Waitrose suffered from an early Easter but John Lewis has once again outperformed the high street.

That is the general message but dig down to the regional performance of both the food and department store offerings and a picture emerges of London's middle classes rapidly tightening their purse strings.

Waitrose outperformed in the areas traditionally populated by high percentages of City workers and with a higher than average proportion of families sending their children to private schools.

The so-called group D area of Waitrose outlets, covering west and south-West London, suffered from the early Easter but the 6.9 per cent decline in sales was only two-thirds of the decline suffered on average across the group. Waitrose picked out strong performances from Fulham - "outstanding" - Weybridge, Twickenham and Balham. Others that "traded well" were Hersham, Wandsworth and Kingston.

Families with children at private schools had to cater for early school holidays coinciding with Easter (state schools are still on holiday, private schools have started term.) Affluent families living in the Fulham-Wandsworth-Twickenham triangle tend also to have a high proportion of parents working in the City. Easter this year coincided with heightened concerns about City job prospects and bonuses.

The result seems to be that for those City workers with families in private schools and a taste for good food, shopping more at Waitrose and eating out less became a sensible course of action as money prospects took a turn for the worse.

The pattern of good sales figures at Waitrose was repeated from Belgravia and the Barbican to Temple Fortune in North London - the port of call for all those well-to-do Hampstead Garden Suburb residents.

If Waitrose benefitted from the desire of London's affluent to eat in then Peter Jones, the John Lewis store on Sloane Square, suffered from this new found frugality.

Why would hedge fund managers and City bankers shop for new fittings and furnishings when they could soon be made redundant? Peter Jones suffered a 10.1 per cent fall in sales for the first 10 weeks of this year compared with a 1.8 per cent rise in sales across the whole of John Lewis compared with the same period last year.

Outside London only Peterborough's John Lewis suffered as badly as Peter Jones. Sales in Peterborough for the 10th week were down 17.8 per cent, bringing the 10 week total this year to a decline of 8.9 per cent.

Expect John Lewis and Waitrose to outperform the sectors. City workers will however continue to distort the picture for the good of Waitrose and to the detriment of Peter Jones.