Mark Price: The 'Chubby Grocer' helping Waitrose buck industry trends

Inside a yawning, former railway shed above the main line out of King’s Cross station, a small army of men is working flat out. Everywhere, there is activity. Shelves going in here, lighting over there, more fixtures and fittings arriving at the door.

Within a few days, says Mark Price confidently, this will be the new Waitrose King’s Cross branch.

Seeing my smirk, he points out he has got form for this sort of thing: it will be the 179th new Waitrose to open since he became MD in April 2007. That does include branches at Welcome Break services, petrol stations and in the Middle East but even so, it’s going some.

This is the 100th new store within the M25. Yet, as I read a headline in another newspaper, “Supermarkets cut space for the first time in a decade”, it shouldn’t be like this.

Waitrose is cited in the article, which is based on research by analysts at Bernstein. According to them, the total floorspace owned by Britain’s biggest eight supermarkets groups, which includes Waitrose, has contracted by 1%. It was a “remarkable” turn of events, “a major change in trend”, said Bernstein.

Not where Waitrose and Price are concerned: “We’re adding space. In the first half of the year, we opened five new branches, including one acquisition, two relocations and one convenience store. In the second half, we plan six core branches, two major redevelopments and one convenience.”

He’s irrepressible, is Price. He was born in 1961, and joined John Lewis, owner of Waitrose, after leaving university in 1982 (he studied archaeology at Lancaster). His enthusiasm for the group, for his division, for the John Lewis partnership structure and style of working, remains undimmed.

He’s not like other supermarket bosses. Indeed, his nickname — one he gave himself — of the “Chubby Grocer” says so. They do triathlons and Iron Man contests, and pride themselves on being stick thin and ultra-disciplined; he revels in the fact that he loves the food he sells, and wears his waistline as a badge of honour.

But few of them can match his success, or his longevity (he was made Waitrose marketing director in 1998). He could choose to leave, to go and manage one of his rivals, but he refuses, preferring to stay and earn less money within John Lewis.

When I ask how many job offers he’s had down the years, he grins. “A few. I get a good few every year.”

Has he ever been tempted?

“No, not really. Some, it’s true, are offering cash rewards that are enormous. There’s what they’re offering, versus our partnership pay structure. And you do think about it, you’re bound to. But my commitment to Waitrose, to the team here, to John Lewis, always wins out.”

While they struggle, Price forges ahead. He churns out the stats: operating profits were up 0.6% last year, to £135.5 million; Waitrose did on average 280,000 more customer transactions each week compared with the previous year; sales volume grew 1.8% and market share was up, to 5.1% (it was 4% when Price took over).

He strides through the hard-hatted workers to a corner of the new premises. This will be the cookery school, he says proudly, indicating rows of worktops.

“Customers can come in and learn a recipe with one of our cooks. This will be our third cookery school. The sessions are always heavily subscribed.”

Over there is the bar, he adds, gesturing across the floor, “where customers can enjoy our wines.”

What he wants to get across is that this is a very different store from your bog-standard supermarket, with rows of shelves, aisles and a line of tills. As well as the cookery school and wine bar, there’s a snack bar, juice bar and coffee bar.

“It’s all about giving the customer a good time. If they want to shop and rush through, fine. But if they want to stay and take longer, that’s also fine. If they want to come here and meet their friends, that’s great,” Price explains.

“More and more, selling food is about providing a service, about making people want to come and eat the food. Our food service hospitality sales, which is what we call this bit, were up 27% last year.”

He’s unstoppable. What excites him about this opening, he says, is that the store has blended in with the Victorian architecture. The shed is listed, and they’ve built the store as a shell, within the original building, “so it feels contemporary, feels like a Waitrose, yet it’s inside a beautiful, historic building”.

That, plus it’s in central London, and he says, we’ve no idea just how hard it is to find the space and develop a supermarket in the middle of the capital.

Waitrose is winning while others struggle “because we’re food experts”, he adds. “Our stores are food only. Theirs can go to 50,000 square feet; our biggest are 20,000 to 30,000 [King’s Cross is 21,000]. We’re about giving customers an amazing choice in food. Others are reducing their range and choices, we’re looking to increase ours.

Price waves towards the new bars and dining areas: “We’re food experts, that’s what we do. We sell food to cook; we sell food to eat as a takeaway, now our customers can eat in. We’re obsessed with quality and service.”

But within the industry, haven’t some of his initiatives have been mocked as, well, gimmicky?

“If you mean supplying free coffee, we gave a free cup of coffee to our millionth customer only last week. If you mean Pick Your Own [Waitrose cardholders can choose 10 products on which they can save 20% every time they shop], over 700,000 customers have signed up to it.

“It’s not a gimmick, it’s about putting power into their hands, allowing them to decide where they want discounts.”

But Waitrose remains relatively small — compared with, say, the buying power of the German discounters. Aldi and Lidl are both thought to be wanting to move upmarket, to entice the Waitrose shoppers.

Is he bothered? “No. Everybody wants to be Waitrose. Aldi, Lidl, they want to be Waitrose. Morrisons wants to be Waitrose. They can’t be, we’re unique.” He laughs: “We’ve just agreed to open a Waitrose next to Aldi in Cardiff. We’re not concerned by anyone next door to us.”

In 10 years, he predicts, there will be low-price shops at one end and shops that stand for innovation and service at the other: “We’ll be at that other end. We’ll be offering mobile technology to our customers, so they can pay on their mobiles; we will be doing everything we can to help them eat more healthily and easily.

“Our branches will contain more facilities to help them live their lives.”