M&S Food Waterloo, London, UK
Marks & Spencer Waterloo Main Store is conveniently situated opposite platforms 6 and 7 in London Waterloo Station, the largest and busiest train station in Britain. Waterloo Station serves as a crucial hub, connecting London with numerous major towns and cities across the south and southwest of England.
Company and Brand Overview
Overview of M&S
M&S is a leading British retailer bringing exceptional quality, great value food, clothing and homeware to millions of customers around the world. We operate as a family businesses, powered by more than 64k employees to serve over 70 international markets, with c.1,500 stores globally. M&S has been leading the way with new and exciting products and services since its inception 140 years ago (in 1884).
M&S Purpose
Our purpose is to bring the magic of M&S through exceptional quality, value, service and innovation to every customer, whenever, wherever and however they want to shop with us. Our vision is to be the most trusted retailer, doing the right thing for customers, with quality products at the heart of everything we do.
M&S Food Channels Team
M&S Food Channels is an exciting, newly-formed team made up of Convenience, Online (Ocado) and International Wholesale. We have an asset-light model enabled by best-in-class partners who help us access unique locations and scale rapidly. Our convenience footprint has c.500 franchised stores, servicing ‘on-the-go’ missions across Travel (380+), Healthcare (65+) and Local (20+) locations.
Our strategic partnership with Ocado unlocks access to the fast-growing online grocery market, leveraging the world’s largest dedicated online grocery retailer. International Wholesale is a new channel aimed at bringing the best of M&S Food to customers around the world. We’re ready to take on the challenge of our growth ambition, enrich the M&S brand, and bring the magic of M&S to customers whenever and where they wish to shop with us – be it on-the-go, online, or outside the UK.
Overview of M&S FY24 Results
- Group Sales £13.1bn (+9.4% YoY).
- Food Sales £8.2bn (+13.0% YoY, +11.3% LfL)
M&S Food delivered market-leading volume growth and strong innovation whilst broadening customer appeal
FY24 Review of M&S Food (“The beginnings of a virtuous circle”)
- Investing in Trusted Value – promo participation has halved since 2018 (13% in FY24)
- Upgrading and innovating 1/3 of the range – Quality NPS +10% vs. 2019
- Developing Fresh Market Renewal Stores – 25% of all Food stores now in renewal format
- Increasing Share of Larger Baskets – M&S Value Market share +9% vs. FY20 (+29% for Large Baskets)
- ‘Backbone’ programme driving availability and efficiency.
Store Photos
Store and Offer Overview
This store has defined zones for Food for Now, Dinner for Tonight, Beers, Wines and Spirits, Gifting, Impulse and Payment which are all visible from the point of entry.
The zones are all centered around our main customer missions.
The store has a fresh first layout leading with ‘Fresh Food to Go’ and Floral as a main feature as customers enter the store. Food to Go has been step changed, leading with ISB, all-new Coffee To Go and Hot Food adjacent FOTM Meal Deal on primary sight-line. Our FOTM Meal Deal has been purposefully re-presented in linear drops for ease of shop and to boost visibility.
Moving further into the store, customers will find inspiring Dinner for Tonight solutions, zoned and delivered with Dine-In and Italian Meals on leading Chilled Ends. There is a strong focus on gifting at the heart of the store with highly visible location for flowers, cards and boxed chocolates.
With a customer first mentality payment zone has been defined with clear entry and exit points means it`s easy for our customers in a hurry. The queue merchandising and increased till count, including new hardware is a real win for the store and our customers.
There are over 1800 delicious M&S food products ranged in store that primarily serve our key travel customer missions: Food For Now, Dinner For Tonight and Gifting.
It is our largest Convenience store with a 4800 sqft Foodhall.
- The format was delivered as over-size (vs our standard Convenience blueprint) based on significant footfall and sales overperformance.
- Chilled footage has been prioritised over Ambient to satisfy customer demand and protect core footfall driving categories, reflected in the 73:27 split between Chilled and Ambient.
- The store trades 06:00-01:00 Mon-Sat and 07:00-00:00 Sun – ensuring customers can shop whenever is convenient to them.
Layout and Retail Environment
Store proposition & layout
The salesfloor at Waterloo totals 7760sq ft and is split over two floors. It’s made up of a bold and fresh Food proposition on the ground floor at 4800sq ft with a more contemporary and relevant Clothing proposition on the 1st Floor at 2960sq ft. The entire store was renewed in 2023 and has delivered a best-in-class shopping experience for our customers.
Food Hall
Foods in travel has never been fresher or more inviting than that at our Waterloo store.
Our entrance has doubled in size and customers are welcomed by ‘Fresh Food to Go’: a bigger ISB, freshly prepared hot food ready to grab and go and our latest hot and cold self-serve drinks proposition. We have balanced the space within the store to align with our strategy creating defined zones for Food for Now, Dinner for Tonight, Beers Wines & Spirits, Gifting, Impulse and payment. And it’s never been easier to complete payment – we have 34 tills, perfect for customers on the run.
In the Food for Now zone our meal deal is visually strong using linear drops for ease of shop and its visibility is boosted by taking a prominent position within the space.
There are clear sections for breakfast, sandwiches, wraps and rolls, and soft drinks. We also position our fantastic British gifting range in a bold display visible from the entrance. Dinner for Tonight follows on and is zoned and delivered with Dine-In and Italian meals on leading chilled ends. Beers and wines is zoned to come after customers have shopped Dinner for tonight and is clearly laid out to allow customers to find product to take home or for those that shopping for ‘drinks for now’ we’ve created clear sections of chilled drinks and cocktail cans.
There is also hotspots for champagne and sparkling to support key events such as Ascot throughout the year. Flowers, cards and boxed gifting has a strong focus at the heart of the store and we have a strong offer of grocery, bakery and sweet treats that follows on from the chilled journey. We finish the journey with confectionary, including our famous Percy Pigs and impulse snacking product leading into the payment area.
Environment and design
Delivering a scheme within Waterloo station requires us to comply with the station guidelines which seek to deliver a uniform retail environment; this presents an additional challenge for the design teams.
From the external façade and finishes which we colour matched to the mullions and signage trays to ensure the elevation felt cohesive to calling out local landmarks and locations within the half height vinyl’s in the shop front windows to the internal environment we worked throughout with the team in M&S design, our partners at SSP and Network Rail to deliver a differentiated environment that is aligned with our brand and seeks to wow our customers.
Internally in the food hall we have delivered a best-in-class rail station food offer using the latest in M&S environment design. At the newly enlarged entrance we lead in with a fresh first offer with bakery front and centre showcasing the best of our freshly baked in store product.
- The offer is highlighted with illuminated signage and messaging all finished in our standout black tiled finish. Throughout the store we continue to use alternative finishes to zone the store with oak slats on elevations around fresh, a brick finish on our beers and wines section and a clear payment zone with a stunning backdrop of a lit sign showcasing the station name and vinyl finish highlighting local landmarks.
- We have used signage across the top of the chilled cabinets to help navigate the customer in this area and the lighting is designed to provide a bright environment in which to shop and highlight key product areas. The use of light boxes to manage negative space allows us to add interest and highlight key services and product provenance.
Clothing is also set to wow. We’ve adopted the award-winning store environment from Stevenage and recently launched at Liverpool One to create a clothing and gifting destination perfect to pick up something extra, something forgotten or something special to gift.
Also with clearly defined zones demarking the areas for women’s and men’s products and the latest self-serve clothing tilling area the customer journey in this challenging space has been transformed. We’ve used of oak finishes that ties the clothing environment to the food one and light boxes support customers to navigate and find the payment area.
Back of house is an important area not to forget.
We designed a new back of house space to make the store teams life easier and enable replenishment more often with new chilled storage areas adjacent to the salesfloor and a bakery area adjacent to the bakery fixtures.
The store still operates with additional storage and bakery facilities in the station basement but the new areas with closer proximity to the sales floor help maintain great availability throughout the day to maximise choice for the customer.
Throughout the food hall and clothing areas we’ve used the latest technology to support the customer journey.
- We have 34 self serve tills on the food hall which are managed by a team of customer assistant to support customers with a speedy payment experience.
- Handheld terminals with the latest stock management tools support customer assistants to prioritise replenishment to those areas that need it most and on clothing we offer bot a self-serve payment experience and a manned till too.
- We have the latest online order collection technology allowing the customer to enter order details on a digital screen which a customer assistant responds to bringing the parcel for collection directly to the customer.
Customer Experience
In a hectic environment when every minute counts when catching their train, customers want to be able to buy the best of M&S fresh product, be excited by the lunch options available and most importantly pay for their goods quickly!
- We capture customers feedback on the store through customers completing a short survey which is e-mailed to them post completing their transaction.
- Each week we receive circa 50 responses from customers who tell us what is important to them and how the store has matched up to their expectations.
- The store team will review each of these comments and ensure that they take relevant action from all customer comments.
- Sometimes this can be as simple as feedback on the great product range or how easy the customer felt the store was to shop with the team needing to adapt how and when they refill the shelves during the busiest periods of the trading day.
A team of trained colleagues are focused on helping customers purchase their items speedily with a minimal friction payment journey through a self service tilling proposition. With an engaging style you will hear colleagues asking customers to move to the next available till and keep the payment area moving. Every minute counts and it is a sight to be hold in full flow!
Customers are welcomed into the store with the best of M&S fresh items through the Instore bakery, coffee offer, hot food and floral displays. Add a speedy payment journey where customers are welcomed with a smile, and this results in the store being an essential stop for any of the 85 million customers who will visit Waterloo station each year!
Operational Excellence
Waterloo has greatly exceeded the ambitious Renewal weekly sales target of £500,000, achieving an impressive average weekly sales figure of £567,000 this financial year.
This makes it the top-performing location within the entire M&S store estate for the Convenience and Ambient Non-Food trading clusters.
- The store serves over 100,000 customers weekly, ensuring a seamless shopping experience with minimal wait times, consistently meeting our ‘Time to Pay’ service metric.
- Every ‘Brand Standard’ visit has confirmed the store’s excellence in presentation, cleanliness, availability, freshness, and customer service.
- Moreover, Waterloo’s performance against our stringent Mystery Shop criteria has surpassed the business target by an impressive 12%.
- The store has also achieved 100% compliance with all ‘Operational Indicators,’ which measure efficiency across key areas such as counting, waste management, ticketing, and click & collect services.
As a result, Waterloo is frequently utilized as a Centre of Excellence, reviewing the implementation of key strategic and commercial activities, including seasonal phase and space changes, and trialling new business initiatives.
Overall Performance
The store is outperforming expectations and has had its best ever performances so far across the summer. Progressively the store is performing at 7% ahead of its business case sales expectation with the past 4 weeks at 21%.
Due to its location the site has capitalised on key events such as Ascot and Wimbledon as people stop into the store to service their food for now and on the go missions
At less than 5,000 sq ft and with a range of 1800 products Waterloo has one of the highest RPL’s in our convenience estate at £1,500 per linear.
As a result it’s waste performance is significantly ahead of the convenience and out performs the rest of its peer group.
The highest performing category is FOTM, taking over 3 x more than any other category, followed by wines which include our delicious ready to drink cocktail cans and delicatessen. British gifting is also a key sales category servicing the tourists that travel through the station.
‘The Best Foodvenience Store in the World’ 2024