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RETAIL FOCUS Inset: Directors Lizzy Braine and Vicky Woolston at The Kitchen Shop, Lichfield.
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“Training is non-stop; we are constantly training,” enthuses Tom Carter, director of Potters Cookshop, Hockley, winner of the Excellence in Training Award at the Excellence in Housewares Awards 2021. When the cookshop was closed during pandemic lockdowns, and staff were deployed to the neighbouring hardware store or fulfilling online cookshop orders, the table normally used for promotions was transformed into a training table, highlighting particularly products and enabling staff members to try them out. The shop has also made the most of remote training opportunities with the help of suppliers such as Sage and Smeg. “Our training is a combination of in-house and supplier sessions and it’s intense – there is always stuff you don’t know!” exclaims Tom. Moreover, Potters Cookshop’s regular product demonstration videos (filmed instore for its social media feeds) provide entertaining and succinct summaries and
In the fiercely competitive housewares market, well informed, helpful members of staff can be the diamonds that make a cookshop shine brighter than others. PH spoke to the winner and finalists of the Excellence in Retail Training Award 2021 to learn how they go about sharing knowledge and gathering pearls of wisdom.
soundbites that help the whole team get to grips with new products and refresh their understanding of old classics (such as the Jar Key from Lifetime Brands). Above: Getting hands on with products on the shopfloor: Jo and Alison at Potters Cookshop. Left: The team at award winning cookshop Trevor Mottram has decades of accumulated wisdom.
Yossi Gliksman, director of Upstairs Downstairs, Oswestry, winner of the Independent Cookshop of the Year at The Excellence in Housewares Awards 2021, concurs: “You never stop learning!” With 35 years of cookshop experience, Yossi believes that two-way communication is paramount: “Every day we learn a lot from listening to our customers. The most important thing is customer relations: get to know your customer and understand their needs before you advise them, so you supply what’s suitable for them rather than what they might say they want initially.” Continuous shop floor training is a collaboration between Upstairs Downstairs’ staff - of which there is a longstanding core – and suppliers, particularly when there are new product launches, and knowledge is disseminated via hands-on demonstrations to the team and customers. Meanwhile, Lizzy Braine, director of The Kitchen Shop, Lichfield acknowledges: “Our customer service and staff product knowledge is something that sets our shop apart from others and this is only achieved by training every single day.” She explains: “All our training is done in-house
Tried and tested With its very long serving staff, it is a longstanding joke that the team at Trevor Mottram in Tunbridge Wells often knows more than suppliers when it comes to product training! “Our training is very thorough, product driven and hands on,” acknowledges joint managing director Sarah Wood. The shop has a ‘library’ of products so that every member of staff can try out the products that they sell when cooking and preparing food at home. She admits: “When a new product is launched, we can be quite brutal in testing it and we will always share samples around so we can compare our experiences.” PROGRESSIVE
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