A SUPERMARKET is celebrating a decade in York.

It will be ten years on Wednesday (October 28) since the then archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, opened the Waitrose in Foss Islands Road in the city.

Staff at the store will be celebrating with a buffet lunch with balloons and a big board full of pictures from the last ten years as well as the odd present.

Assistant team manger, Ben Hird, said: “During the past ten years we have been through a lot. The Boxing Day floods back in 2015 meant our store was unable to open as then the entire car park was covered - as well as Foss Islands Road for that matter. And of course, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic has meant that we have never seen toilet rolls fly off the shelves so fast.

“As part of the media coverage I took part in an interview with This Morning on ITV talking all things about coronavirus and shopping experiences.”

Mr Hird said the store has done a lot for the local community. Customers are given a green token at the end of their shop and can choose between three local charities each of which gets a share of about £1,000 each month, with the charities changing every month.

Mr Hird said: “We have donated about £120,000 in total to local charities since opening and maybe a little more with raffle prizes.

“We are also supplying the prosecco for York City’s man of the match which means one of our partners will be handing this over to the chosen player on match day.”

Looking to the future, Mr Hird said over the next decade he’d like to see a huge growth in online deliveries.

He said: “These have seen a massive rise in orders over the last few months, so much we had to completely rejig the warehouse.”