Waitrose boss Mark Price has announced he will quit the John-Lewis owned supermarket in April.
The managing director of Waitrose has been at the company for 33 years and is in line to become the Channel 4 chairman reports today suggested.
Rob Collins, Waitrose’s retail director, will take over from Price.
The news comes as Aldi leapfrogged Waitrose to become the sixth largest supermarket in the 12 weeks to 11 October.
The discounter now has a market share of 5.6%, up 0.8% on the year before, while Waitrose remained flat at 5.2%.
Fellow discounter Lidl, at 4.3%, reached a record market share for a second month running.
After a slowdown earlier this year, both discounters have seen their rate of growth return to more than 17% during this period.
It impacted the ‘big four’ supermarkets, with only Sainsbury’s (LON:SBRY) able to improve year-on-year sales over the period.
The Mike Coupe-led group saw sales climb 1.1% to £3.96bn in the period compared to the year before, despite the price of groceries falling 1.7%.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Kantar, said the sales growth was due to “a strong performance in its online and Local stores” though its market share remained static at 16.1%
It reinforces Sainsbury’s positive statement last month, when the company said it would top city forecasts.
It was not good news for the others, with Tesco (LON:TSCO) Morrisons (LON:MRW) and Asda all seeing sales drop.
After reporting that more than halved interim profits, Tesco saw sales fall a further 1.7% over the period, while Morrisons’ sales dipped by around 1%.
The big loss was for Wal-Mart-owned Asda, which lost some 3% of sales over the period at £4bn from £4.2bn.
All have been hit by increased competition from Aldi and Lidl, forcing the bigger supermarkets to drop their prices, Kantar said.