Waitrose & Partners news

We look at the latest developments from the John Lewis Partnership and M&S that address the challenges created by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. This includes the newly introduced Five Point Plan for Waitrose stores.  Five point plan Waitrose & Partners has introduced a five point plan to keep its shoppers and partners safe; Customer numbers are limited so social distancing ca...

Profit delivered by Waitrose was more than offset by decline in John Lewis, as both parts of the business recorded a decline in sales. The Partnership's overall reported a 23.1% decline in profit, its third drop in consecutive years, prompting new Chairman Sharon White to launch a new strategic review of the business that is expected to take three to five years to deliver results. Results i...

Market growth for the 12 weeks to 23rd February was +0.7% according to Kantar, up from +0.3% last month. Despite being modest, this was the fastest growth since November 2019. Sales were driven by better performance across the multiples. We look at this and the latest news from the leading retailers in more detail. Sainsbury's strongest performer of the Big Four Sainsbury’s was the best per...

While Waitrose prepares to ramp up operations and switch shoppers from Ocado to its own online platform, Ocado and M&S answer shoppers’ questions in anticipation of the changes to product range in September. Waitrose: “September offers single biggest growth opportunity for our business”   Currently 150 stores offer the Waitrose.com’s online delivery service, in addition to orders fulfille...

Latest developments on health, in-store experience and two new appointments. Former Tesco development chef joins Waitrose & Partners Former executive chef for product development at Tesco, Martyn Lee, is set to join Waitrose & Partners. Lee will head up a team of development chefs at Waitrose's Food Innovation Studios. This state of the art facility opened in 2019, representing a £1.5m inve...

The start to 2020 saw weak growth in the GB grocery market, with sales +0.3% in the 12 weeks to January 26th, according to Kantar. Once again shoppers committed to Dry January and Veganuary, boosting sales in some areas but not driving significant growth across the sector. We look at this in more detail and key retailers' performance during the period. Volumes continue to fall The slow mark...

The new year has brought in a flurry of new retail appointments from Sainsbury's, Asda, Morrisons, Waitrose and Crussh.  Key senior appointments Sainsbury's Mike Coupe is set to retire after six years in the role, to be replaced by Simon Roberts: read more about the news here  and a profile of Roberts here The John Lewis Partnership prepares for its Future Partnership structure...

The John Lewis Partnership has named Rupert Thomas as the Director of Food & Grocery across both its Waitrose supermarkets and John Lewis department stores.  The new role has been created as part of the new 'Future Partnership' structure that aims to bring the two brands together in a single operation for the first time, and sees a single executive team replacing the existing separate ones as of ...

Waitrose & Partners' gross sales declined -1.3% in the seven weeks to 4th January, reflecting store closures. However, the retailer achieved a 0.4% increase in like-for-like sales. Double digit online growth for Waitrose Online grocery was a high point for the retailer over Christmas, boosting sales by 16.7%. Online orders in the week up to Christmas Day were up 23.4%, as well as increased ...

Morrisons is the last of the major UK retailers to launch its Christmas ad.  Iceland For Iceland's Christmas 2019 campaign 'The Magic of Frozen', the retailer has partnered with Disney's Frozen, ahead of the release of Frozen 2 at the end of November. The ad uses several characters from the Disney film, with each sharing their favourite part of Christmas. The retailer returns back to ...