Getting the My Local staff onboard

Morrisons had done a great job in training its staff, My Local founder Mike Greene told Retail Express, but under his leadership, store managers and their teams will have a much bigger say over what they stock and how they get involved in the local community.

"Stores were throwing away £500-£1,000-worth of stock each week. Every store will make their own decision of which homeless shelter it will now go to and every store will nominate a charity within one mile of the store,” he said.

Store managers were asked what they would do if they owned the store and will be given 10% of store space to dedicate to 'manager's choice' lines. "We got some fantastic ideas from the managers. A lot of which we can implement really quickly and a lot was around ranges," said Greene.

Staff have really embraced the company’s ethos and are looking forward to having more control. The initial stock problems following the disagreement with Morrisons has also pulled them closer to My Local, he added. “It’s a nail in the coffin in their attitude towards Morrisons,” he said.

Emily, store manager: "Our branding has changed and we’re going to be getting in more locally-sourced food. There’s a butchers down the road called Lishman’s and we’re going to start stocking some of their products. We actually used to stock some local food, but it just stopped coming in. With M Local I didn’t get to see any figures apart from base figures, but now I’ll be able to see the profit and loss we’re making. We’ll be able to see what’s going on in the store."

Bradley, bakery and shop assistant: "The whole delivery system will be better because we can order what we want now. Before they sent us whatever they wanted. It means we’ll have a lot more stock on the shelves rather than having empty sections. The way it used to work was if something sold really well, we couldn’t order it in, it was just allocated. People kept coming in and asking the same questions for missing products day after day. But if we can order a high quantity we can make it more available."

April, assistant manager: "It’ll be really good. We can order all of our own stock and manage stock levels better. All our processes have changed, which we just need to get used to. Since Morrisons got a new CEO we’ve sort of been cast aside. This will be a good change."

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