Morrisons – its History & its Role in Wincanton’s Economy UPDATED

Everyone knows that Morrisons is one of the major supermarket chains in the UK, but it wasn’t always one of the big boys. Like a lot of businesses it started very small, in fact, as a corner store in Yorkshire. But how did it come to be in Wincanton and what part does it play in the local economy?

Originally the major supermarket in town was a Safeway, occupying the key unit in the town’s Camelot Shopping Centre built by Hopkins Developments. With business growing, Safeway sought and obtained planning permission to build a new bigger store out of town. The edge of town location provided a massive increase in floor space and probably as much, if not more parking space than all the town centre car parks put together. Business continued to grow, but behind the scenes a business coup was brewing.

The Morrisons corner store had grown steadily under the radar of all the big players. They were still small fry compared to the others, when out of the blue they took the business world by surprise and bought the much bigger Safeway, one of the major players in the field. Hey presto, Wincanton had a Morrisons.

Morrisons continued to grow over the years under the watchful eye of shop manager Alan Crane. When Alan moved on to manage a larger Morrisons store he was succeeded by Alex Turton. Alex recently stated that, per head of population, Wincanton actually outperforms many much larger Morrisons stores in in the whole of the South West.

Alex also shared that Morrisons Wincanton was the first store in the group to win The Grocer Magazine’s prestigious “Store of the Week” award, announced in an October 2013 edition of The Grocer magazine.

This accolade is important because it’s independently awarded, based on the reports of a battalion of The Grocer magazine’s own mystery shoppers throughout the UK. They assess the big five (ASDA, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Waitrose) on a highly secretive list of criteria including, “Overall customer service, and product availability”.

Being a weekly award this is clearly a major operation.

Wincanton’s award-winning Morrisons attracts shoppers not only from the town itself, but from other surrounding towns and villages. Morrison’s also benefits from passing trade from travellers heading East/West on the A303 who stop in Wincanton to break their journey.

Their growth over the years makes Morrison’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest employer in Wincanton. They currently employ over 200 people, and that means that Morrison’s in Wincanton is an important part of our local economy.

[UPDATE:] Thanks to Sue Maber for tipping us off that Morrisons Wincanton will now be opening from 7am Monday to Saturday.

Comments

Login to comment!