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Tuesday Jun 09, 2009

Move over Jamie Oliver...

Did anyone else catch the first episode of I'm Running Sainsbury's on Channel 4? The four-part series focuses on shop floor workers who come up with ideas to help improve the store's performance and in the first episode (that I only got round to watching last night) it was the turn of 21-year-old Becky Craze from Watford.

Becky's idea was incredibly simple, the Feed a Family for a Fiver promotion that Sainsbury's has been running was missing a crucial trick. Rather than expect families to take the reciepe cards and find the food around the store, why not simply bag up the ingredients and sell them together? It's a no-brainer, right?

Well, Becky had to jump through various levels of corporate hoops before her idea was trialled in her own store. Bizarrely, and it wasn't really explained in the programme, she had to create a new reciepe for the product (err, isn't that why Jamie Oliver exists?) and the final product was thrown together when they discovered a supplier couldn't meet the quantity required for the correct meat to be included in the promotion.

Despite the various setbacks, and the eventual outcome (spoiler alert, but let's just say Becky is still working in Watford), Becky did an amazing job for a 21-year-old thrown into dealing with a large corporate machine.

If you want to see the programme, it's on the 4OD catch-up serivce, and there is also a great follow-up interview with Becky.

Posted by Olly ( 10:30 AM ) Link to this post  |  Comments[0]