Supermarket Assistant, Team Leader

Waitrose & Partners; Hale; On-site; GBP 26,000 - 34,000; Full time

Job summary

Waitrose Hale Barns is recruiting a Team Leader to help drive excellence in customer service and store operations. You will lead colleagues, support management, and ensure high standards of safety and compliance while delivering a premier shopping experience.

As a founding member of the Hale Barns team, you will help build the new store presence, oversee stock, and support online order fulfilment, Click & Collect, and in-store services with a focus on profitability and customer satisfaction.

Qualifications

• Good people and leadership skills.
• Good understanding of retail and how to maximise commercial success.
• Experience of working in a customer facing role
• Good stakeholder management skills when working with third parties and the wider Partnership.

Responsibilities

• Supporting the shop’s management team with managerial tasks and work with all other areas of the shop to meet customer demand.
• Ensuring Partners are operating in a safe and legal manner.
• Fulfilling online customer orders ready for our drivers to deliver their shopping direct to their doors.
• Stock replenishment - ensuring shelves are full and products are in the right place.
• Working with the wider shop team to support when needed including checkout support and Click & Collect operations.
• Proactively driving commercial performance and suggesting improvements.
• Reducing wastage by following product due diligence and markdowns to those reaching sell-by dates.
• Maintaining a safe and tidy working environment and general shopkeeping tasks.

Skills

People leadership

Retail knowledge

Customer facing

Stakeholder management

Job description

About The Role

As a Team Leader within one of our Waitrose shops, you'll help our difference be felt by our customers on every visit, providing the Partner-led service and passion for food that our competitors can't compete with - passionate Partners serving food lovers. Your drive to go the extra mile to help both customers and Partners will make all the difference to the impression our customers 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.

About The Role

As a Team Leader within one of our Waitrose shops, you'll help our difference be felt by our customers on every visit, providing the Partner-led service and passion for food that our competitors can't compete with - passionate Partners serving food lovers. Your drive to go the extra mile to help both customers and Partners will make all the difference to the impression our customers 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.

Join the Team at Waitrose Hale Barns!

We are thrilled to announce that a brand new Waitrose shop is arriving in Hale Barns on 12th November 2026, and we’re looking for dedicated food loving Partners to help us build this shop from the ground up.

As a vital member of our founding team, you’ll work side-by-side with your colleagues to champion the quality, integrity, and unique shopping experience our customers love.

If you have a passion for working together and want to be part of a new opening, we’d love for you to join us in making our newest branch a local favourite.

The start date for this role to commence a 4 week training period will be 12th October.

Key Responsibilities

• Supporting the shop’s management team with managerial tasks and work with all other areas of the shop to meet customer demand.
• Ensuring Partners are operating in a safe and legal manner.
• Fulfilling online customer orders ready for our drivers to deliver their shopping direct to their doors.
• Stock replenishment - ensuring our shelves remain as full as possible and products are in the right place at the right time for our customers.
• Working with the wider shop team to support when needed including; checkout support, managing Click & Collect orders, fulfilling on-demand customer orders and more.
• Being proactive in helping to drive the commercial performance for the shop, offering ideas for continuous improvement to the operation.
• Reducing wastage by following product due diligence and markdowns to those reaching their sell by dates.
• Maintaining a safe and tidy working environment with general shopkeeping tasks.

Essential Skills/experience You’ll Need

• Good people and leadership skills.
• Good understanding of retail and how to maximise commercial success.
• Experience of working in a customer facing role
• Good stakeholder management skills when working with third parties and the wider Partnership.

Desirable Skills/experience You May Have

• Duty Manager Training (Internal Partners only).

About 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.