Waitrose is to become the UK‘s first supermarket to operate a cashless system with the introduction of its new store in Sky‘s flagship head office.
Standing as Waitrose‘s second smallest store at 1,400 sq ft, the new site will be located in Sky Central, Sky‘s new office building. The store will cater to over 3,500 staff on completion this summer.
The store will be the first to open in a workplace campus in almost 20 years.
Sky employees will be able to make purchases with card or mobile devices only at one of the five self-service checkouts in the store.
The John Lewis partnership owned grocer met with a number of Sky employees to determine which products they would like to see in the new store. These include food to go sandwiches, wraps and sushi, evening meals, celebration cakes, fresh flowers, fresh bread and croissants as well as cupboard staples.
The store will create 20 new jobs as part of the John Lewis partnership.
Waitrose Director, Convenience, Jackie Wharton, says: “Opening on the Sky campus is an exciting opportunity for us to respond to how customers wish to shop in this flagship workplace setting. Our convenience model is now more flexible than ever, especially as payment methods and ranges continue to evolve, so we’ll look forward to exploring other opportunities like this in the future.”
Nick Green, Director of Property Service Group, Sky, added: “We’re thrilled to welcome Waitrose to our campus in Osterley. Our goal is to make Sky a great place to work for all our colleagues to work and having such easy access to this new shop will be a huge benefit.”
Waitrose‘s only other business based store was opened in 1998 at British Airways‘ Waterside headquarters in Harmondsworth.
