Waitrose will open a full-size supermarket in Cricklewood, north London, on Thursday — its first new store in eight years. A second follows next month in Hale Barns, Greater Manchester, with four smaller locations planned for 2026 including Oakham, Bedminster, Chalk Farm, and Springstead Village. The moves are part of a broader five-year plan announced in 2024 targeting up to four large supermarkets and 100 convenience stores. The expansion is led by Tom Denyard, the former Tesco executive who took the helm in January. Denyard inherits a chain that has stabilised after a rough patch — IT failures caused persistent shelf gaps — but is now holding market share rather than growing it. Sales rose 4% in the six months to August 1, a respectable but unremarkable figure in a grocery sector still riding residual food-price inflation. The competitive picture is the real story. Marks & Spencer has overtaken Waitrose in grocery market share under some measures, having aggressively opened food-led outlets while Waitrose was frozen. The upmarket grocery slot Waitrose once owned is now contested territory, and M&S has proven that premium positioning and physical expansion are not mutually exclusive. Financially, the plan is being funded from a position of weakness. Underlying operating profit at Waitrose fell £7m to £103m in the half-year, squeezed by deliberate price investment, loyalty scheme costs, and higher energy bills during the summer heatwave. The parent John Lewis Partnership posted a £98m pre-tax loss in the same period, dragged down by underperforming department stores. The partnership has been cutting headcount to trim costs. A notable structural shift landed alongside the expansion news: the John Lewis Partnership signed its first company-wide union recognition deal with Usdaw, the shopworkers' union. For a business built on the mythology of employee ownership — all staff are technically "partners" — formal union recognition is an acknowledgement that the partnership model alone has not been sufficient to represent worker interests. The deal arrives just ahead of new statutory union access rights taking effect at month's end. The £1bn investment figure sounds muscular, but spread across store openings, 29 refurbishments this year, and the addition of meat, fish, sushi counters, bakeries, and wine sections, it is a catch-up spend rather than a land grab. Waitrose is essentially rebuilding the in-store experience it let atrophy while competitors moved. Whether premium grocery shoppers who migrated to M&S will return for a sushi counter remains the open question. The strategic bet is that physical retail still matters in the premium segment — that customers buying £12 wine and fresh fish want to be in the store, not clicking through an app. That thesis is plausible. But executing it while the parent company loses money, cuts staff, and simultaneously tries to revive department stores is the kind of multi-front war that punishes slow movers.
