Founded over 100 years ago, Waitrose is one of the UK’s leading food retailers employing over 38,000 people across 187 branches. Waitrose successfully combines the convenience of a traditional supermarket with the expertise and service of a specialist food shop. Unlike other major supermarkets Waitrose is not owned by shareholders and City institutions. Instead, as part of the John Lewis Partnership, it is owned by everyone who works for the partnership, who annually receive a share of the company’s profits. This produces an extraordinary high level of commitment amongst those who work in the branches.
Among its many accolades Waitrose ranked number one in Which? magazine’s retail satisfaction survey 2008, claimed the top spot in the National Consumer Council’s first ever consumer focused environmental rating, and has won more wine awards than any other supermarket in the UK.
In 1998 Waitrose embarked on strategic renewal of its fixed position POS (point-of-sale) bar code scanners, adopting Datalogic Scanning’s Magellan® SL scanner/scale. In 2002 Waitrose started to rollout the Magellan® 8200 series. Today Waitrose has around 2,900 Magellan scanner/scales deployed across its estate.
The Datalogic Magellan 8200 scanner uses OmegaTek™ Productivity Technology, which is comprised of hardware and software that significantly improves the scanner’s first pass read rate on hard-to-read codes.
For Waitrose customers this means less time at the checkout, as the Datalogic Magellan 8200 scanner can read poorly printed and even damaged bar codes, as well as those printed on highly reflective packaging, or irregularly shaped items that traditionally cause reading difficulties. Five-sided (360°) scanning using OmegaTek™ decoding software means Waitrose Customer Assistants do not have to waste time repeatedly adjusting the angle of an item when presenting it to the scanner.
David Todd from Waitrose said, “Customer wait times are one of the key reasons why consumers choose a particular place to shop, so it is important that we can make the checkout experience as quick and pleasant as possible. The Datalogic scanners help us keep this commitment to our customers.”
Todd continued, “We chose Datalogic because of the flexibility of their 5-sided scanner, and the option of using Sapphire glass which is incredibly scratch resistant. This means we don’t have to worry about “hazing” and the loss of performance, and inconvenience this can cause. The smaller footprint of the Magellan 8200 scanner means we can also design and install space saving podia checkouts. Over the years we’ve found the Magellan scanner/scales very reliable and are very pleased with the way they perform in our branches.”
“Customer wait times are one of the key reasons why consumers choose a particular place to shop, so it is important that we can make the checkout experience as quick and pleasant as possible. The Datalogic scanners help us keep this commitment to our customers.”
David Todd Project Manager, Waitrose Systems
