Woolworths-Bloem

I was kindly hosted for the day by the manager of the Cafe at Woolworths in the Waterfront Mall, the largest of 3 Wooloworths in Bloemfontein. The store has a large fashion offer, a reduced home offer and a full size food market (think M&S). Since opening the store has struggled to meet projected targets, so the manager spends much of his time struggling to merchandise a space that is fours times the size of it sales quota. Changes in leases i the new year will see the amalgamation of the 2 larger home and food stores into one larger full offer Woolworths.

Frikkie Jones has been working for Tribecca, who have the contract for all Woolworths Cafe's, for 3 years and it was a pleasure to spend the day with someone who was so passionate about customer service and customer experience, and to meet his team who worked really hard to support each other and to ensure that their customers received the Woolworths service!

It was interesting to compare the third party catering agreement, and the resulting service available to customers with our in house offer at Waitrose back in the UK.

I spent the afternoon with a friend of Frikkie's, the manager of Coco C, Limpy, and yet again it was fantastic to talk about how the hospitality industry and retail (Limpy is ex Woolworths) compare in SA and the UK.

Coco C is a the first of 3 beautiful 5 star restaurants, with amazing decor, amazing design, an amazing view over the waterfront and a menu to match. It was so kind of the both of them to take time out of their day to meet with me! It also gave me the opportunity to sing the praises of the GSE exchange programme with 2 potential new team members for a future District 9320 trip!

The following day it was arranged for me to visit the third but most profitable Woolworths in Bloem. It consisted of just a food offer, but on entering the store it was apparent that not only was it very well managed, but also well shopped by customers. Although I was only able to spend 45 minutes with the manager due to restrictions from their Central office, it was yet another chance to get an insight into the mind of a passionate retailer here in SA.