Waitrose Locks Heath: Grocer 33 store of the week

How long have you worked for Waitrose? I spent eight years in the Royal Navy as a warfare officer. When I was looking for a new challenge, I picked retail. I joined Waitrose on a management scheme, and have been a branch manager for 17 years. This is the first time in my 20 years with the business that I’ve had a Grocer 33 visit, so I’m very proud of the team.

Is there anything surprising about the store’s location, and what people are buying? Locks Heath is a small shopping centre – we’re surrounded by trees in the middle of a housing estate, so you could easily not know we’re here. It means we are more of a destination store. Our customers are generally local families and professionals. There are no particular surprises in what people are buying. We’ve recently relaunched our No.1 Range, and added lots of new products like pizza, ready meals and breads, which have been incredibly popular. Ottolenghi and Gymkhana curry lines have gone down well. Most exciting for me is we’ve just had a refresh of our bakery area. We’ve got lots of new creative bread and patisserie lines. They’re delicious and there’s something interesting for everyone.

A retail park means lots of competition. How do you make sure your store stands out? There’s an Iceland, a convenience Morrisons and a Cook, alongside lots of other branches within the shopping centre itself. We complement each other quite well. Having other stores around us makes us a destination and helps us attract more than just the typical Waitrose customer. We’re really lucky as we have a large café and, of course, Waitrose’s point of difference is our service counters. It gives customers every reason to visit us, whether they intended to or not.

Waitrose is really investing in on demand. What challenges does that bring to the store? It’s growing week by week. What people order can be random and is dependent on the weather. There are customers who just buy a couple of items, and there are those who do their full weekly shop of 30-40 items.How we integrate picking to the shop floor as we get busier remains a challenge. We want to excel in customer service, both to those on-demand customers, but also those shopping in branch. So making sure partners are heads up and aware, making eye contact and smiling – rather than eyes on the screen and not noticing what’s around them – has been challenging. For me, the solution is having great partners and training.

What do you make of the new Waitrose Christmas ad? Brilliant. It’s completely different and we’re trying to keep it fresh. Importantly, it’s got our customers and partners engaging in store. Our partners are all wearing different coloured t-shirts saying who they think stole the Christmas dessert – it’s a conversation starter with customers and a little bit of fun. We’re also inviting local suppliers to a Christmas shopping evening in store.

How will you make sure Christmas is a success at your store? It’s just making sure we have the right partners in the right place, the best availability we can and that the branch is buzzing. We’re retailers – if we can’t enjoy our jobs at Christmas time then there is something wrong!