More decisions....

Tonight Morrisons is jointly hosting a barbeque with the National Farmers Union (NFU) in Westminster, which is Dalton Philips first major public outing since taking over as chief executive of the business. The fact that he’s doing it in the first place is a sign of how he’s changing Morrisons - I’m not sure whether Morrisons holding an event in London or a supermarket jointly hosting an event with the NFU is the more unprecedented event, but both would have been unlikely a couple of years ago. Ken Morrison never liked it much down here.

Dalton is a very impressive guy and is proving much swifter to change things at Morrisons’ HQ than Marc Bolland was. Already he’s moved long-serving trading director Martyn Jones into a corporate affairs sort of role, where his job is to make more of Morrisons’ unique credentials when it comes to farming and provenance. He’s replaced Jones with the highly-regarded Waitrose trading director Richard Hodgson, who has done a terrific job in the success of the Bracknell-based grocer.

Apparently Dalton is very hands-on and has impressed the stores by racing round to see all the managers very early on in his time in the business. Now he will be getting down to the big decisions around online, convenience, non-food and the like. There are good reasons for and against moving into any of those areas, but it’s unlikely that, as Bolland did, Philips will ignore all of them to stick to Morrisons’ traditional strengths. I’m not sure which avenues he’ll take it down - although smaller stores would probably offer the most compelling argument - but what is for sure is that there’s a lot more change ahead for the business in the near future.