38 John Lewis Partnership plc Annual Report and Accounts 2016 Waitrose performance (continued)


Customers


Giving customers additional reasons to visit our shops in an online age is a core part of our approach. We now have 117 cafes, six wine bars, nine juice bars, 66 eat-in bakeries and three recently opened sushi bars. Together, these drove a 20% uplift in hospitality sales. We continued to add services, including foreign currency Click & collect – now available in 300 branches – and dry cleaning, now in 148 shops.


Waitrose was awarded Best Supermarket in the 2015 Which? Favourite Supermarket survey.


Online


Building our online business included opening our first purpose-built .com fulfilment centre in Coulsdon in March 2015; this increased capacity in London by one-third. Online grocery gross sales were down 2.9% (on a 52-week basis), held back by the first half of the year when sales were down 13.0%, impacted by a strong promotion-driven performance last year. Sales accelerated in the second half of the year, up 8.3%. The Waitrose Kitchen website was launched in October with over 3,000 lines of cookware, bakeware and gadgets. In total our Direct Services sites saw sales growth of 21%.


The popularity of Click & collect grew, with collections of John Lewis orders from Waitrose up by 19% and 70% of all Click & collect orders are now picked up from Waitrose branches.


Products


The myWaitrose scheme deepens relationships with our customers and more than six million have now signed up and 70% of sales are to cardholders. Our ground-breaking Pick Your Own Offers scheme launched in June and well over a million customers have joined. We also launched a new app, which has made it more convenient for customers to change their selection of the ten products (out of more than a thousand) on which they would like discount.


The strength of our own-label product ranges was recognised last year when consumer watchdog Which? named Waitrose the top supermarket for own-brand products.


We now export Waitrose products to 58 countries around the world. Sales grew strongly in a number of territories – 47% up in Bermuda and 70% in Malta – and we started exporting to five new international destinations last year, with Mauritius and Dominica being the most recent additions.


Branches


We opened 12 new branches in the year – 10 supermarkets and two little Waitrose shops. This included two relocations and one acquisition. Two of the new branches, Basingstoke and Horsham, are in combined premises with John Lewis shops, while our King’s Cross branch includes our third Waitrose cookery school.


We carried out major redevelopments of our shops in Saffron Walden and Bayswater and managed the closure of two convenience stores in Sutton Coldfield and Walton-on-Thames. We have also announced the planned closure of our convenience store in Tottenham Court Road.


Our first National Distribution Centre opened in Milton Keynes at the end of July, and will build capacity to handle 25,000 longer-life ambient products.


“ The market continues to change and to challenge but our Partners and our Modern Waitrose strategy give us a strong, differentiated position.”


Rob Collins Managing Director, Waitrose


Rob Collins has succeeded Lord Price as Managing Director, Waitrose. Rob has been with the Partnership for 22 years, initially with John Lewis in a number of senior roles before moving to Waitrose in 2007 to establish its e-commerce business. In 2010 Rob was appointed Personnel Director and in early 2012 was appointed Retail Director.


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