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Grocery Stores Adopt New Measures

Lori Walsh: Grocery stores across the country are taking new measures to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 and to help the immunocompromised and elderly populations get the supplies they need. So grocery store workers themselves are on the front and center lines during the Coronavirus outbreak. Tina Potthoff Potthoff is Vice President of Communications at Hy-Vee Incorporated. She joins us now to discuss some of the measures she's seeing implemented at stores across the Midwest. Tina Potthoff, we know you're very busy so we really appreciate your time here for South Dakota public broadcasting listeners.

Tina Potthoff: Thank you very much for having me on today. I appreciate being able to talk to everyone.

Lori Walsh: Tell us first how Hy-Vee is responding to some of the panic buying that we saw early on here in South Dakota regarding fears about Coronavirus. How did workers and store managers really pull together to manage that?

Tina Potthoff: Well, it's definitely been interesting and unprecedented as we've all been experiencing this pandemic and our response to it and how the American people are responding to it too with their dollars and what they're doing at the retail level and the grocery level. The biggest thing that we initially saw was when the announcement first came out, there was panic and people went to the stores to buy up as essentially as much as they could to do the stockpiling for two weeks at a time. But you know there has been word that's been coming out saying that grocery stores will keep their doors open, and I think that's providing people with more comfort, especially as we proceed into the days ahead.

We're starting to see people experience more, they're still massively buying, but we're starting to see that even off a little bit as they realize I've got plenty of toilet paper, I've got plenty of frozen food items, I have plenty of canned good items. And so what we're starting to see is while the buying still is high, people are starting to level off and realize that I have plenty of items at home and they do start going back to my normal shopping behavior. It's a very similar to this COVID virus that we're watching with this cyclical cycle, right? You start to reach a peak and then you start to level off. And so essentially with grocery shopping, we're seeing the same thing. People are starting to level off their buying.

Lori Walsh: Is there a way to prepare for things that you predict in certain areas? So if we have an area, a community, a state like South Dakota where you know the infection rate is not incredibly high yet. Mostly because we don't have the testing. We don't really have those accurate numbers. But can you look into the future and say we think people are going to stockpile this or that or the other thing and prepare for it or is it more responsive?

Tina Potthoff: What we've been seeing is that a lot of people are concerned with purchasing bottled water, rice, macaroni and cheese. We've also seen the toilet paper. We've seen cold and flu items that have been more at demand items at our stores. The biggest thing that I want people to know is what we're encountering isn't a supply issue and it's an excessive demand issue. That we're still receiving supply from our suppliers. They're still producing like they normally would, but that you can only go so far with trying to meet the level of demand. So they tap out at a certain point when it comes to their capacity because they're producing at maximum capacity. So right now what we're seeing is we're getting the typical levels and we're asking for more and continue to ask for more as is every retail in the country for certain supplies. And we're getting some in certain areas, but in most of the cases we're getting the normal amount that we've been allocated, and then we're getting that shipped to our stores as quickly as possible.

Lori Walsh: Tell me a little bit about efforts to protect employees because those employees are, they're not trained doctors and nurses and suddenly the one place everybody has to go is their local grocery store, whether they have symptoms or not. Sometimes depending on a family situation.

Tina Potthoff: Well, the biggest thing that we want to do is protect the health and safety of not only our employees, but also our customers too. So we are starting to do things differently in the grocery store. What you used to see in the bulk food items where people could scoop up a bag of jelly beans or maybe Milk Duds or Malt Balls, that's no longer available. Also, when you go in and you try and grab a donut, the donut case has been closed off and everything is prepackaged. When you go into our convenience stores or dining areas, you're going to see that those dining areas are closed. We're taking that as precaution and in our convenience stores, you won't be able to go in and refill your own mug. We want you to take a new coffee cup or a new plastic cup and be able to fill that for the time being. So we are implementing other measures.

There are other things too. We might have convenient stores that would normally serve popcorn that people could go in and get on their own, and we've stopped those things because we want to take every single measure that we can. The biggest thing I think that you'll start to see in our stores across our eight state region is that we have purchased plexiglass shields that will go at the checkout lanes over the next couple of days. They started to be installed in the Des Moines area. They'll be installed across all of our eight states in the upcoming days at our stores. And this is the part of the grocery store where you really can't have enough space, you're just kind of locked in there going through the checkout. So the cashier is in one location and the customer's in another and there is never an area where you can actually have more space than you really want.

So we've installed a plexiglass shield that will be a... It's a slight barrier. It's a temporary barrier as we're all going through this time, but it will be in front of the customer and also be in front of the cashier. So as you're doing the transaction, you do have a little bit more of a barrier that's there versus just relying and keeping our fingers crossed on the spacing issues. So social distancing, we're trying to practice that in our stores to. But at any place in the store, you can maintain that distance when you're walking around the store. The checkout line's a little bit different.

Lori Walsh: Tell me a little bit about different hours, changing hours, some of those. So hours are being adjusted for restocking and some are being offered to people who are in the more vulnerable population. What can you tell me about that?

Tina Potthoff: Sure, so our typical store hours have now gone to 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM across our eight state region at our main grocery stores. The other thing is our convenience stores are still the normal time slots that they have been since before this even began. So those have not changed. You can still get your gas and other snacks and other items at the normal times that you would. We did open up all of our stores from seven until 8:00 AM for three populations of individuals. One will be pregnant moms. Those who are over the age of 60 and anyone who considers themselves to be at risk, at a higher risk, for this particular disease. We do know that there are many Americans that have various diseases or ailments that may consider them to be more at risk and so that hour in the morning from seven to eight is when they can stop by our stores. Our pharmacies will be open at that time as well.

Lori Walsh: Delivery. Is Hy-Vee still delivering in the communities that it delivers to?

Tina Potthoff: We are. That's a really good thing to mention right now because as you can imagine, the demand for our aisles online service has skyrocketed here recently. We were starting to see just in general a trend towards more people shopping online over the past several months before we even hit coronavirus, but now what we're seeing is that a massive influx of brand new customers are coming to our aisles online site and trying to do their shopping there. We are working with third party providers in many markets. I wouldn't say all of them, but many markets where we're working with people like Door Dash or Shipt to be able to make those deliveries for us that we can continue to fill the orders at the stores. We also are opening up additional pickup slots at the stores so customers can come by and pick up their groceries, and I do encourage our customers to please check the website first for times of pickups and deliveries before they start placing their order because that's an easier way to see if there are time slots available for the time that you want versus placing the order and then selecting the time slot.

Lori Walsh: Tell us a little bit about the ban on reusable bags because some people are needing help making the connection. It seems like if the bag comes from my house, I have an understanding of its germ exposure, but a bag from the store is a bag from the store. Tell us why that decision was made please.

Tina Potthoff: Sure. So we know that when we're packaging with and we want to make sure we're keeping our sustainability initiatives first and foremost. I mean we all feel the same way, right? You know, reusable bags have definitely been in that category of sustainability, but we're in different times right now. We have to do what's best to protect the health and safety of our customers and employees. So what we've done is we've temporarily banned the use of reusable bags at our stores. We will give you a fresh bag, whether it be paper or plastic at our stores so that those individuals get a brand new fresh bag that no one has touched other than the bag room who's backing your groceries and you know that your groceries are safe. With regards to reusable bags, we've just seen some reusable bags that maybe haven't been washed the best way that they could. We really don't know where the reusable bag has come from. So to protect the safety of our employees too. And also the fact that that reasonable bag is sitting at the same place where you'd have a normal bag. We want to make sure that we're using due diligence in that area.

Lori Walsh: Tell me a little bit about your efforts for employees. And then I know you are very busy so we'll let you go after this one. But talking to your employees about staying home if they have symptoms and when you work in a job where everything is very, very important right now, it's so important that they show up for work. It might be tempting to have a fever in the morning and just say I've got to get there. Talk about communication with employees about their own wellness and how they can prevent bringing that to the store and other employees.

Tina Potthoff: Right. Our employees understand that this point in time, they are really a first responder of some sort, right? I mean we're essentially an emergency service, a critical need that people are relying on that we stay healthy ourselves, that we can service our customers. We have talked tirelessly with our employees about this and we also do a regular walk around to the stores just to make sure everybody's doing okay. Not only from a health standpoint but from a mental standpoint too. This is a lot for everyone, for our customers, for our employees. And so we want to make sure that everyone's being able to handle it correctly, but we especially want to make sure that our employees are staying safe and that they know if they had any symptom whatsoever, even a minor cold, that they're required to stay at home and not be at the store. So we continuously do walk arounds and make sure that our employees are indeed healthy.

Lori Walsh: Tina Potthoff is vice president of communications at Hy-Vee, Inc. She joined us today to talk about a supply chain and please don't hoard items. The supply chains are functioning. Tina Potthoff, thank you so much. We appreciate your time.

Tina Potthoff: Thank you so much.

You can access all of SDPB's COVID-19 coverage at www.sdpb.org/covid

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