Finchley Road Waitrose’s first ever manager Pamela Roche 

A LONG queue of relieved shoppers formed outside Waitrose over an hour before its re-opening on Wednesday following a six-week closure.

“Golden tickets” worth £50 were being handed out to the first 50 customers at the revamped “John Barnes” branch in Finchley Road. An inflatable champagne bottle had been set up on the forecourt along with taster tables and face-painting for children.

Many of the customers would have been desperate to get their hands on parmesan cheese from a new “specialist bay” – 12 per cent of all of Waitrose’s “parmigiano counter sales” are made in the Finchley Road store, according to a spokesman.

Giant champagne bottle greeted customers on Wednesday 

The major changes include the majority of the human-attended tills being removed from the store as well as a simpler layout with an

expanded wine section – the largest selection of fine wines out of any Waitrose store in the country can also be found at the store.

Among those attending the launch on Tuesday was the first manager of the supermarket that opened in 1981, Pamela Roche. She said: “It was a wonderful place to work and I have such fond memories.

“How can I put it, we had very good customers. Although some of them gave me hell, but that’s one of those things. I retired in 1997.”

The queue of ‘VIPs’ on Wednesday 

Ms Roche had come down from Taunton in Somerset where she had retired after her husband died.

John Barnes was a business in Finchley Road named after a department store guru who died in a shipping accident more than 100 years ago. Waitrose kept the name after it moved in 1981.