Waitrose Dorking: Grocer 33 store of the week

This is the second victory for the store in 13 months. What’s changed in that time? We’ve now got all the modern Waitrose concepts - juice bar, café, meat counter, bakery and patisserie, including breads of the world, and we have a larger deli and cheese counter and a larger fish counter. It was nice to hear your shopper commented on our new welcome desk and the smart partner at it.

What difference do the new concepts make? We want people to come in and have that Waitrose welcome. We want them to feel they are not just here on a shopping trip but to socialise, meet friends, talk to partners, enjoy their myWaitrose coffee. One of the great things here in Dorking is that we have very loyal customers as well as partners, and they are all passionate about our food, the ethical side and where it comes from and they want to talk about it. There’s a very personal, friendly atmosphere here.

How is the new Waitrose 1 range performing? Customers are very interested in it and our partners are very enthusiastic to understand about the quality and to be able to tell their customers about that. We’ve been doing tastings and we’ll be doing lots more. We haven’t got the full Waitrose 1 range yet but we’ll be getting more soon.

Have customers mentioned your new ads about the provenance behind Waitrose products? Well, the ads only started in the last few days but, yes, we have had nothing but positive comments so far. Partners and customers love to hear that Waitrose is advertising its products to the wider world.

Have you got any more developments coming up? Yes, we are about to have some outdoor seating at the front, on the high street. It’s a real sun trap there! We’re also looking at our convenience offering and to keep up with the way our customers can pay to improve their shopping experience.