Hospitality, Supermarket Assistant

About the role

As a Supermarket Assistant (Specialist Meat & Fish) working on our service counters, you'll have the perfect opportunity to bring our ethos and values to life for our customers. Demonstrating your knowledge and passion for food while feeling proud of how it is ethically sourced, you'll be playing an active role in helping our customers feel GOOD about their food and recommending recipes for them to try.

You'll use your enthusiasm and friendliness to build lasting relationships with your customers. You'll make all the difference to the impression they have about the Waitrose brand and keep them returning again and again by earning their trust and loyalty for a lifetime. All the while helping to maximise on sales and profit.

In addition to your contractual pay, any time worked between 22:00 - 06:00 will attract Night Premium at a rate of £3.50 per hour. This will also apply to existing Partners who have enrolled onto Enhanced Hours Premium arrangements.

Key Responsibilities

- You'll take responsibility for your own food counter ensuring the highest presentation and hygiene standards at all time.

- Stay on top of stock levels, ensuring the products are customers love are there when needed.

- Take great care while working with open food and ensure all due diligence and health & safety protocols are followed. Helping to reduce food wastage.

- Maintain your knowledge of new products and have a good understanding of Waitrose's food values (e.g. animal welfare).

- Support the wider shop team when required with general shopkeeping tasks which include: stock replenishment, fulfilling online customer orders, helping to reduce waste, checkout support, managing Click & Collect orders, fulfilling on-demand customer orders and more.

Essential skills/experience you'll need

- Communication skills - to enable you to work effectively as part of a team and with our customers.

- Outstanding customer service and a passion for food.

- Excellent knowledge of your specialist area.

- Ability to Coach and mentor Partners on your specialist area.

Desirable skills/experience you may have

- Commercial Awareness - keeping up to date with market trends and product launches in your specialist area.

- IT literacy skills.

- Selling skills.

The Partnership

We’re the largest employee owned business in the UK and home of our cherished brands, John Lewis and Waitrose. We’re not just employees, we’re Partners, driven by our purpose to build a happier world. As we look to our future, there’s never been a more exciting time to join us.  

We’re ruthlessly focused on being brilliant at retail. We continue to innovate, adapt and diversify. Never Knowingly Undersold on price, quality and service in John Lewis and passionately serving food-lovers in Waitrose.   

As Partners we all share the responsibility of ownership and in its rewards. We use our voices to contribute to our success, working together through the good and challenging times, holding true to our behaviours and treating everyone with kindness and respect. 

We all own making the Partnership somewhere we belong. Embracing our differences and creating an environment where we’re free to be ourselves and can THRIVE. Growing ourselves individually, and as a collective. 

As Partners, we make all the difference. And, we all own it.  

Important points to note:  

It’s important to note that some of our roles are subject to pre-employment vetting (which may include DBS checks for successful candidates). If required, you’ll be informed and provided with information about vetting during the recruitment process and we encourage you to complete any vetting documents quickly to avoid delays. Any DBS checks required will be carried out by a third-party registered body and financial probity checks may also be required for some of our roles.  

We occasionally close vacancies early in the event we receive a high volume of applications, and therefore, we recommend you apply early. If you require a reasonable adjustment due to a disability which means you may need longer to complete your application please contact us as soon as possible.

We want all of our Partners to have a good work-life balance and we support flexible working. This might mean flexible or compressed hours, job sharing or shorter hour contracts, where possible. Please discuss this further with the hiring manager during your interview.