Store: Waitrose Sandbach
Team manager: Andrew Leggott
Opened: 2004
Size: 22,876 sq ft
Market share: 22.5%
Population: 113,386
Grocery spend: £2,880,863.59
Spend by household: £58.72
Competitors: 31
Nearest rivals: Aldi 0.2 miles, Asda 4.1 miles, Co-op 0.4 miles, Iceland 0.1 miles, Lidl 4.7 miles, M&S 4.3 miles, Morrisons 0.2 miles, Sainsbury’s 4.0 miles, Tesco 4.0 miles, Waitrose 10.2 miles
Source: CACI. For more info visit www.caci.co.uk/contact. Notes: Shopper profiling is measured using Grocery Acorn shopper segmentation. Store catchment data (market share, population, expenditure, spend by household, competition) is within a five-mile radius.
For CACI’s shopper segmentation of the other stores we visited this week see the online report at
www.thegrocer.co.uk/stores/the-grocer-33
What has your career trajectory looked like? I’m the team manager of e-commerce here. I’ve been at Waitrose just short of seven years now and all of my time has been at the same branch. I was attracted to Waitrose by the business efforts and its reputation as an employer. I like the whole principle of shared ownership.
What stands out to you about the Sandbach store? The partners are wonderful people and the customers are great as well. We’ve got a loyal customer base and it’s great to speak to them and to get to know a whole new area. The real strength of the branch is the partners and their knowledge of the local community. Everyone, despite the challenges we may face on a day-to-day basis, is totally committed to providing that world class service for our customers.
How do you cater to the local community? We try to speak to our customers on a regular basis, so we can understand where their needs are, and where they feel we may not be delivering exactly what they want. There’s lots of local engagement and we will talk them through the offers we’ve got at the minute.
How have you noticed shopper habits changing? It’s been a really interesting year because our sales have pretty much held up despite the cost of living crisis. We’ve noticed customers are probably doing smaller shops than they were, but more frequent smaller shops. I think a lot of that is driven by our location: we are pretty much a community supermarket and we know lots of our customers. As Christmas is approaching, we are seeing the usual ramp-up in customers – particularly towards the back end of the week and into the weekend.
What Christmas ranges are you bringing in at the moment? We’re ramping up gradually with our Christmas offering. We’ve had stuff on the shelves for a few weeks. For example, our Heston range is always a great seller and there are a couple of new launches on the Heston line this Christmas such as the chocolate pennies, which are the chocolate pennies you drop in your milk to make hot chocolate. These have been really popular and have formed part of the business’ advertising. Mince pies are going off the shelf pretty well: we’ve got the No.1 Brown Butter Mince Pies that scored extremely highly in recent surveys. We’ve got through almost all of our Christmas crackers, which we had in the branch up until yesterday, when we finished a half-price promotion on them.
How have you been coping with the egg situation? We’re doing alright within our branch and across the estate. We continue to monitor the situation with what’s going on with bird flu, but we’ve got a strong supply of eggs. I suppose a lot of that is testament to the good relationships we have with the supplier.
How do you ensure you keep availability high? We have really good relations with our suppliers that have been built up over years. And locally in branch, partners are identifying gaps and looking where something might not be coming into store, and investigating why, speaking to our distribution unit. We also make sure we stay on top of all our stock management processes in the building because it’s absolutely key to what we’re able to offer our customers.
No comments yet