UK: Waitrose sees rise in sales over Christmas

Retailer Waitrose has announced that it has seen a 4.1% rise in Christmas sales, making it the supermarket’s most successful Christmas on record, Talking Retail reports.

In terms of like for like branch sales, Waitrose’s income in the last twelve trading days to Christmas was up 4.1% on 2012.  Sales on Monday 23th December 2013 were £51m, the highest sales taken on a single business day according to Talking Retail, with an average of 22,000 items being purchased every minute.

In the five-week period leading up to Christmas total sales excluding fuel totalled £736m, up 3.1% on the previous year. There was also a 33.4% increase on online sales, with the “click and collect” service proving particularly popular, reaching 619,000 collections.

“Every year retailers say that Christmas is late, but with some justification in 2013 as customers phased their shopping in line with the mid-week fall of the main festivities” managing director Mark Price commented. “Our performance this Christmas continues our sustained growth for the last five years.”

Source: Talking Retail