Waitrose reveals plans to open 16 stores across Scotland

Published on Thursday 6 January 2011 10:19

WAITROSE, the supermarket chain popular among middle-class shoppers, is aiming to open a further 16 stores in Scotland over the next five years, Scotland on Sunday has learnt.

Nigel Keen, director of development at Waitrose, said the chain is hoping to have a total of 20 supermarkets and small convenience stores in Scotland by 2015 after it last week announced its fourth was to be built in Glasgow's affluent Newton Mearns area.

The expansion is likely to amount to millions of pounds in investment and will lead to the creation of hundreds of jobs north of the Border. It will also likely herald a windfall for Scottish producers, as Waitrose prides itself on stocking locally sourced products such as Gigha halibut and Innis & Gunn beer.

Waitrose has accelerated its roll-out of high street convenience stores in particular over the last six months to rival the likes of Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local. Although it is yet to open a smaller-format outlet north of the Border, Keen said a number of potential sites were under consideration, including Glasgow city centre and Edinburgh's St Andrew Square, close to Harvey Nichols.

"I'd like to have 20 stores up there, certainly within the next five years," Keen said. "There are areas of Glasgow where there's room for more than one Waitrose in the centre … and certainly Edinburgh - places around Harvey Nichols."

The chain, which has experienced a surge in popularity since it introduced its "essential Waitrose" range of competitively priced products in 2009, first set up shop in Scotland in 2006, in Edinburgh's Comely Bank and Morningside. In 2009 it opened its first Glasgow store on Byres Road.

The expansion plans will no doubt please the hundreds of Scots who have written to Waitrose, asking the firm to open in their area.

Keen said Stirling, Ayrshire and Perthshire are among the other localities it is looking at, although he admitted the Berkshire-based firm, which doesn't have a distribution centre in Scotland, would face difficulties serving certain parts of the country.

Keen acknowledged that Waitrose's expansion in Scotland has been slow. "We're not exactly racing ahead, are we?" he said.

But he added that the firm's progress over the past few years, during which it has worked hard to compete with the rest of the market on price, had given it the confidence to accelerate its growth plans.

"We have got sufficient confidence from that to say Scotland is somewhere where there are plenty of areas we think we can put successful stores. Stirling, Perthshire, Ayrshire - all of those areas are areas where we would like to be."

Last week Waitrose's managing director Mark Price announced it would almost double its rate of store openings this year compared with 2010. It will be opening 39 shops across the UK, creating 3,000 jobs.