16 Shop Talk S
ainsbury’s has reported a 2.5% increase in sales for the third quarter. Like-for- like sales for the three-month period were flat. However, the retailer says it saw its best Christmas ever with record trading in the seven days before and more than 28 million transactions. The single busiest day was 23 December which also saw the biggest trading hour with customers spending almost £17m. The Stanway store in Essex took £1m in sales on 23 December – the first ever store to do so.
Meanwhile, Waitrose says that it recorded its most successful Christmas ever, with total branch sales for the 12 trading days ending 31 December up 6.5% on last year and 4.1% on a like for like basis. Sales on Monday 23 December were £51m – the highest ever taken by the business in a single day with an average of 22,000 items going through checkouts every minute. For the five week period ending on Christmas Eve, total sales were £736m - up 5.4% on the equivalent period last year and 3.1% on a like for like basis. Online grocery sales were up 33.4% for the five-week period. Asda also reported a surge in sales in the run up to Christmas 2013, with a record 4.8 million customers through the doors of its 573 UK stores on 23 December. In addition, it recorded online sales of more than £5m on 21 and 22 December. Meanwhile, sales through its mobile app increased by more than 200% year-on-year and 28% of its home grocery orders were made via its smartphone app in December. The company is due to report its trading figures for the fourth quarter on 20
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February. Tesco has reported a 1.5% fall in UK sales in its Christmas and New Year trading statement. According to chief executive Philip Clarke, further weakness in the grocery market as a whole contributed to the decline in UK like-for-like sales. However, the retailer took more than £1bn in the five days before Christmas and its UK online sales increased by 14% to £450m in six weeks. Morrisons says that its third quarter performance was in line with expectations. For the quarter to 3 November 2013, total store sales excluding fuel were up by 1.0%, with like for like sales down 2.4%. An additional 36 M local convenience stores were opened during the quarter, bringing the total to 69 across the country, of which around half are in London and the South East, an important
growth area for the firm. The retailer says it plans to open a further 100 M locals in 2014/15. Its new distribution centre in Bury is now
operational and will support the expansion of its convenience network in the North West. Barr Construction is building a new 40,000sqft Asda store in Barrhead, East Renfrewshire on the site of a former health centre. Barr will also create a 250 space car park and a petrol station. It is Barr’s second project with Asda following the opening of a new store in Dundee last year. Tesco has opened a new grocery dotcom centre in Erith in Kent. The facility, which uses leading technology to improve the availability and range of products for customers who order their groceries online, will deliver to homes in South East London and North West Kent.
The centre is the sixth dedicated Tesco dotcom facility to open in London in the past seven years and completes a ring of facilities around the capital. Erith dotcom employs around 550 people, many from the surrounding borough of Bexley.
The Co-operative Group recently opened two new food stores in Wandsworth, London. Both convenience stores are around 2,000sqft and have together created 26 new jobs. Morrisons has launched an online food offer at Morrisons. com and claims that it will set new standards for the delivery of fresh food in the UK. Deliveries began across much of the Midlands on 10 January. This will be extended to Yorkshire and the retailer expects to be covering 50% of the UK by the start of 2015, including London.
Morrisons prides itself on the high quality fresh food prepared by butchers, bakers and fishmongers and its online offering will replicate this. For instance, with the Morrisons. com virtual butcher, customers can choose how thickly their steak is cut. Orders will then be expertly prepared by Morrisons Academy-trained butchers at its manufacturing sites.
The grocer says that one of consumers’ biggest concerns when shopping online is freshness, so it has introduced ‘expert review’ and ‘doorstep check’. The expert review is a rosette rating system that gives customers an honest assessment of the quality and seasonality of every item of produce. The doorstep check allows customers to check the freshness of the products before they accept them.
Swep ACR News February 2014
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