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Chateau Latour at £425 a bottle, 'Pippa Middleton' handbags and a 30-seat wine bar welcome to Waitrose's biggest and busiest shop
It is an optimistic retailer which splashes out £15m on the refurbishment of a single store and a brave one which tries to sell fine wines at up to £425 a bottle.
But this is Waitrose and the shop is its store at London's Canary Wharf, where banks including Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citigoup and HSBC have headquarters.
The business district has grown substantially since Waitrose opened its first store there in 2002. Its new-look branch, under the glass towers of Canada Square, now attracts 80,000 regular weekly customers. It is the biggest and busiest Waitrose in the UK, taking three times as much money as the average, and with more than double the footfall.
On Thursday it reopened as the first 'Waitrose Food, Fashion & Home' store, showcasing top quality food and drink as well as fashion and furnishings sourced from John Lewis aimed specifically at the Canary Wharf customer.
There is no lock on the door of the glass-fronted temperature-controlled cellar in the heart of the ground floor, where the finest wines are stored. A bottle of 1988 Chateau Latour, a Bordeaux from Pauillac on the left bank of the Gironde river, is the most expensive on display with an eye-watering price tag of £425.
Pierpaolo Petrassi, head of beer, wines and spirits buying at Waitrose, explains: "This is wonderful vintage wine and the stuff of legend. We don't expect huge numbers of people to buy it, but some definitely will. And there are many more wines at much more affordable prices and which represent very good value for money."
Here, customers have the largest choice of wine in any branch of Waitrose more than 2,000 wines from 20 countries ranging from £3.99 to £500 a bottle. They include 150cl magnums which Petrassi says can be good value for a dinner party including a £200 Chateau Palmer claret.
Petrassi says of Waitrose, which this week clinched the Supermarket of the Year Award from the International Wine Challenge (IWC): "We have found that in the recession staying in has become the new going out, and consumers have wanted to have a little luxury by drinking good wines at home. Sales of fine wines have been holding up very well."
The once familiar sight of City traders publicly blowing their bonuses on bottles of Dom Perignon (on sale here for £100) may thankfully be long gone. Petrassi hopes that people in celebratory mood might come to the 30-seat wine bar and enjoy a good bottle of wine which attracts only a £7.50 corkage fee (rather than the usual fee of three times the retail price).
The chain has expanded its range of mini bottles of wine and is also trialling 'mini carafes' (a quarter of a bottle 18.75cl) of red, white and rosι for £2, which might appeal to City workers who fancy a French-style tipple with their lunch.
Takeaway food for desk-bound lunches will remain a core, high volume business. With the average worker taking a 17-minute lunch-break, Waitrose serves 4,000 customers between 122pm.
The store is also opening one hour earlier on weekdays, at 7am, to cater for 'early bird' workers and has an Italian-style 'stop and perch' espresso bar with standing room only for its customers.
Very busy and very wealthy
And there are even more to come. The population of Canary Wharf is expected to increase to 120,000 over the next few years as new companies move in to occupy vacant offices. In December Shell will move into Jubilee Place, bringing an additional 1,700 workers. And next year JP Morgan will take over the building occupied by the collapsed Lehman Brothers, boosting the working population by 8,000.
Diana Hunter, Waitrose's director of store development, said the demographics were "fascinating", and the rest of the store reflects their needs: "A large proportion of shoppers are renting flats, so they are looking for colourful accessories like cushions, bedding and towels. We know that, despite the recession, there are a lot of very wealthy people with money to spend. They are also very busy as they are working hard. So they want an edited choice which is what we have tried to give them."
The Reebok gym above Waitrose is the biggest in Europe, and on the first floor keep-fit afficionados browsing through the extensive range of sportswear will be able to use a gait analysis machine to advise them on the best running shoes to wear.
The store has a slightly higher proportion of male shoppers, at 51%, than the average but the top floor has been designed as a luxurious fashion temple for women. Among the 110 top brands, for example, are handbags from names such as Longchamp, Osprey, DKNY and Modalu, including its famous 'Pippa bag' carried by Pippa Middleton.
At 6pm on a weekday evening, Canada Square is buzzing and the bars and restaurants outside are packed. But there is no escaping the sense of gloom that hangs over those working in the financial sector.
One HSBC employee, who wished not to be named, said: "It's not a time for extravagance. The bank has announced today that it is going to axe 3,000 staff in Hong Kong and wants further, massive job cuts. I don't know if I will have a job next year. I might buy a can of lager and packet of crisps from Waitrose, but I wouldn't buy a £500 bottle of wine and I don't know anyone else who would."
Rebecca Smithers
guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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Chateau Latour at £425 a bottle, 'Pippa Middleton' handbags and a 30-seat wine bar welcome to Waitrose's biggest and busiest shop
It is an optimistic retailer which splashes out £15m on the refurbishment of a single store and a brave one which tries to sell fine wines at up to £425 a bottle.
But this is Waitrose and the shop is its store at London's Canary Wharf, where banks including Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Citigoup and HSBC have headquarters.
The business district has grown substantially since Waitrose opened its first store there in 2002. Its new-look branch, under the glass towers of Canada Square, now attracts 80,000 regular weekly customers. It is the biggest and busiest Waitrose in the UK, taking three times as much money as the average, and with more than double the footfall.
On Thursday it reopened as the first 'Waitrose Food, Fashion & Home' store, showcasing top quality food and drink as well as fashion and furnishings sourced from John Lewis aimed specifically at the Canary Wharf customer.
There is no lock on the door of the glass-fronted temperature-controlled cellar in the heart of the ground floor, where the finest wines are stored. A bottle of 1988 Chateau Latour, a Bordeaux from Pauillac on the left bank of the Gironde river, is the most expensive on display with an eye-watering price tag of £425.
Pierpaolo Petrassi, head of beer, wines and spirits buying at Waitrose, explains: "This is wonderful vintage wine and the stuff of legend. We don't expect huge numbers of people to buy it, but some definitely will. And there are many more wines at much more affordable prices and which represent very good value for money."
Here, customers have the largest choice of wine in any branch of Waitrose more than 2,000 wines from 20 countries ranging from £3.99 to £500 a bottle. They include 150cl magnums which Petrassi says can be good value for a dinner party including a £200 Chateau Palmer claret.
Petrassi says of Waitrose, which this week clinched the Supermarket of the Year Award from the International Wine Challenge (IWC): "We have found that in the recession staying in has become the new going out, and consumers have wanted to have a little luxury by drinking good wines at home. Sales of fine wines have been holding up very well."
The once familiar sight of City traders publicly blowing their bonuses on bottles of Dom Perignon (on sale here for £100) may thankfully be long gone. Petrassi hopes that people in celebratory mood might come to the 30-seat wine bar and enjoy a good bottle of wine which attracts only a £7.50 corkage fee (rather than the usual fee of three times the retail price).
The chain has expanded its range of mini bottles of wine and is also trialling 'mini carafes' (a quarter of a bottle 18.75cl) of red, white and rosι for £2, which might appeal to City workers who fancy a French-style tipple with their lunch.
Takeaway food for desk-bound lunches will remain a core, high volume business. With the average worker taking a 17-minute lunch-break, Waitrose serves 4,000 customers between 122pm.
The store is also opening one hour earlier on weekdays, at 7am, to cater for 'early bird' workers and has an Italian-style 'stop and perch' espresso bar with standing room only for its customers.
Very busy and very wealthy
And there are even more to come. The population of Canary Wharf is expected to increase to 120,000 over the next few years as new companies move in to occupy vacant offices. In December Shell will move into Jubilee Place, bringing an additional 1,700 workers. And next year JP Morgan will take over the building occupied by the collapsed Lehman Brothers, boosting the working population by 8,000.
Diana Hunter, Waitrose's director of store development, said the demographics were "fascinating", and the rest of the store reflects their needs: "A large proportion of shoppers are renting flats, so they are looking for colourful accessories like cushions, bedding and towels. We know that, despite the recession, there are a lot of very wealthy people with money to spend. They are also very busy as they are working hard. So they want an edited choice which is what we have tried to give them."
The Reebok gym above Waitrose is the biggest in Europe, and on the first floor keep-fit afficionados browsing through the extensive range of sportswear will be able to use a gait analysis machine to advise them on the best running shoes to wear.
The store has a slightly higher proportion of male shoppers, at 51%, than the average but the top floor has been designed as a luxurious fashion temple for women. Among the 110 top brands, for example, are handbags from names such as Longchamp, Osprey, DKNY and Modalu, including its famous 'Pippa bag' carried by Pippa Middleton.
At 6pm on a weekday evening, Canada Square is buzzing and the bars and restaurants outside are packed. But there is no escaping the sense of gloom that hangs over those working in the financial sector.
One HSBC employee, who wished not to be named, said: "It's not a time for extravagance. The bank has announced today that it is going to axe 3,000 staff in Hong Kong and wants further, massive job cuts. I don't know if I will have a job next year. I might buy a can of lager and packet of crisps from Waitrose, but I wouldn't buy a £500 bottle of wine and I don't know anyone else who would."
Rebecca Smithers
guardian.co.uk © 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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