles, Co-op 0.8 miles, Iceland 1.4 miles, Lidl 2.9 miles, M&S 1.4 miles, Morrisons 4.5 miles, Sainsbury’s 1.6 miles, Tesco 0.8 miles, Waitrose 7.0 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.
How long have you worked for Waitrose? For 13 years. I started off as a non-management partner in the Sheffield store. I’ve worked across Leeds, Harrogate. I’ve done a couple of shops in central London and then back up north. So it’s working through my first management position and then going from there and getting to see different shops, different sizes, different cities and demographics. I’d say every shop is different and it’s really great to get out there and learn something new from each shop that you go to that you can take with you under your belt.
How have you found working at the Altrincham store? I’ve actually only been at Altrincham for the last three months but I’ve absolutely loved working here – it’s a really tight-knit, passionate and committed team and they’ve made me feel so welcome. It’s my first branch manager position and I’ve just loved it.
What have been the main challenges you’ve encountered during you first three months? I think obviously a change in leadership obviously can be tricky to navigate. The pace of change is just faster now than it ever has been. Another challenge has been in terms of changing customer habits or external changes going on and just trying to support the team to work in a really agile way.
What kinds of changes are you seeing in-store? In response to everything that’s going on externally, we were seeing customer habits changing and there’s a lot of pressure on customers in terms of cost and competition out there. So really what we’ve just been trying to do in Altrincham is focus on what our customers are telling us, creating the best customer journey that we can in our shop, and creating a great atmosphere to shop in and really listening to what our customers are telling us, about what they would like to see in our shop.
How is your store paying tribute to the late Queen? Everyone in the shop has been really deeply saddened by the death of the Queen and we do join the rest of the nation in their grief. So we are paying tribute in a number of ways in the store and as well as that, the partnership, health and wellbeing team has been great and is on hand to offer emotional support to any partner that needs it. We’ve had messages of condolences and tributes in the shops as well as across all Waitrose websites and social media. My branch will be closed for the funeral and John Lewis is closing all its department stores.
Your store excelled on service this week. How have you ensured that service is prioritised? From starting at Altrincham, I’ve been really clear that customer experience is something that I’m super-passionate about. We’ve been trying to work really hard on the relationships rather than trying to chase like a customer service metric or anything like that. We’ve just been really working hard on listening to what our customers are telling us, creating those genuine relationships with customers, because our partners are the people that know customers the best. We want to create that great atmosphere in the shop and empowering every partner in the shop to see the shop through the customers’ lens rather than our lens as partners working in the shop.
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