There are certainly some dedicated Waitrose fans. Some avid shoppers even started queueing as early as 3:15am on Wednesday morning to catch a first glimpse of the upmarket grocer’s new look John Barnes store on Finchley Road.
The north London supermarket, which has been closed for six weeks, is the second out of 150 that will receive a makeover as part of a £1bn investment, that will also see it open up to 100 new convenience shops.
The revamp comes as Waitrose looks to drive growth after a difficult few years. The grocer returned to market share growth for the first time in two years last month, according to the latest Kantar figures, and wants to build on this.
Executive director James Bailey describes the revamped Finchley Road shop as “more beautiful, more colourful, and designed for food lovers to come and enjoy their shopping experience”.
However, analysts are divided on the new store concept that had been trialled at Waitrose’s Sudbury branch in Suffolk earlier this year.
By retail director Tina Mitchell’s own admission the retailer has yet to nail down the new blueprint for its revamped stores but says John Barnes has certainly helped it to take “more of a stride forward” on the design features it is looking to rollout across the rest of the estate.
But what does the new concept look like?
Making it ‘more’ Waitrose
Mitchell says that each new or revamped store will ask: ”What does the customer want out of the shop? How can we make it as easy as possible to shop? And how do we elevate products?”
It’s therefore unsurprising that the John Lewis Partnership-owned retailer replaced the ill-fitted mix of checkouts at the store’s entrance with an expanded fresh produce department that places extra emphasis on its organic fruit and vegetable ranges.
Mitchell says the space has been “rebalanced” at the store, giving more room back to fresh foods and away from its ambient ranges.
“We’ve really tried to tailor the offer based on the location to make sure that we show up best for what customers want in those locations,” she explains.
Store design expert and managing director of Newstores John Ryan says: “The first thing you see is fresh and Waitrose is banging out the message that it’s great, organic, leaders in animal welfare, all the sort of stuff that its target shoppers want to hear.”
Towards the back of the store are the meat and fish counters that Waitrose is known for by many shoppers. The grocer has introduced a second special dry aged beef cabinet in store.
Mitchell points out the counters are “really a USP for us at Waitrose”, adding “it’s where you really get first hand our quality, our values, our ethics.”
The retailer has also introduced a new cheese counter – which was first trialled at the Sudbury store – and a separate display to lean into the fact that the Finchley Road store is single-handedly responsible for 15% of all its Parmigiano sales.
To its right is a refreshed bakery counter, stocking its freshly-baked bread along with loaves from its partnership with Gail’s and exclusive tie-up with Crosstown doughnuts.
Mitchell says: “We didn’t do the bakery in Sudbury and it was really obvious when we walked the store. Bakery feels really core…so we’ve worked at it again and you’ll see here it’s very different to what we’ve got in most stores.”
Not too far from its freshly-baked section is the retailer’s first-ever chilled white, rose and champagne cabinets, which Mitchell says is likely to “become a design standard for us because what customer is not going to want to buy their wine chilled”.
She notes the new feature is “a big step on from what we had in this store before”
“It really frustrated customers that we didn’t have chilled wine in here,” Mitchell adds.
The supermarket has also doubled down on the service provided by partners in store, she adds.
Waitrose has relocated its service desk to the back of the store and incorporated a revamped click-and-collect station to make shopping between Waitrose and sister brand John Lewis easier.
“Click and collect is such a key part for us with our sister brand John Lewis and a lot of our customers shop in both brands,” she says.
Mitchell admits the team have tweaked the click-and-collect technology to include larger screens as what it had in place at Sudbury “didn’t work as well as we would have wanted it to”.
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Going big on food-to-go
Food-to-go has a central role in the new concept store, with Mitchell explaining it is a big priority for the business.
“We’ve got to continue to innovate and really reflect food trends,” she says, adding that it will continue to bring in third parties to offer greater variety to shoppers across food-on-the-go.
Alongside its £5 lunchtime meal deal, the John Barnes store is now offering in-branch made baguettes, wraps and salads.
“It’s getting that balance between the customer that just wants their crisps and drink and then somebody who wants something that’s a bit more artisan as well,” Mitchell says. “If I was a betting person, I think this is going to work quite well and if it does work well, then we’ll need to roll this out quickly into all the shops.”
Mitchell says Waitrose’s hot food proposition will continue to evolve, noting that the store has extended its Sushi Daily counter to provide a hot wok station.
Not far from Waitrose’s hot food offer is its first delivery hatch, which Mitchell shares has been specially added to the store to cater to the rise in on-demand groceries.
“It’s an important part of the business,” she says, explains that the addition means that partners are able to fulfill Uber Eats and Deliveroo orders outside of the Finchley Road store’s opening hours.
Is it enough to compete with rivals?
Finchley Road sets the marker for what Waitrose wants to do with the remaining 148 supermarkets set to receive refurbishment over the next three years.
“Sudbury was kind of like a small step, this is a bit more of a stride forward, but this is just the start of how we’re going to evolve the proposition as we go through,” says Mitchell.
“We’re pleased with how we’ve learned a lot from Sudbury, enough for us to go ‘we’re going to give it another go’, but we’ll wait and see how customers react in here, and then we’ll take that feedback and evolve it further if we need to.”
However, the concept will be tailored for to each revamped store.
“You’ll see something slightly different in all the locations, because we just want to get it right locally for customers,” she adds.
As Waitrose looks to refresh much of its store estate, it has steep competition from the likes of M&S which has also decided to update its food halls.
Ryan says that “Waitrose began in certain branches to look a bit tired, and it would readily admit this itself”.
But with the new store, he adds that “M&S will have reasons to sit up and take notice and do something about it” and believes that Waitrose is “going in the right direction”.
However, Redline Retail consultant Andrew Busby argues the despite the obvious investment, the new concept feels like a “very analogue store” and it “doesn’t move the dial that much”.
“It’s got a huge opportunity to differentiate itself from M&S Foodhalls by becoming a very artisan grocer, really bringing the farm to the table, and bringing unexpected things,” he says.
“I would like to see them moving more towards being that little bit more specialised, offering things that perhaps you wouldn’t get anywhere else. There’s a gap in the market for that kind of grocer.”
He picks out hot food as an area where Waitrose falls short compared to rival M&S.
“It didn’t feel like they had the guts almost to invest in it. It was like, ‘well, we really ought to have some hot food-to-go so we’ll put it here’,” he says, comparing its efforts to the wood-fired pizza oven M&S introduced at its revamped Clapham Junction foodhall.
Busby also points out product adjacencies in store don’t quite fit, referencing the end of aisle display of cleaning products facing the fish counter and the hot rotiserrie chicken opposite the cheese counter.
He notes the lack of technology in store and argues Waitrose “needs to think about where digital fits in with their with their strategy and that’s not simply slapping a load of QR codes around”.
Mitchell agrees that the retailer’s digital presence is still very green. “If I’m being honest, we’re at the beginning of that journey,” she says.
“At the moment, we’re not particularly technology driven, very much that human service that our customers really want. We are looking at those things, and as you see us iterate in the right locations, then technology will play a much bigger part.”
“For us, our USP is that human personal service, and that for us, is at the heart of what we do,” she concludes.
Although analysts may be divided, the store is certainly a big step forward. There are clearly areas which can be finetuned before Waitrose firms up its blueprint for the store of the future next year, but the much-needed investment in its shops will be welcomed by all customers, not just those prepared to queue at 3am.
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