Grocery Stores Response to COVID-19
By John Conley
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken measures on most businesses including grocery stores. Grocery stores are at the forefront of this pandemic because they are a necessity to public with the products they serve.
Stores such as Giant Eagle, Aldi, and Walmart have all taken certain precautions to limit the spread of the virus and will continue to provide goods to the public.
“At Giant Eagle, we are committed to being there for our customers. We have over 34,000 employees who are working to safely provide food, fuel, and medications to our communities,” Richard Roberts, a Giant Eagle spokesperson said.
Giant Eagle committed to specific guidelines that outline just how safe they are keeping their stores.
“We are following the sanitization guidelines as set by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). Masks and gloves are available for all employees and extensive sanitization of carts, totes, and other major contact points occur after every use,” Roberts said.
Grocery stores are one place where people are still gathering, so staying clean is a top priority and will have to continue to do so as they see numerous customers each day.
“Our stores have put an occupancy limit to safely allow a number of people to enter the store and have expanded our social distancing measures including one-way aisles, and six-foot floor markers,” Roberts said.
Giant Eagle continues to support the community and wants every family to feel like they can shop at their stores.
“Giant Eagle has lowered prices on many essential items and hundreds of items will have their prices locked going into the summer,” Roberts said.
This helps those families who may not be benefiting financially from the pandemic and will keep customers coming back if they need anything.
Aldi has taken similar action towards the COVID-19 virus and has taken guidelines listed from the CDC to control the spread.
Aldi and Walmart both directed me to their websites regarding COVID-19 as guidelines were listed and did not want to comment.
On Aldi’s official website, they state that all stores and warehouse employees will be required to wear masks during their shifts and hope customers will do the same. Aldi also has listed that they want customers to continue to follow the CDC guidelines and practice good hygiene and social distancing. They are also conducting health screenings of each employee before they start working.
Aldi will continue to provide safety measures where they are needed to help protect the health and safety of the communities they serve.
Walmart has also provided guidelines to follow as they hope to continue business and keep the community safe.
On Walmart’s official website, they have listed steps employees and customers should follow.
Walmart recently received a call from the White House in the hopes that they can turn their parking lots into testing centers for the virus. Dan Bartlett, Executive Vice President of Walmart knew they could make a difference and decided to go ahead and allowing testing. The results have seen cars lining up to get tested, proving that the need was clear.
This comes as something that grocery stores are also useful for. This allows for more testing sites that will help out to determine who does and who doesn’t have the virus.
Before COVID-19, grocery stores did not have to worry about any of these procedures and it will be interesting to see which direction each of these stores takes, once social distancing guidelines are eased off.
Looking ahead, grocery stores are a necessity to the public and will remain that way through this pandemic. Without them, millions of Americans would be at a loss for products they need. Grocery stores continue to provide goods and its hard to think of a society without them, especially now.
