An email from Stong's, a supermarket where we do a lot of shopping: Working Together To Keep Our Community Safe. Excerpt and then a comment:
To our Valued Guests,
As the coronavirus COVID-19 affects communities across Canada, we want to update you on what we are doing at Stong’s. Our entire team of almost 300 strong have been working diligently to keep our stores running. Our supply chain remains robust and we are working around the clock to replenish our shelves. The number of people looking to use our on line shopping service has been overwhelming and we continue to add resources to try and address this challenge.
As your local community grocery store, our number one priority is to keep our customers and our team members safe. In addition to the steps I outlined in my communication last week, we continue to make changes as the situation evolves. Some of the changes we are making include, but are not limited to:
Store Hours – effective immediately our store hours have changed to 8am – 9pm daily
Special shopping hours – On Wednesdays and Fridays, we will open our doors one hour early as a special shopping hour for seniors and those at risk
New Signage – installation of visual reminders for all visitors to practice social distancing
Reusable Grocery bags –for customers that choose to bring their own shopping bags, we will ask for your help to please bag your own groceries.
Online shopping – we are actively hiring and putting out a call for volunteers in the community to assist those that are unable to get out and shop.
For everyone that has visited our stores, you would have noticed some of the actions we have already taken:
• We have suspended the sale of any self serve ready to eat foods including our salad bars, bulk foods, hot soup and bulk bakery products
• We have removed all indoor seating to encourage social distancing
• We have added janitorial staff devoted strictly to the increased cleaning and sanitizing of all high touch areas throughout the store
• We have reduced the hours in our café, which will allow us to redeploy our resources to more essential services within the store
How you can help us:
• Practice proper social distancing. Keep your distance from other customers whenever and wherever possible
• Please shop in store if you are able, and leave our on line shopping service for those that are unable to leave their homes at this time.
• Recognize the efforts of our team in store. Please show kindness to all, as a community, we will all get through this if we all support one another.
At Stong’s we are committed to doing our best to ensure our stores offer a safe shopping and working environment and help keep our communities safe. We will continue to monitor all public health departments advisories and, when appropriate and available, update you on how we are adapting our store practices with everyone’s safety in mind.
Thank you for your continued support. Stay safe!
Meanwhile, just a block away from Stong's on Dollarton Highway, Deep Cove Brewers and Distillers have dropped their excellent lunches; they are now off-sales only. As a loyal fan of their Tin Can ale, I hope that they too stay safe, but they really need to update their website right away.
