Grocers respond to COVID – again

Jeff Green | Apr 08, 2020

As the state of emergency in Ontario intensifies and the list of essential services shortens, trips to the grocery store and pharmacy are becoming one of the few public events on the weekly calendar for many.

As we reported two weeks ago, grocery stores have been scrambling to keep their shelves full in the face of heightened demand for certain products (remember the run on toilet paper – it is starting to seem like so long ago) and the subsequent supply chain issues. Some of those issues remain but the products have changed. Flour is hard to find, and yeast is impossible to find. The supply of chicken seems to have been restored but the chickens that are in stores now are larger than consumers are used to.

But for the most part, grocers affiliated with chains such as Sobeys, as well as independent grocers, have been able to get the products that their customers depend upon. However, they are dealing with heavier than normal demand, as more people are eating at home than ever before.

Over the last two weeks those concerns have taken a bit of a back seat to the physical distancing issue. As an essential service, grocery stores have become a major battleground in the fight to diminish the impact of COVID-19. With Easter, one of the peak weeks of the year for grocery purchases, those concerns are only heightened.

Rural grocery stores, even those affiliated with chains, tend to have narrower aisles than urban stores, making it more difficult to maintain the 2-metre distance for customers and staff.

Stores in our region have taken the initiative, over the last month, to establish safety protocols. At first, it was all about ramping up disinfection, and over the last couple of weeks it has been all about distance.

That has meant directional shopping, one lane aisles marked by arrows on the floor, distance at the checkout counter, a don’t touch it unless you are buying it practice, and limits on store traffic. And in many cases as well, the customers are also being screened before entry. All of these measures are in place at local stores, and for store owners and managers one of the difficulties, is convincing their customers, all of their customers, to follow the new rules.

Clint and Andrea Reid of Reid’s Foodland in Verona have done just about everything you can do in a grocery store, but they took on new roles this week, store greeters.

“When we decided we needed to control the traffic flow in the store and let our customers know about some of the changes that we gave made, like directional shopping and distance, we thought we needed to be the ones telling them all about it,” said Clint Reid earlier this week.

That way, any customers who were upset about the new policies had the opportunity to confront the store owner directly.

“It is a big change for us. Our business is normally all about customer service, not about telling customers where to stand or making people wait. But, for everyone’s safety, that is what we have to do now.”

And the customers, the vast majority of them at least, are “getting it”, Reid said.

Gordon Dean, owner of Mike Dean’s Grocery stores in Sharbot Lake, Chesterville and Bourget, is not standing at the front door in Sharbot Lake, a store staff member is doing that, screening customers and handing them a clean cart.

He is back in his home office, 2 hours away, but is keeping a close on eye on everything that is going on. When I reached him by phone on Tuesday, just after taking some pictures for this article, the first thing he said was, “what were you doing taking pictures in my store?”

He monitors camera feeds from all of his stores, and when not scouring the market for products in recent weeks, he has been consulting with the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers and the provincial government concerning how the stores should be operating in the new environment.

“They have been excellent, because we really need to know what they require and they need to hear from us about how we can make it work. I think we’ve all made a lot of progress, keeping food available and keeping everyone as safe as possible,” he said.

That has meant putting a series of measures in place, such as limiting the number of customers in the store to 30, directional shopping, creating a 4am – noon shift so the store remains stocked while keeping less staff in the store in the afternoon. And as of Tuesday this week, it also means masks for all of the employees.

Distancing measures are also in place at Glenburnie Groceries, Trousdale’s Foodland (Sydenham), Northbrook Foodland, and North of 7 in Plevna.