Another Good Meeting with Tesco

These are the minutes of my latest meeting with Tesco about their England's Lane store.

1) Early Morning Deliveries
About 90% of early morning deliveries are now arriving and leaving between 07:15 and 08:00, but the truck is sometimes not out by 08:00.

2) Turnaround Times
The aim is to achieve 30 min turnarounds. We're not there yet, but this is a medium term goal.

3) Evening Deliveries
The evening truck is supposed to arrive at 20:00. It has sometimes arrived late (circa 23:00) and been refused the right to unload by the store manager. Turnaround times are quicker in the evening because there is less unloaded from the truck and nothing loaded on to it.

4) Third Party Deliveries
Milk is now on the morning Tesco truck. Bread still comes daily at 6am but turnaround is only 5 mins. The same goes for the newspapers van. The main bread truck comes at 09:30. Three other trucks arrive during the week to deliver tobacco and frozen food and take on average 10 mins to unload.

5) Weekend Deliveries
Tesco has been delivering Saturday at 08:00 and Sunday at 09:00. Residents of England’s Lane have clearly stated a preference for a later delivery on Saturday. Tesco staff agreed to look at moving the Saturday delivery to 09:00. However they later said this would be difficult and I now need to go in one Saturday morning to see for myself.

6) Delivery Truck Size
The maximum size is now 10.3m.

7) Quieter Backlift
Tesco staff report that approximately 60% of the fleet has now been equipped with quieter backlifts (rubber edging, quieter tail lift motor) and more improvements are in the pipeline.

8) New Storage Facilities
Work has been done to create more space in the basement. This was originally discussed in the context of keeping rubbish/recycling off the pavement as much as possible.

9) Facade
The facade will be renewed this quarter but there are no dates yet. It should look like the Tesco in Hampstead.

10) Sustainability Measures
- Tesco staff will check progress on moving to Liquid Petroleum Gas for trucks and whether any research is going on into the possibility of using electric trucks.
- Tesco will look into putting a box at the exit of the England’s Lane store with a sign on saying “Are we giving you too much packaging? Leave it here and we’ll recycle it. We’ll also try to produce less packaging in the future.”

11) Community

Tesco would like to get more involved in the community and are thinking of installing a community noticeboard in the shop. I suggested they might like to sponsor the Belsize Fun Run this summer or Xmas Lights in England’s lane. To be discussed.