CORONAVIRUS panic-buying, stockpiling, empty shelves and long queues are a familiar sight in supermarkets across Coventry, Warwickshire and Solihull.
Sainsbury’s and Asda has announced that from today, (Wednesday March 18), customers will be limited to buying a maximum of three grocery items and two of the most popular products including toilet paper, soap and UHT milk.
Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe said: “We have enough food coming into the system, but are limiting sales so that it stays on shelves for longer and can be bought by a larger numbers of customers”.
In a blog post to customers Asda said: “Customers will only be able to buy up to three of any product across all food items, toiletries and cleaning products, so that all of our customers in stores and online have access to the products they and their families need.”
Iceland and Lidl are offering a ‘silver hour’ for elderly and vulnerable shoppers only. Elderly and vulnerable customers are also being prioritised at Sainsbury’s. Tomorrow, Thursday March 19, it will set aside the first hour in every supermarket for elderly and vulnerable customers and allocate dedicated online deliveries slots for the over 70s from next Monday (March 23).
Mr Coupe said: “If you or an elderly family member, friend or neighbour would like to shop during this hour, please check online for your local supermarket opening hours. For all other customers, supermarkets will open one hour after the published opening time. I hope that you can respect this decision and will work with us as we try our best to help those that need it the most.
“We will also help elderly and vulnerable customers access food online. From Monday, March 23, our online customers who are over 70 years of age or have a disability will have priority access to online delivery slots. We will contact these customers in the coming days with more details.
“For any online customer who can travel to our stores, from Monday March 23, we will operate an expanded ‘click and collect’ service. We are significantly increasing the number of collection sites across the country over the coming days in preparation for this.
“Customers can place their order online as usual and pick it up from a collection point in the store car park. Please let us know if you are self-isolating to help us provide this service for you too.”
Cafe and meat, fish and pizza counters will also be closed from tomorrow Thursday March 19 to enable more staff to help get more essential items onto the shelves, said the supermarket chief executive.
He added: “This means we can free up warehouse and lorry capacity for products that customers really need. It will also free up time for our store colleagues to focus on keeping the shelves as well stocked as possible.
“Everyone is working flat out in difficult circumstances to do their best to serve our customers. If you’re able to say thank you to them when you see them, I know they would hugely appreciate it.”
Aldi is limiting customers to four items of any one product during each visit and Tesco has cut its limit from five to two items on products including toilet roll, long-life milk, pasta and tissues.
Morrisons has also increased the amount of stock being sent to stores from warehouses, is extending its home delivery service and introducing limits on high demand products.
