Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Cookery-superstars’ recipes and the on-going baking craze are helping to put a shine on Waitrose’s sales figures.
The grocery chain saw sales surge by 11.8% in the week ending October 22 – in contrast to sister business John Lewis, where four in five of its established department stores suffered a sales drop over the seven days.
Heston Blumenthal and Delia Smith both promote Waitrose, and create special recipes that appear in advertisements and on the Waitrose website.
The supermarket says these have boosted sales, along with a special cake kit timed for the run-up to the festive season. Delia Smith’s Classic Christmas cake box, which contains all the ingredients needed to bake the cake, was a sell-out success with shoppers last year – Waitrose’s fastest-selling festive line in November 2010.
This year it is expected to be an even bigger hit, and so the launch date was brought forward and extra stock has been brought in. Sales are already up 13% on last year, and Waitrose says that the week also saw sales of cake tins soar by 15%.
