Store of the week: Waitrose Berkhamsted

How long have you been store manager? I’ve been with the business for 30 years, but I’ve only been managing the branch here for a month. I’m on secondment from Leighton Buzzard, which was my first job as store manager. I absolutely love being a store manager - I love seeing happy customers and happy partners.

What is trading like at your store? We’re right in the heart of the town, so we get quite heavy lunchtime trade and the café is busy all day. There’s a large retired population so the store is busy during the day in the week, as well as evenings and weekends.

Have there been any recent changes to the store and what impact have they had? We started selling garden products outside the store for the first time last year and that has been fantastic. We’ve seen a real uplift in sales.

And are there any changes planned in the future? We’re introducing a second hot beverage machine because of the success of the free hot drink we offer to MyWaitrose cardholders. The MyWaitrose scheme has been fantastic and the free hot drink offer has gone down really well. The second part of a re-fit to the front of the store is also coming up.

How has trading been affected by the warmer weather? Salads, quiches, strawberries and meats have all gone really well. A key focus for us over the weekend was ensuring that we had good availability across these lines.

What are you doing to ensure good availability? The key for us is being fully engaged with partners. We have a team of people whose job it is to monitor availability in different areas of the store.

What did you make of the 15% bonus this year and what will you be spending it on? It was a fantastic bonus this year. I’ll be putting it towards a holiday to somewhere like Majorca - somewhere where it’s hot.