Waitrose Newbury: Grocer 33 store of the week

You must be delighted to start the year with a G33 win… I’m incredibly proud we’ve achieved it in what is typically a tricky week for all retailers, pivoting from the indulgence of Christmas to the healthy eating of January. My team has done an amazing job. It’s a real tonic for the new year. I’ve won the G33 twice at a previous store, but this is Newbury’s first win in the 21 years it’s been open.

How would you describe the store? We’re just on the edge of Newbury – you can walk into the centre in about five minutes. We have a really great car park, and it’s a lovely, bright and airy, modern shop. We’re surrounded by bigger stores, but our layout is a real plus point. We have a great variety of customers. Some treat us as their local convenience type of shop, but we’ve also got a lot of families and, as ever, the foodies who love walking around with their cookbooks. My customers are definitely very focused on health generally. Fruit and veg trades very well for us.

How was Christmas at Newbury? We had a really successful Christmas. We served more customers than we did last year and they spent a bit more. Our Christmas range was brilliant. Our buyers and commercial team were really bold. It was curated well, with a good balance between the Essential range and some incredible No.1 products.

Were there any surprises in what people were buying? Of course, the traditional seasonal veg lines and turkeys sold well. Prepared meats – for example, turkey and gammon – were popular this year in particular. Waitrose No.1 panettone in a box, champagne and sparkling wine were also really powerful.Noticeably, we had good sales of low & no-alcohol drinks this year – normally they don’t sell well over Christmas, but people were buying them throughout December.

You’ve already mentioned the tricky transition between Christmas and January, how did you manage it? It’s a challenge. You close the door on New Year’s Eve, when customers have festivities on their mind, and then, in our case, you reopen on 2 January and everyone is into fresh veg, smoothies and ginger shots. It’s a completely different offer. There’s a lot of work, not only to get those products into store, but to get merchandising turned around. It takes just as much planning as Christmas does, and the team did an amazing job. 

Waitrose recently launched its new Plant Varieties label, what January promotions are you running? We call it ‘30 plants a week’ and the aim is to promote the six key plant categories to help shoppers reach that. We’ve got key fruit and veg lines on our promotion end – offering discounts like 25% off avocados and 25% off peppers, for example. Shoppers are looking to refresh themselves and their homes after the indulgence of Christmas, so on top of that we’ve got really strong promotions on household cleaning.

Newbury is the next store set for a major refit this year, what’s planned? We’re really excited – it will be great for Newbury. It’s building on work at the Maidenhead and John Barnes branches last year, to create the latest iteration of Waitrose stores. I haven’t seen the full details of what’s planned yet, but we’re flattered that we’ve been chosen.