Waitrose celebrates retailing landmark with 300th branch in UK

The supermarket’s latest shop opens in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, 109 years after Waite, Rose and Taylor opened the chain’s very first grocery shop in Acton, London, in 1904.

The original trio opened their first modest shop in order to challenge the unscrupulous practices for which the grocery trade was renowned at the turn of the 20th century.

These included fixing scales in the retailer’s favour, adding chalk to flour and bribing servants to shop in their stores.

In contrast, the founders of Waitrose shops aimed to “lift the food trade to a higher plane” and treat customers and workers fairly.

Growth within the business – still well known for the quality and integrity of its products, as well as its industry leading customer service – has accelerated rapidly within the last decade.

At the turn of the millennium, the employee-owned supermarket chain had just 121 shops clustered largely within the South of England. Newark in Nottinghamshire was its most northerly shop.

Today, the business, which has outperformed the industry every month for the last four years, has six supermarkets in Scotland, as well as a growing presence in the North of England, Wales and the South West.

It has seven stores in Yorkshire. A spokesman told the Yorkshire Post: “We’ve no new locations to announce at present but as a lot of our customers live and work in Yorkshire we’re keen to open more shops in the county.”

In addition, the supermarket said its rapidly growing online business is expanding across the country with sales growing by 40.6 per cent.

The 25,000sq ft Helensburgh shop, which opens on Thursday and will employ 200 people, is the furthest yet from the site of the first Waitrose – a 430-mile drive from Acton.

Mark Price, managing director, said: “While we’ve grown rapidly in scale since the very first Waitrose more than a century ago, it’s remarkable how the original philosophy of our founders – based on the honesty and integrity of the business – is still at the heart of everything we do.

“Although our new shop in Helensburgh demonstrates how the scale and ambition of our business has transformed over the decades, the pride in our food and in the distinctive customer service we offer, still has its roots in that very first modest business in Acton.”

Bracknell-based Waitrose is part of the employee-owned John Lewis Partnership.