How John Lewis plans to use Waitrose to boost its quality perceptions
John Lewis outlines “huge opportunities” to leverage the fact people shop for food more than they do non-food as it posts disappointing Christmas results and loses its managing director.
The John Lewis Partnership believes it can use Waitrose much more than it has been to improve the performance of John Lewis, which has entered the new year with a blow to sales and the surprise departure of managing director Paula Nickolds.
On a press call this morning (9 January), outgoing chairman Sir Charlie Mayfield said the retailer will increase its focus on drawing on the synergies it can get in areas such as hospitality and the “huge opportunities” it sees in leveraging the fact people go shopping for food more than they do for non-food.
Citing a newly-refurbished Waitrose in Cheltenham with a 200 seat cafe, which is within 800 yards of a John Lewis store, Mayfield said: “What we know from our research is the awareness of the quality of some of those services among customers sitting at the Waitrose café is way lower than we’d like it to be.
“By bringing together those operations we’ve got the opportunity to greatly increase how much we can trade across both of our brands and draw on the strength.”
