Waitrose checks out 22,000 items a minute on busiest day ever
Waitrose saw its most successful Christmas on record, with sales for the twelve trading days up to 31 December up 6.5 per cent on the same period of 2012.
In the five weeks to Christmas Eve, total sales (excluding fuel) rose 5.4 per cent from a year earlier.
The store added that on the 23 December it saw sales of £51m, with an average of 22,000 items going through checkouts every minute.
Online grocery sales also saw bumper growth – up 33.4 per cent for the five-week period, with 619,000 collections from branches made through click-and-collect.
Meanwhile, fellow supermarket Co-op has reported like-for-like sales growth of one per cent over the Christmas period, driven, it said, by convenience shoppers. Convenience store sales rose 3.2 per cent.