John Lewis Partnership

The John Lewis Partnership is a major United Kingdom retailer, operating department stores and, through its Waitrose subsidiary, upmarket supermarkets. Unusually, it is a partnership, with the company held in trust on behalf of its employees (called partners) who receive an annual profit distribution which is usually a significant fraction of their annual salary.

Supermarkets

The John Lewis Partnership also owns Waitrose, an upmarket supermarket chain which has over 165 branches and 27,000 partners. Waitrose trades mainly in London and the South of England, originally formed by Wallace Waite, Arthur Rose and David Taylor. The company was taken over by The John Lewis Partnership in 1937. The acquisition of 22 Safeway branches in 2004 greatly increased the size of the company and saw branches open in the North of England for the first time.

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