Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Waitrose plans to open its first new stores since 2018, as the upmarket supermarket chain invests £1bn into expanding its presence on the UK high street.
The retailer, part of the John Lewis Partnership, will create up to 100 new convenience stores over the next five years. There were also plans for four larger branches, it said on Wednesday.
The expansion would focus primarily on convenience stores because it’s “a fast-growing channel and an area we can extend at a reasonable pace”, said customer director Nathan Ansell.
Waitrose currently has 329 stores in the UK. The first new outlet will open in the London district of Hampton Hill later this year, subject to planning approval, with a second following elsewhere in the capital in early 2025.
Locations have not been decided for the other stores yet but Ansell said Waitrose had identified a number of different areas that represented “a pretty good geographical spread and we think there’s space for 100 new stores”.
The £1bn investment would cover the next three years of expansion and refurbishment of existing stores but would not cover the full five years it would take to roll out the stores, a Waitrose spokesperson added. The group declined to say how many new jobs would be created by the expansion.
Analysts said the push was a sign of Waitrose’s confidence but warned that the convenience store market was fiercely competitive.
Adding 100 new outlets in the format was “pretty ambitious”, according to Amarveer Singh, an analyst at CreditSights, as there were now so many players in the sector. However, he added that the John Lewis Partnership’s focus on growing its food business mirrored what competitor Marks and Spencer had been doing and “seems a step in the right direction”.
On Wednesday, Waitrose unveiled a newly refurbished store on London’s Finchley Road where it plans to test new ideas, including an entirely chilled department for wine, champagne and beer, and a partnership with Crosstown, a luxury doughnut company.
It said it would become the first UK supermarket to have a dedicated area for on-demand grocery collection through services such as Deliveroo.
The John Lewis Partnership recently returned to profit after three years of losses with Waitrose helping drive the improvement. Sales at the supermarket rose 5 per cent to £7.7bn in the 12 months to January 27.
Richard Hyman, a partner at Thought Provoking Consulting, said that the decision to expand was a sign “we’re seeing the old partnership coming back” after John Lewis had gone through a very difficult period. “£1bn is a statement of intent which you want to see,” he added. “There’s a return in confidence, knowing who and what they are, and putting their money where their mouth is.”
