John Lewis’s upmarket supermarket Waitrose is looking to break into the north of England, for the first time in 100 years, following the opening of a store in Sandbach, Cheshire.
The new Waitrose is a former Safeway store, divested by Morrisons’s as part of its takeover of the supermarket group. Steven Esom, the former Sainsbury’s executive now running Waitrose is convinced that he can repeat Waitrose’s success in the south of England.
Esom said that John Lewis trades very profitably up north through its department stores in Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle. He said: “We want to build on the back of what John Lewis has been doing up there for years.”
However, Waitrose is treading very carefully in the north. Out of the 19 supermarkets it has bought from Morrisons, only five are in the north of England. These are located in prosperous towns such as Harrogate and Southport.
The supermarket is also asking suppliers for keener prices in a bid to capitalise on the sales opportunity its new floor space can offer them. Waitrose who boosted its selling space by 20 per cent with the acquistion of 18 Safeway stores and one Morrisons store is looking to compete further with Asda and Tesco.
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