Store of the week: Waitrose Newton Mearns

Have you won before? It is my first win in three years as a store manager. It’s fantastic. Winning The Grocer’s store of the week is the holy grail for a branch manager!

What do you put the win down to? It’s a cliché but you’re only as good as your team. I’m fortunate to have a great one and they’ve worked really hard. Our customer service was better than ever this Christmas.

How did Christmas go at the branch? We had really good growth again this year. We introduced click & collect in October so customers were able to shop from the full John Lewis catalogue. That went really well and brought in a lot of new customers in the run-up to Christmas. It helped afterwards, too, because of the popularity of John Lewis Clearance.

Did you spot any trends in how shoppers spent their money over Christmas? We saw a switch from traditional turkey into geese and game products. Free-from products like our free-from Christmas pudding - which was new this year - really flew off the shelves.

What offers do you have on at the moment? We have a lot of promotions on products to help people get back into shape. We’re running 3 for 2 on our Love Life healthy ready meals, as well as discounts on other healthy products from water to Shredded Wheat. We are also giving a complimentary bottle of Champagne to new customers using our online shopping service until the end of January.

What plans do you have for the store in 2014? Wi-Fi will be going in soon. It is something a lot of customers have been asking for. When stopping in the café, people want to be able to connect to the internet. We’re also looking forward to having a welcome desk put in at the front of the store. It’ll make life easier for shoppers. They can collect their shopping there, ask questions and pick up a free coffee with their myWaitrose card.