Safeway, a leading UK supermarket group, also offers a graduate training programme. Sainsbury's graduate training scheme postulates that whether you choose to specialise in supply chain, marketing, trading or finance, you could be looking to study towards a professional qualification and new opportunities throughout the organisation. If you prefer retail, you could be part of the senior store management team in three short years. You've got to be persuasive, energetic and confident, an individual who is capable of motivating teams and enjoys making decisions and gains satisfaction from achieving results in a culture free of bureaucracy. After 12 months intensive training, area manager status can be achieved with full operational responsibility for a group of stores.
Further opportunities exist for promotion to senior management matched by high earning potential.
British retailers and their European colleagues will look back on the year 2000 with very mixed feelings. It was a year when Britain recovered from the BSE scares and French and German food stores began to suffer a similar fate. It was a year when new chief executives were found for Sainsbury and Safeway, replacing former incumbents who were guilty of under-performing. The industry has grown used to internal change but some of the forces reshaping most other industries - whether it is the impact of globalisation, new technology, especially the internet, or greater regulatory scrutiny, will not leave food retailing unscathed. In the UK and Germany, the arrival of Wal-Mart has had mixed reactions.