the times | Saturday December 18 2021 67The ManifestoBusiness
Q&A
Who, or what, is your
mentor?
I don’t have a mentor as
such, but have learnt
from so many people. In
my early 20s at M&S, a
manager called Iain
taught me about
building the best team,
customer service and
how to make a good
shop great. Many years
later at Boots, I learnt
about leading at scale
and how to adapt and
grow a business.
Does money motivate
you?
No, I’m motivated by
other things. Having
clear purpose and then
building the energy and
belief to make the right
things happen really
matters to me.
What was the most
important event in
your working life?
Getting to run my first
shop at M&S and then
leading Boots 25 years
later were both
significant events. In
preparation for this job,
I would say my previousrole at Sainsbury’s,
where I led our stores
and operations, was
probably the most
important. This gave me
the best grounding for
this role, especially with
all the challenges of the
pandemic and the rapid
change we’ve seen in
how customers shop
over the past 18
months.
Which person do you
most admire?
David Attenborough.
When he spoke at
Cop26 I hope the whole
world felt and heard
what he said. We have a
huge responsibility to
take care of our planet
and reduce the impact
of food production on
climate and nature.
What does leadership
mean to you?
To me, leadership is
about being in the
service of others and at
the same time being
prepared to take and
stand by the tough
decisions when they are
the right thing to do.
How do you relax?
Listening to great music
especially whilst doing
some cooking. A
delicious meal and anice glass of wine (or
two) with friends and
family is my favourite
Saturday night.CV
Age: 50
Education: Purley Sixth
form college
Family: Married to
Helen and we have four
children between us.
Career: July 1987:
Saturday work at M&S;
Sept 1989: store
management, M&S; Jan
2000: Marble Arch,
M&S; Jan 2004: regional
director, Boots; Aug
2006: UK and Ireland
retail director, Boots;
June 2011: chief op
officer, UK and Ireland,
Boots; Oct 2013:
managing director,
Boots UK, Ireland and
Opticians; Jan 2015:
executive vice president
Walgreens Boots
Alliance and president
of Boots UK, Ireland and
Opticians; July 2017:
retail and operations
director, J Sainsbury;
June 2020: chief
executive, J SainsburyS
imon Roberts, chief executive
of Sainsbury’s, is skipping
down the aisle of the group’s
store in Sydenham, in
southeast London, as he
searches for his favourite party food.
After 34 years in retailing, he joined
Marks & Spencer straight from
school, the 50-year-old has lost none
of his enthusiasm for selling stuff and
is keen to show off the supermarket’s
new range of posh nibbles.
For many people a supermarket
nine days before Christmas would be
the definition of hell. But an excited
Roberts bounds round the shop floor.
Having spent the last couple of days
in Scotland, he’ll continue his tour of
Sainsbury’s stores right up until
Christmas Eve. Today south London,
tomorrow the Midlands.
Having found his favourites —
lemongrass skewer prawn pops and
mini hog roast hot dogs — Roberts
launches into his sales patter. Last
year the supermarket chain launched
600 new products. This year it will be
more than 1,800.
New products are a key part of
Roberts’s strategy to put food at the
centre of his vision for Sainsbury’s.
Innovation and value are his mantra
— and he manages 15 mentions of
“value” during our whistlestop
interview. “We have gone back to
fundamentals, we’re going to focus on
being food first. Putting food back at
the heart of Sainsbury’s. It is the
reason customers shop with us,” he
says.
Roberts’s focus on food appears to
be winning over customers. Last
month the retailer reported that it
had grown market share, stealing
customers from all its rivals.
He is also winning over the City. In
a note to clients this week the veteran
retail analyst Clive Black, wrote:
“Simon Roberts has brought
considerable focus and pace to
Sainsbury’s... revolving around a plan
to raise the priority of food.”
Lemongrass skewer prawn pops
and the mini hog roast hot dogs will
definitely be on the menu when
Roberts sits down for Christmas lunch
with his family in a week’s time, along
with a Taste the Difference turkey,
which he is cooking with his son.
Ever the salesman Roberts insists
that the veg on his plate will be from
the “Sainsbury’s quality, Aldi price
match” campaign.
No one could begrudge Roberts a
few days off for Christmas. His
appointment as chief executive,
replacing Mike Coupe, was
announced in January 2020 just as
reports started to emerge of a
mysterious pneumonia outbreak in
Wuhan, China. By the time he was
officially anointed in June 2020 the
UK was emerging from its first
Covid-19 lockdown.
His first anniversary was a “very
challenging period”, marked by empty
shelves across the supermarket sector
as a combination of a lack of HGVdrivers, a carbon dioxide shortage
that affected supplies of meat and
fizzy drinks, and panic buying —
although the on-message Roberts
would never use that term — led toFood, glorious food is the mantra for
Sainsbury’s in fight for new customers
Chief executive who
steered group through
pandemic tells Richard
Fletcher and Ashley
Armstrong why he’s
going back to basics
pandemic also led to an extraordinary
rise in online shopping. In the first
half of the year online accounted for
about 17 per cent of Sainsbury’s sales,
more than double the pre-pandemic
8 per cent.
“Who would have thought that we
could serve twice as many online
orders through this shop than we did
before the pandemic? Who would
have thought we could do that with
next to no capital spend? Who’d have
thought that we’d be able to do all of
that within a very short timeframe?”
So is Sainsbury’s long-term future
online? “We think it will increase, of
course it will. But will more customers
shop online than in store? We still
think that the range of products and
the convenience means more
customers will shop physically in the
store than online.”
The £7 billion takeover of its rival
Wm Morrison and the sale of Asda to
Mohsin and Zuber Issa (which
followed an ill-fated attempt at a
merger with Sainsbury’s by Roberts’s
predecessor) has led to speculation
that Sainsbury’s could be next on
private equity’s shopping list.
Sainsbury’s is certainly vulnerable
to a bid, with two big shareholders —
the Qatar Investment Authority and
the Czech billionaire Daniel
Kretinsky — controlling a 23 per cent
stake. This year Sainsbury’s hired
Robey Warshaw, one of London’s
leading investment boutiques, to help
to defend the supermarket group
against a takeover. So is it distracting?
“I think about all of the competitors
in the sector. I spend time in their
shops, I spend time looking at what
they’re doing but primarily, as a team,
we are focused on what we’re doing,”
Roberts insists. “We set a plan and
every single day and every single
conversation we have is about that
plan.”
Roberts, who was born in Croydon,
started his retail career at Marks &
Spencer after joining the high street
retailer straight from school, making
him part of a club of bosses that have
risen from the shopfloor that includes
Steve Rowe at M&S and
David Potts at Morrisons.
After 15 years at
M&S, Roberts joined
Boots in 2004
where he was
appointed head of
the UK and
Ireland division
in 2013 before
becoming
president in 2015.
He left the
following year to
“pursue new
opportunities” and
joined Sainsbury’s as retail
and operations director in 2017
before taking over from Coupe.
“I started on the shop floor when I
was 16. Every single day we need to
remember the people that do the real
work: the people that serve and look
after our customers in stores, online
or in logistics.”
The store tour is over. But just as
we are set to leave, Roberts takes a
detour dashing down another aisle.
We have missed out his favourite of
this Christmas’s new products: an
orange & prosecco panettone.
“I love a good pud on Christmas
day,” he beams, patting his stomach. It
is not just pudding Roberts is fond of.
His love for retailing is also obvious.Simon Roberts is putting food at the centre of his vision for the grocer. “It is the reason customers shop with us,” he saysTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILLgaps on many Sainsbury’s shelves.
The shortages over the summer
prompted a rethink about how the
supermarket chain made sure that the
shelves weren’t empty at Christmas.“It’s been a 24/7 focus for us since
early September to make sure that all
the products we planned were here.
That has meant going back to
suppliers. That has meant going out
to new suppliers.
“It has also meant doing things that
we’ve never done before. So
traditionally supply chains only move
one way. We’ve been going to our
suppliers to pick up stock so we can
guarantee availability for customers.
In the end, what is our job? What is
my job? It is to make sure
that when customers
come here, they can
buy what they want
to buy.”
There are
certainly no gaps
on the shelves of
the Sydenham
store, one of
the largest of
Sainsbury’s 600
supermarkets. The
group also owns 816
convenience stores as
well as Argos and
Habitat. The UK’s second
largest grocer, Sainsbury’s
employs 189,000 people.
The pandemic not only put the
UK’s food retailers under tremendous
pressure — at the peak of the first
wave one in five Sainsbury’s staff were
off sick or shielding — Roberts also
believes it fundamentally changed the
way people shop for food.
“Customers are shopping for food
differently. That’s given this brand
and this business a real opportunity
to go back to the fundamentals.
People are at home and they’re eating
more food. They’re expecting better
value and they want to innovate and
try new foods. There is a real role for
Sainsbury’s to play in that.” TheSteve Rowea
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