Cricklewood shoppers finally have a date for the diary: the new Waitrose on Cricklewood Broadway will open its doors on Thursday, October 22.
The upmarket grocer will welcome its first customers from 8am following a ribbon-cutting ceremony, with tastings and giveaways laid on throughout opening day.
Inside the 18,000 sq ft store
The branch will take over the ground floor of the Eden NW2 development — the new quarter rising on the site of the legendary Galtymore, the Irish ballroom that was once the beating heart of Cricklewood’s nightlife. The store will stock the full Waitrose range across its 18,000 square feet.
Plans signed off by Barnet Council offer a fuller picture of what shoppers can expect: a basement car park, a quiet room and customer toilets, alongside back-office space including a training room and a dining room for staff.
The unit had originally been lined up for Asda, but it emerged in June that Waitrose had taken it on instead — a change of tenant that has had the Broadway talking ever since.
The John Lewis Partnership, which owns Waitrose, has described its multi-million pound investment in the Cricklewood store as part of a £1 billion programme designed to reach “more customers in new areas”.
New jobs for the area
Minutes from Cricklewood station, the store is set to create new jobs for local people, with staff — known as Waitrose Partners — trained to deliver the chain’s famously attentive customer service.
The Cricklewood opening will be the retailer’s second new store of the year, following Waitrose Chelmer Village which launched in July. It joins existing north London branches at Brent Cross and John Barnes on Finchley Road, and the Partnership clearly believes there is an established customer base in the area ready to welcome a store closer to home.
What the arrival means for Cricklewood high street
For Cricklewood, the opening is about more than a new place to do the weekly shop. The Broadway has been in the middle of a long transformation, with the Eden NW2 scheme remaking the former Galtymore site into new homes and shops. Securing a high-profile grocer as an anchor tenant is the kind of result that pulls extra footfall down the high street — and footfall is the lifeblood of the independent cafés, butchers and corner shops that trade alongside the chains.
Across the capital, high streets are being reshaped by big retail decisions, from supermarkets expanding into new neighbourhoods — with Aldi confirming four new London stores before Christmas — to former chain units being reinvented entirely, as in Sidcup where a former Poundland is becoming a 24-hour gym.
The change of grocer is telling, too. Where Asda had been pencilled in, it is Waitrose that will now cut the ribbon — a sign of how the John Lewis Partnership reads the local market as new homes bring new shoppers to the streets around the Broadway.
There is a symbolic layer to the move as well. The Galtymore was a landmark of Cricklewood’s social life, and its replacement by the Eden NW2 development has divided opinion among those who remember the ballroom in its heyday. That the ground floor of the new scheme will now house a household name like Waitrose shows how firmly the site’s next chapter has begun.
Key details
To recap: the Cricklewood Waitrose opens on Thursday, October 22, with an 8am start after the ribbon cutting, tastings and giveaways on the day, the full Waitrose range across 18,000 sq ft, a basement car park, and new jobs for local Partners. For a high street with its eyes on the future, October 22 cannot come soon enough.
