Who is Majestic Wine?

Majestic Wine are the UK’s largest Wine Specialist with over 200 stores nationwide and more than 30 years experience of providing our customers with wines that they will love. We sell fantastic products with great stories behind them and employ passionate, enthusiastic people to bring these stories to life. We always strive to offer our customers something more, so that we make Majestic the best destination to buy wine, craft beers, real ales and artisanal spirits.

What sets us apart is our unique proposition. We offer highly trained staff; free wine tasting and tutorial sessions, free delivery on six or more bottles, free glass hire for parties and a no quibble guarantee that will replace any wine bought that you didn’t totally love.

Majestic Wine Group plc also includes Naked Wines, Lay and Wheeler and Majestic Commercial.

Tell us about your flagship brands- e.g. the vision, branding, heritage etc….?

An exciting recent development for Majestic has been the launch of our ‘Definition’ range; which is our first ever own label brand. The aim of the Definition range was to capture the quintessential qualities of the world’s greatest wine styles with help from some of the world’s greatest winemakers.

The idea of Majestic as a wine retailer is to take the pretension and pomposity out of buying wine, so it made sense to have a range of wines that showcases the most famous regions and grape varieties. This range offers a great introduction (or re-introduction) to these famous styles, but at an affordable price too.

The branding is kept simple and we use the best bottles and closures as well as the expertise of the best winemakers.  The range has grown from our first initial six lines to sixteen at the last count. These wines have already won over 20 awards and since the inception of this range we have sold close to a million bottles. We have also recently introduced Definition Gin as our first own label spirit.

How would you describe the culture at Majestic Wine?

In a recent engagement survey our highest rated response was in regards to the quality of the people that our employees work with. At Majestic we are a friendly, sociable bunch that enjoy meeting up for good wine, good food and good times.  There are lots of informal get togethers as well as companywide events including a big summer BBQ, our fantastic Christmas party and regional summer gatherings that have included punting in Cambridge, Casino boats on the Thames, butchery masterclasses and inflatable obstacle courses (with sumo wrestling thrown in for good measure).

The people in our stores come from a range of backgrounds, from fresh graduates to seasoned business professionals who love wine and fancy a career change. People with backgrounds in hospitality and catering progress quickly at Majestic, due to having so many relevant transferable skills, enabling them to hit the ground running.

We are very driven and committed and have lots of bonus schemes and incentives to drive our high performance culture. When we asked our people to describe Majestic in three words the most commonly recurring word was – fun.

What training and development opportunities are provided to employees?

Our competitive Retail Management scheme is where many Majestic employees start their journey with us. Beginning as a Trainee Manager, we will equip our people with the tools to become savvy Wine Gurus and future business leaders. We sponsor industry recognised qualifications and the opportunity to be running one of our stores within just 2-3 years.

We promote from within wherever possible and members of our Retail teams have been promoted into positions within Buying, Marketing, e-commerce, PR, Recruitment, Learning and Development, Supply Chain, Property and also into Regional Manager and Divisional Director positions within Retail.

We aim to spot talent and many of our Sales Assistants go on to be fast tracked on to the Management Scheme.  We now offer fast track schemes for Assistant Manager and Store Manager positions for candidates with the requisite experience in customer facing roles and managing teams.

One of our most prominent talent spotting schemes is our Rising Star programme, where top performing Store Managers are assessed to get onto the scheme and are then developed by the business, and themselves, to be our future business leaders.

What’s the best thing about working for Majestic?

The three P’s – the people, the products and the progression. We really do have great people who work in committed, close knit teams. Wine is a product that brings people together and is a very personal thing; we never recommend wines that we don’t enjoy ourselves. Lastly, our clear progression pathways mean that if you put your mind to it then you can go as far in the company as your ambition and determination will take you.

See the latest drinks industry jobs here on Liquid Careers – drinks industry job board

For more information about Majestic please check out careers.majestic.co.uk