by Kirsten Moore, Cooperative Services Director
At the time of writing, epidemiologists at Dane County saw a rise in COVID-19 incidents every week for five weeks throughout the southern region that also includes the counties of Adams, Columbia, Dodge, Grant, Green, Iowa, Jefferson, Juneau, Lafayette, Richland, Rock, and Sauk. Over the past two weeks, more than 5% of all COVID-19 tests have come back positive in Dane County, and statistics point to community spread, making contact tracing difficult. As things continue to play out, we expect the temporary precautions we initially implemented to become more long-term as we look into the future. That means we must continue to evaluate our practices for practicality, efficiency, and safety.
Current Hours
Store hours have held steady at 8:00am-8:00pm daily for East and West and 9:00am-8:00pm daily for North. We continue to ask customers to reserve the hours prior to 10:00am daily for those who are seniors or who have compromised immune systems. We have had customers ask whether hours will return to normal, and we currently do not have a timetable for that. Opening later and closing earlier has allowed for our employees to do more of the cleaning and stocking that needs to be done on the retail floor without customers being present. This is safer for both customers and employees to distance and allows for employees to do a more thorough cleaning job when there are less people present. If we opened earlier and closed later, we would likely need to add hours to the beginning and end of our employees’ shifts. This would cost the Co-op more in labor and we are not currently in a financial position to add more labor to the workday. So the hours remain what they are, for now.
Face Coverings
The Co-op is pro-face coverings, and we believe that wearing one will keep you and our employees safe when you shop. Employees have been required to wear face coverings since April (medical exemptions have been requested by less than one percent of our staff). Since that time, we have encouraged our customers to wear face coverings as well. However, once Dane County began its Forward Dane phasing to reopen businesses, we started to notice that fewer and fewer people were bringing face coverings to shop at the Co-op. Consensus among employees and management alike, as well as many customers, was that simple encouragement was no longer the safest way to protect those within the Co-op’s walls, and so we made face coverings mandatory the last weekend of June, a couple weeks ahead of the County’s Emergency Order #8, which made face coverings required across the area. We implemented and have been refining our procedures around face coverings based on guidance from the CDC, OSHA, and Public Health Madison & Dane County.
All employees, customers, and business partners must wear face coverings over their mouth and nose when in line to enter the Co-op, inside the Co-op, and when interacting with Co-op employees on Co-op premises indoors or outdoors. Accommodations can be made for those who meet certain criteria per County ordinance for not wearing a face covering. We do offer disposable masks to those who arrive without a mask, and we also have adult- and child-sized face coverings available for sale. Thank you for your cooperation and for keeping our employees and the community safe.
Please Pay with Debit or Credit If You Can!
Like many other businesses, we’ve been asking customers to pay with credit or debit since COVID-19 began, since using a credit or debit card requires less points of touch for our shoppers and reduces the amount of cash and coins our employees in the Front End and Finance have to handle. Individuals, too, have been more reluctant to use cash and coin, as money that has been in circulation is simply not very clean. This reluctance to circulate cash, as well as some social distancing and safety measures implemented at the US Mint, has caused a slow in coin production as well as an overall shortage in small bill and coin circulation. That means that when you pay for your groceries with cash, if you do not pay with exact change, it is harder for your Co-op to guarantee that we will have change to give you.
Due to the current situation, we continue to ask those who are able to please use credit or debit when you shop. When you pay with a credit or debit card, you help us keep the cash and coins we have on hand available for change to give to those who have to pay with cash. We are also no longer selling rolls of coins to customers, nor exchanging cash or coins for other denominations of cash or coin. We will only give change back from a purchase. If you are looking for rolls of quarters or other change, or to exchange cash or coin, we recommend contacting local credit unions or banks to see if they can provide the support you need.
Reusable Bags
We are in the middle of some long discussions at the Co-op about reusable bags, now that the CDC’s studies are showing that people are less likely to catch COVID-19 by touching surfaces or objects than through aerosolized droplets produced when people talk, cough, and sneeze. We want to bring back reusable bags, and hopefully at a later time, other reusable systems, in a safe and hygienic way.
When we first banned reusable bags to prevent the spread of COVID-19, it was about the potential for spreading disease from surfaces, and we did not know how long we would be in this situation. We had initially planned to bring back reusable bags as soon as we didn’t have to maintain social distancing and could open all the lanes again. Now reality is settling in, and we see that we may be practicing social distancing at the registers for a fairly long time.
Our Front End departments currently would prefer a system where when shoppers bring reusable bags in, they must bag them themselves. They would prefer this because unfortunately not everyone brings in reusable bags that are as clean as they should be for expecting others to handle them, and we respect that valid concern. When register lane traffic is light, having customers bag their own groceries is no problem whatsoever, but when lines are long, we want to move people through the lanes as quickly as possible so that they don’t need to be indoors any longer than necessary. It’s challenging for us to keep the lines moving when we can’t help shoppers bag groceries safely and currently the safest way for our Front End to do that is by offering paper bags. We also cannot reduce the lines by opening more lanes, because keeping every other lane closed is the only way we can adequately maintain social distancing for our cashiers.
Currently, customers are allowed to bring their bags into the store with them, they do not need to be left in a vehicle or outside. However, if a customer wishes to use those bags to pack their groceries, they can ask the cashier to reload groceries to the shopping cart instead of packing them. Then, the customer can pack their own bags outside after checkout. When you do opt to pack your own groceries after checkout, you can let the cashier know how many bags you have, and we will make a contribution to the Double Dollars Fund for your efforts.
We recognize this is not ideal at all, and are talking about different solutions to implement soon, solutions that take into account good hygiene, keeping the lines at checkout flowing, and our ability to reduce paper bag use.
Cart Cleaning and Baskets
Throughout the spring and early summer, it was very challenging for us to get cleaning wipes, and so we were not able to offer them to customers to wipe down carts before or after use. To mitigate this, our employees were cleaning each cart after each use with a slightly messy spray solution. At East and West, we had to do this work outside, and at North, this work had to be done in the foyer. This was a challenging process, that took a lot of labor, a lot of space all day long, and also was subject to conflicts with weather at two of our stores.
Pre-saturated cleaning wipes are still hard to come by these days. However, at West and North we have successfully implemented self-cleaning stations, where customers can take cleaning wipes that we saturate with our own cleaning solution, and wipe their carts down. We will eventually be offering this service at East as well. The new system is proving to be much more efficient and cost-effective. Carts will still be cleaned by employees on a daily routine, but it will be a lot easier, faster, take up less space, and be
less dependent on weather for shoppers to be able to give their carts a quick wipe when they enter the store.
Also, at the time of writing, West began piloting a program to offer shopping baskets again, with a new cleaning regimen in place. We look forward to learning from their efforts for the other stores and continuing to make improvements to both our basket and cart services.
Wellness Any Day Virtual Coupons
We still do not want to encourage Owners to all visit the store on one particular day during the pandemic, as this could cause long waits and make the stores crowded throughout the day. Therefore, we continue to offer the Wellness Any Day virtual coupons in lieu of a Wellness Wednesday. Make sure to take advantage of this great monthly benefit! Simply plan for purchasing the health and beauty care products you need ahead of your trip, then when you get to checkout and provide your Owner number, ask the cashier to apply your Wellness Any Day coupon to receive your one-time 10% off discount for the month.
Self-Service/Bulk Update
At this point in time, the Forward Dane plan and the County’s Emergency Order #8 still includes a prohibition on “customer dispensing of bulk food items and condiments,” and requires us to “except for produce areas, cease any customer self-service operations of all unpackaged food, such as salad bars, and buffets.” Our understanding has been that once the County moved Forward Dane into Phase Three, we could resume at least self-dispensing of bulk groceries. However, since we may be in Phase Two for quite awhile, the Co-op is starting to consider some longer range plans for these products that are important to our Co-op Owners and customers. We do not have more updates regarding this at this time.
Veggie And Fruit Boxes Available Through September
Order-ahead fruit and local veggie boxes are available for touchless pickup and we are still accepting subscriptions for the month of September! Visit www.willystreet.coop/boxes for details. Weekly pickup days and times scheduled for each retail location.
Staying Safe in the Moment While Always Looking Ahead
As the pandemic will likely continue through the fall months and we need to also be prepared for taking precautions in winter, your Co-op is discussing all kinds of ideas related to capacity counting, our pickup and delivery service, curbside options, the holidays and more. We continue our commitment to doing our best to provide the best working and shopping environment we possibly can during these challenging and unprecedented times for our community. As always, we will do our level best to keep you informed of new developments and continue to work with our community partners to keep the Co-op community healthy. We continue to express gratitude for our Board of Directors, our suppliers, our benefits providers, Public Health Madison and Dane County, UE 1186, and all our employees, Owners, and managers for their steadfast commitment to our safety. Thanks for your cooperation with us.