When I’ve been to the grocery store there were endless dozens of people wandering around, and the virus can last in the air for hours. I’m assuming grocery stores are an infection point for the virus to spread.
In the US we already have options to buy your groceries online and either have them delivered to your home, or have them put them in your car in the parking lot.
Will this become mandatory in the near future as people fight the virus? Or do not enough people have reliable transportation, the extra money to pay for delivery, and internet access to make this idea work for the masses? This would work for most people in the west, but I could see the bottom 20% in socioeconomic status having trouble with this plan.
Costco has been limiting the number of people in the store at a time, among other infection control measures. I can see a midpoint being assigned time-limited shopping slots. Some stores are already setting aside the first couple of hours of the day for the elderly.
My local grocery store put yellow tape on the floor six feet from the cash registers and told shoppers to stay behind the line until called by a cashier. The cashier would call the next customer after the previous one left the checkout area.
Of course, customers were packed tight crowding behind the line.
My grocery store has delivery already. The website says there are long delays.
We have a friend with a bad illness. She doesn’t want to go to the store, and ordered online. Only half her order came. My wife went to a store this morning and reports that they are very short on perishables. The trouble with online ordering is that you can’t select alternate products real time.
At my store the on-line ordering system is overloaded. It’s taking 3 days to get your order, and even then, you only get what the shopper was able to find on the shelf.
I work and have worked in grocery stores for a long time and I doubt that they will go to delivery/carry-out only. They’re not geared for it. Every customer order would need a corresponding employee inside the store shopping for them and there aren’t that many of us. We don’t have a National Reserve of grocery store employees we can call on.
More likely is limiting the number of people at one time and temperature checks of anyone entering the store.
I also expect a strong police presence at stores to make sure everyone stays calm and to enforce the rules. I’ve already seen more police in and outside the store I’m at than I’ve ever seen before.
Grocery stores operate on razor thin margins, ramping up staffing is basically drag racing toward bankruptcy. The only reason i think this would be helpful is forced compliance of rationing on high demand items.
picking multiple customers is not as straightforward as it might seem especially as orders get larger/bulkier. picking 500+ orders a day even with some multitasking is not a small task. Places like amazon do it with massive amounts of automation.
The government mandating it would be a mess. What I could see them doing is mandating 10 people to the store* and strongly encouraging pick up/delivery.
You mentioned what I was thinking, that is, what’s the point of a line on the floor. The person at the register is still spitting distance from the cashier and everyone else is going to be ass to elbows, where they’re 10 feet back or not.
They almost have to put a piece of tape every X feet and have each person behind the next piece of tape.
I’m surprised a non-contact forehead thermometer works (in fact, I didn’t even know they existed). If you use a regular IR thermometer, it’ll measure surface temp (as opposed to body temp). Anytime I’ve tried a (regular) one on myself, it tends to be in the lower 90’s. Maybe a little higher in my mouth.
*or, to be realistic, 10 people not including the staff, and ramp it up for larger stores. A giant store the size of a Target could have 30 people in and you wouldn’t even know the others were there.
The grocery store closest to me has a new policy where they encourage older and high-risk individuals to come do their shopping between 7-9 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays and have asked those who do not fall into those categories to be respectful of these intentions.
It’s a start.
They do offer grocery delivery but not very far from the store. This is a rural community so delivery services are of limited use.
I’m not familiar with WM’s delivery service. Did he pay an annual fee for delivery, like Amazon’s Prime, or a fee for each delivery. If it’s the former, I’d be pissed.
I saw a snippet in the news last night where in Beijing, everybody entering the subway system was pausing at the turnstile while a guy in uniform aimed an IR gun at their forehead. Everyone was masked.
A major market down in the county seat offered order-picking with a 48-hour lead time. We made a list last night, hoping a reduced snowpack would free us on Saturday (tomorrow). Then they shifted policy and required scheduled pickup times. Those time slots went fast! Our soonest is Tuesday. Walmart suspended order-picking and won’t mail prescription meds so I’ll necessarily walk into the store for those - might as well grab health and food stuff too.
I’ve not checked on other big stores downhill amid population. Our small mountain markets are DEFINITELY not set for pickups and deliveries - not that anyone delivers on our mud track even without snow blockage. Will every market go to one entrance+exit with metered admission?