Deliver the Essentials

Just how does the Queen’s grocer respond to an economic downturn? Well, no retailer can ever afford to stand still. This is especially true in tough economic times.

This is not empty rhetoric. In March, Waitrose undertook strategically our biggest and most important launch ever, with Essential Waitrose.

The Essential Waitrose range consists of more than 1,400 affordable, everyday food and non-food lines priced to offer the very best value to our customers.

It features fresh new packaging to ensure customers can easily identify and navigate through the various price points straddled by our own-label products – our research had shown this was an issue that we needed to address.

However, as our latest television ad campaign that begins airing this week will make clear, Essential Waitrose is not an economy or value range. Some press commentators, keen to reinforce the depth of the recession, presented our launch in this way but they are wrong.

All products sold under the Essential Waitrose banner are produced to the same high specifications they have always been by producers who share our values; the packaging and many of the prices may have changed but the quality has not. To have done anything else would have contradicted all our brand values.

Rather than cutting quality, our response to the downturn has been to give our customers sharper pricing and more offers and promotions than ever. This way, when times are brighter, they will remember that we didn’t compromise our standards to make a quick buck. Instead, we worked hard to remain relevant to them during tough times.

Another way we have been fighting the recession is by bringing the Waitrose brand to as many new customers as we can by developing the business in different ways to fit our growth ambitions. Some of our most recent developments have been in formats or areas that are new to us – our partnership with Fine Fare Foods to open two branches in Dubai and shops in Welcome Break service areas are two obvious examples.

But we also recently pulled off a special coup by opening three more traditional branches in a single day. It wasn’t too long ago that our opening programme would have seen us bringing three new branches on stream over the course of a year.

Finally, we have caused a stir by becoming the first supermarket to abolish delivery charges on our online shopping service, Waitrose Deliver. Deliver is performing exceptionally well and sales are about 70 per cent up on last year. We plan to roll the service out to 31 more branches by the end of the year, bringing the total number of shops offering the service to 124.

Customers are responding well to our efforts, which is testament to the strength of our ethos of offering customers the very best value, service and quality.

Mark Price is managing director of Waitrose