Waitrose expansion helps graduates - graduate jobs

Graduates who fancy a career in retail should keep an eye on supermarket chain Waitrose as it prepares to almost double its number of shops over the next five years.

The firm, run by the John Lewis Partnership, said it hopes to increase the number of its stores to 250 by the end of this year and will open another 40 shops every year from 2011 to 2015. Three quarters of the new outlets will be "convenience stores", the Sunday Telegraph newspaper reported.

Waitrose is also planning to sell its products at 1,000 new outlets in Boots shops, Shell petrol stations and Welcome Break service stations on UK motorways.

The firm already has 231 of its own shops and currently sells its products at nine Welcome Break stations, six Shell outlets and seven Boots stores.

Waitrose chief Mark Price told the newspaper: "There's the potential to add 220 more Waitrose shops and probably 1,000 partner outlets, so if the economic models of all of them were to work, I think we could have up to 1,450 branches in five years' time."

Around 2,500 vacancies will be created during 2010 alone, it said, making a total of 44,000 Waitrose staff by the end of the year.