Sue Robinson, branch manager at Waitrose’s Westfield London, reveals how to prevent turkey shortage on the busiest Christmas shopping day.

Sue Robinson, branch manager at Waitrose Westfield London

When do you start preparing for the Christmas trading period (and December 23 in particular)?

The first thing we do in January is get feedback from our supply chain and get recommendations for next year.  We’ll also liaise with commercial from a product perspective, while they get a flavour from us around what customers enjoyed seeing in the branch.

We pick it back up in June and agree with supply chain what we can store in our branch so they can work out when to bring product to store. Then we move into late summer, and we start to receive seasonal ambient lines; that’s about storing and preparing where things will go and when.

We then move to autumn and we have Christmas ambient on sale, it’s for us to showcase our lines, such as specialty boxes of chocolates, gifting ranges and baking products. As soon as we get Heston products in they’ll sell, at any time of the year. Half the ambient assortment is out initially and the full range is out by the beginning of November.

We then agree with John Lewis what our click and collect parcel levels will be. We have the capacity for 2,000 parcels.  With an increasing amount of parcel pick up you get footfall and a captive audience.

Do you have to enlist a lot of extra staff for December 23?

In autumn we agree with resourcing how many Christmas temps we’ll need. A lot is returning partners who for example have gone off to university. My headcount here is usually 240 partners and we’ll have an extra 20 over Christmas. We’ll need 100 partners in store on December 23. On a typical Tuesday I’d probably have around 50 people.

How do you calculate the amount of stock you need for December 23?

We look at last year’s figures and where your current run rate is and add that on. It’s about looking at trends and liaising with forecasters.

What happens if you run out of stock on the 23rd and how quickly can you replenish stock?

Really quickly. We’re quite lucky in London as we have 20 core supermarkets and 15 convenience stores so logistically it’s easy to transfer ambient stock around. On fresh we can extend the following day’s lines if we need to. We enhance our night shift. The shelves are groaning at the seams on opening. Out of 50 extra partners we’d have on that day typically half will be around replenishment and half on customer service.

How does December 23 differ to a day outside of Christmas trading?

There’s a real pride, we just want to get it right. Partners are engaged because we’re co-owners you just want it to be right for the customer. They’re engaged in the whole plan.

We’ll serve about 12,000 customers, we open an hour extra until 11 at night. When we’re at our capacity it’s about engaging with the customers. Normally tins of chocolates will go round to make people feel appreciated. We want to bring an element of fun.

We’ll have a morning meeting as normal to reinforce what the properties are; being proud of what we do, availability, service and having fun. If you have those principles the shopper will have a great shopping experience.  For me it’s all about communication, making sure it’s seamless from the night shift the night before to when the last person leaves.