Waitrose supermarkets across the UK reopened on Friday morning after a critical error hit the chain's electronic systems and briefly delayed opening at some branches. Stores due to begin trade at 7am, including several in Oxfordshire, opened 10 minutes late before the problem was resolved.
The affected Oxfordshire branches were Abingdon, Wallingford, Oxford's Peartree Interchange and Wheatley, all of which were due to open at 7am. Other supermarkets across the county that were scheduled for 8am opened on time, while a source at the supermarket said during the disruption that every branch had been affected. The source added: \"They have started to do some work to fix it, but we can't guarantee when the shop will open,\" and said there had been \"a critical error with the systems that is being fixed as we speak.\"
A Waitrose spokesman later said: \"All our shops are open as normal.\" He said shops due to start trade at 7am opened 10 minutes later \"due to a delay with the system that initiates the tills, which was quickly resolved.\" The spokesman added: \"The vast majority of shops open at 8am so were unaffected.\"
The issue was understood to be a national problem with the tills, and fewer than 50 shops across the UK were affected. That limited the disruption, but it still left a handful of early-opening branches waiting at the door while the company worked to bring its systems back online.
For customers, the setback was brief and localised. For Waitrose, the question was how a national system fault reached shops across the country at the same time and still managed to slow only a small share of its estate before breakfast trading began.
