DRAYTON – The battle against COVID-19 is being waged on many fronts.
While health care workers and emergency responders are on the front lines, retailers are adapting to a new landscape in which their customers must balance the need for essentials against direction to stay home as much as possible to avoid spreading the virus.
At Drayton Freshmart, that meant ramping up delivery service and establishing a system to allow customers to fulfil their needs, while minimizing traffic through the store.
Store owner Deb Ramage has also accepted the help of volunteers in order to meet the booming demand for home delivery.
Ramage says she has long felt remote ordering and grocery delivery would be a boon to many, but the numbers didn’t work.
“I did want to implement this years ago, but honestly nobody ever took me seriously about it and I didn’t have the capability to set myself up with online shopping because of the cost factor,” said Ramage, who has operated the Drayton grocery outlet for nearly a decade.
“I always did offer delivery service. However it wasn’t utilized.”
When the COVID-19 crisis hit four weeks ago, Ramage posted a notice online about offering deliveries.
“That day I had one … moving forward three weeks, we’ve got 60 a day,” she stated.
Initially Ramage filled delivery orders herself, but it quickly became apparent more help would be needed.
Community members stepped forward and a system of volunteer shoppers was created.
“We are really encouraging less foot traffic. We are reaching out to communities,” Ramage explained.
“We are reaching out to the Crest (Conestoga Crest seniors apartments), to the condos … to anyone really – letting them know we shop for you. There’s about 10 or 12 rotating volunteers right now.
“My daughter and I implemented a system where we are trying to do it mostly by email. So we are now phoning people if they provide us a phone number. We don’t want them phoning us,” said Ramage, noting staff members weren’t able to deal with the calls as they came in due to other duties.
“When we get downtime in the afternoon we can call them (to take orders) for the next day.”
Because older people are considered more at risk of developing severe symptoms if they contract the virus, “currently we’re urging older people to stop coming in,” said Ramage.
While the store has dedicated 8 to 9am as a time for senior shopping, “a lot of them are now doing the curbside pickup.”
Ramage said, “Volunteer shoppers pick the orders starting around 7am and we work until they’re done. So we’re getting much quicker, getting better at it, with less error.”
“The first week I picked orders, delivered and implemented it. Now I’m not picking,” she notes. “My daughter rings it in. I pack it up. We label the boxes either curbside or delivery and we have a numbering system that our volunteer Lee Baldwin, organized,” she explained.
Ramage said everything possible is being done to make it easy for people to get their groceries.
For those picking up pre-ordered goods at the store, “We will wheel it out to the car so they don’t even have to come in.”
Customers can also pay via e-transfer or visa, further reducing opportunities for contact.
For in-store customers at Drayton Freshmart and other grocery outlets, things are also looking different.
“We started with the sanitizing station (on) day one,” said Ramage. “As soon as (COVID-19) hit we had someone sanitizing, handing out wipes, wiping down the shopping carts.”
She also implemented a one-way flow through the store for customers and set up plexiglas to separate customers and cashiers.
Community response to the new services and changes has been extremely positive.
“They’ve been wonderfully fantastic, supremely fantastic,” said Ramage.
“The volunteers have been outstanding. I couldn’t do this without them. The community is listening to my pleas of ‘stay home, stay safe, flatten the curve.’”
Despite the disruption to normal routine, Ramage said sales at the store are actually up by about 60 per cent since the outbreak began to impact daily life.
“Our foot traffic, our customer count, is way down,” she said. “So that means people are listening and we’re flattening the curve here and I’m so proud of this community. They’ve done an amazing job.”
Ramage added the store is urging everybody to take advantage of the delivery service and she predicts demand for it could carry on even after current restrictions are lifted.
“I think our new way of shopping is going to be this way. I really do think this will go on,” she said.
“Maybe not as hectic and maybe not as panic-driven, but yes, I believe this is our new way of shopping.”
She noted she is “super proud” of everyone she’s worked with in the community.
“The township has really welcomed this sort of thing,” said Ramage.
“It’s been crazy. I have very good days and very bad days, but we’re improving the system as we go.”
