Waitrose John Barnes: Can An Analogue Store Survive In The Age Of Digital?
The newly refurbished Waitrose branch on Finchley High Street reopened this week, I went along to take a look. In words and pictures.
Previously a John Lewis store, now a Waitrose on Finchley High Street, it is nothing if not imposing. Of late it has undergone something of a transformation, and along with branches in Sudbury and Maidenhead (opening in the autumn), Waitrose claim that these will be used to trial new services, product offerings and concept upgrades over the next 12 months before a new blueprint for Waitrose shops is revealed in 2025.
When describing it, Waitrose executive director James Bailey told me: “Waitrose will always offer fantastic food, but the groundwork we have undertaken behind the scenes in recent years means we can now focus on growth through new shops and ensuring our existing ones are providing great shopping experiences that match the quality of our products.
“The transformation of our Finchley Road store marks the next evolution of our journey to create a great shopping experience for our customers, underpinned by a high-quality product offering tailored to the local area, and the quality service we are synonymous with.
“In designing the store, we have taken time to understand how our customers like to shop, and used this knowledge to introduce new concepts that will be tested and rolled out nationally as we continue to work towards the Waitrose of the future.”
It’s certainly an impressive store, service counters for a butcher, fishmonger, bakery, sushi bar and a cheese counter all featuring, although the former occupied a modest footprint. As one would expect on a private showing for the assembled media, availability looked pretty much 100% and every part of the store was presented impeccably.
Retail Director, Tina Matthews took me on a tour of the store, pointing out the updated service counters, the Uber collection point and the revamped wine and spirits section with rows of chillers for the champagne, prosecco, rose and white wines, something she said their customers had been asking for.
“It felt like the creatives back in Bracknell had been stifled by the accountants, the result being an overly conservative approach as opposed to creating an exciting and inspiring space to be”
One of the highlights of the tour came at the butcher counter, where there was not one but two cabinets filled with dry aged meats, all beautifully presented.
Over at the checkouts, rows of new Diebold Nixdorf self-service checkouts stood ready to welcome their first customers the following morning, I counted 28 of them compared to 8 manned checkouts.
Attention to detail was served by very clear labelling (‘basket here / pack here’)so that shoppers would be in no doubt as to where to put their basket and where to pack; a small but crucial thing when we’re continually faced with left-handed and right-handed self check-outs.
Other than an easier returns process, this represented the extent of any customer facing digital technology in the store, nothing wrong with analogue but as Waitrose claims, this store is being used as the template for a new store blueprint being launched in 2025.
It was all very clean, bright and functional; but is it enough to move the dial? Does this represent the extent of the thinking on what constitutes the Waitrose ‘store of the future’?
Verdict
Not a bad store by any means, on the contrary, by the standards of fifteen years ago (the year when the fire ravaged Banstead branch was reopened), a very good store. And that’s the point. It felt like the creatives back in Bracknell had been stifled by the accountants, the result being an overly conservative approach as opposed to creating an exciting and inspiring space to be.
They will point to listening to what their customers say (faster horse anyone?) and the great customer service delivered by their Partners. Hard to argue with either, except that, much like beige, it’s not going to offend anyone, but neither will it excite.
The UK grocery market is one of, if not the most competitive in the world with multiple players all vying for their share of our wallets. Even more reason why I’d like to see Waitrose differentiating itself as an artisan grocer presenting food from the farm to the table in new and innovative ways.
It all feels like a missed opportunity, the parmesan being a case in point. Because the statistic which everyone took away was that this one branch accounts for 15% of the total parmesan sales across the entire estate. Deeply impressive, and yet, there it was, pre-packaged and displayed in a basket to the side of the cheese counter. So much more could have been made of this to make the experience more memorable.
Wines and spirits was another case in point, tucked away, almost floating in its own serene space away from the main traffic, next door to household products. No differentiation (think lighting, flooring) and try as I might, I wasn’t able to get too excited about a row of chillers.
I confess that I never visited the store in its previous incarnation and I sensed from speaking to various Partners that it was desperately in need of a makeover, and that much of the effusiveness was a result of the transformation the store so desperately needed.
But I wasn’t judging it against that criteria, and that, right there is probably the reason for my disappointment. I’m a self-confessed fan of the Partnership and I want it to succeed and perhaps my expectations were overly unrealistic.
Nevertheless, my overriding feeling was, much like Oliver Twist, of wanting more. One can only speculate as to whether incoming Chairman, Jason Tarry, will also be demanding more.