Stores Respond to an Unprecedented Surge
By Britt Masback ‘20
With COVID-19 creating unprecedented demand at grocery stores, corporate and individual responses have attempted to meet these needs, prevent additional resource-hoarding and ease community and health concerns.
Portland area vendors seek new policies to reduce hoarding, meet demand and protect public health. Photo courtesy of pxfuel per Creative Commons Zero.
Hundreds of businesses have been closed across Oregon in recent weeks, but grocery stores, convenience outlets and supermarkets have remained open, deemed “essential businesses” by the CDC.
While Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced a ban on gatherings of 25 people, grocery stores are exempt from that ruling and have seen large influxes of people, the majority seeking a similar range of products: non-perishable food, toilet paper, and hand sanitizer to name a few.
This has presented a number of logistical and health concerns for store operators, as they desperately try to restock shelves and keep people safe. To prepare for the rush of consumers, stores are shifting hours and hiring temporary workers.
New Seasons, Safeway, Albertsons, and Fred Meyer are rapidly hiring people for all positions, at the same times as many other business are letting people go.
Stores are also changing their hours to allow staff to restock shelves and deep clean highly trafficked areas. To protect stock of more limited and in-demand items, some stores are even placing limits or are instituting non-refundable policies for those items. Major warehouse chains like Costco are limiting purchase of items while Winco is reducing it’s return policy and asking customers to “only purchase what [they] need.”
To promote health practices, other stores are restricting the number of people in lines and in certain high-traffic aisles within the store. With the CDC warning that senior citizens and those with existing health conditions are most at risk from COVID-19, stores are also making accommodations specific to “vulnerable” customers.
New Seasons, for example, is expanding its senior discount and dedicating the first hour of its operating hours to senior shoppers. Whole Foods is opening their stores an hour earlier just for shoppers over 60 and many other stores are following suit with similar policies.
Individual Portland citizens have also stepped up to ensure everyone is able to purchase items from the grocery. Barry Menashe, a local real estate developer, spent his Thursday afternoon handing out gift cards to Portlanders across the city. Seeking to ease problems with food security, he set out to give 1,500 $75 New Seasons gift cards.
In an interview with the Oregonian on March 19th, Menashe expressed the rationale behind this work, “This is a tough, sad time for the state, the city, the world.”
The Oregon Department of Heath expects to see crowds lessen sometime soon, so there is some hope for Portlanders.