Waitrose "it's on us"

[GreenTeaTuesdays]

Just curious about the Waitrose "it's on us" initiative.. a few times I've been in (always with my daughter so I think she's the lucky charm!) the cashier has given us something for free.. we've had flowers, a gingerbread man and some chocolates.

It's a little thing but it does really put a smile on my face

Does anyone on here work at Waitrose? How do you pick and is there a monetary limit on how much you can give away?

Has anyone else had some nice freebies?

@Boshi when it's happened to us they've said something like "oh is the gingerbread man for you?" to my daughter then when she says yes they say "that's on us" then it's zero on the till / receipt

In my local Waitrose, my kid always got offered treats like gingerbread men or other sweet things. He's three and always smiles and tried to make people laugh. Trouble is - he hates sweets so we would have to go through the whole thing of someone from the bakery walking us to the checkouts and getting him something for free......and then wouldnt know what to do with it. I think at some point DH even started hiding from the people working in the bakery for that reason ;-) ;-) but I get that our kids is odd that way ;-)

Oh I didn’t know they did this, how nice. I used to go to Pret and get my tea or coffee free every now and then and loved that.

In the days before Covid when our Waitrose had a cake counter I once got some cakes 'it's on us'. Sadly the cake counter never returned.

What?!? I've never had that and I'm in there most weeks!
I've had two free bottles of Prosecco from them though - once as they were super late on a delivery, once they had me wait 15 minutes on a click and collect. I once returned an orchid plant my husband had picked out for his mother (it was half dead - what was he thinking) and the nice woman at customer service not only replaced it but gave me a free bouquet of flowers too.

A little thankyou for paying our inflated prices 😂

I had my shopping free once, was just a tiny spend but I was very chuffed about it. Don't think they're doing it at the moment.

@chaosmaker that's awesome - what happened?!!!

I did get handed some flowers for free as I was walking out the shop a few months ago. It was closing time so I assumed they were about to be binned.

So how does this work?? Is it things you're buying and the cashier decides to gift it to you? Or staff approaching you as you walk around the store with random freebies?? I always use the self-service tills, but may have to rethink that!

With ours it was at the till @littleburn - as they were scanning it!

In that case I'll start using the tills again, take the DC and be lovely and charming 😁!

@littleburn but not too obvious or they will see right through you as per the warning upthread

Considers stealing next doors newborn then remembers our closest Waitrose shut down about 3 years ago.

We are encouraged to chat to customers, get to know them, I get lots of regulars, freebies are pretty random, its a birthday, an illness, weepy child even a bereavement. I always ask a checkout supervisor, works the same way in the cafe.

I usually feel invisible and I clearly am to Waitrose staff to 😢

Oooh yes, I've been given some cheese before now.

This . Never had a gift yet

I work at Waitrose
It is up to us entirely

I've had this once or twice but usually with low cost items. I did, however receive a £22 bottle of wine a couple of weeks ago as a substitute for a £4.99 one in my online order.

I never normally go but went at Christmas during Covid as a treat. I was given a box of chocolate wrapped up and also an additional person came to pack for me. I thought 'Well this never happens at Aldi'!

I gave a lady some flowers for her birthday, she was having a bad day as her dh had Alzheimers and didn't even know what day it was, she was so upset. I gave her the flowers and she cried.

My kids got two lunch bags free a few months ago and were delighted. In fact, this weekend, dd randomly shouted “I got a free lunch bag from Waitrose!”, as she passed a stranger on the street, apropos of nothing.

Pret does a similar thing - think staff can let a certain amount of people get their order free. Both times I’ve had it, I had my baby with me in a baby carrier so that’s worth a try.

Never had anything in Waitrose but I often used to get free coffee atPret. It was when i was younger amd went out a lot and usually happened on the days I was stinkingly hungover on my way to work, I think the lady could tell and felt sorry for me.

I was just talking to my husband about it and his immediate response was surely people would just give free stuff to their friends 😂

We were given cheese the other day too! DH and I were looking at the cheese counter debating which was most like one we had tried at a friends house and loved but couldn’t remember the name of. We picked what we thought looked most like it and the lovely lady on these cheese counter gave us a big wedge of it and said it was on them. We so chuffed! I thought it was because they had just finished instore renovations, I didn’t know it was an ongoing initiative. How lovely!