Photo courtesy Kathryn Whitlock, APR
Starting today, 120+ plexiglass barriers will be installed at all Sendik’s Food Market stores in an effort to protect customers and employees.
“Nationwide, grocers are doing everything we can to best protect health,” says Ted Balistreri, co-owner of Sendik’s. “Earlier this week, we began to design and fabricate the shields that could best work for our checkout lane configurations, and we’ve repurposed our internal teams to construct and install them immediately.”
The 30” x 36” plexiglass shields sit on top of the register system and extend roughly six feet off the ground, providing a divider between the checkout worker and customer.
Shields have been the latest technique being employed by essential needs retailers nationwide. Sendik’s believes it is one of the first to have them installed locally and is pleased others are doing the same thing, according to Balistreri.
Along with the barriers at the checkout, other health-first safety measures are going into place. Stores will now have a dedicated associate to wipe down and sanitize shopping carts at the entrances. They’re requesting a time for at-risk customers to shop for an hour before regular openings, starting at 7 a.m. Locations will temporarily suspend all in-store food and beverage sampling events, along with a suspension of self-service bars for salad, soup and hot food. Stores will increase the frequency of routine cleaning on all high-touch areas throughout the stores. Limits on products in high demand will be set. In-store returns will also be suspended temporarily. Third party cleaning service will be used each night to clean the stores for eight hours.
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“Today’s installation is an example of our industry working together to best continue to meet the daily needs in our community,” says Balistreri.
