Grocery stores adapt to a new world
Operators shift gears as COVID-19 accelerates consumers’ switch to online shopping model
Brianne Miller isn’t sure when she will let her customers roam freely in Nada grocery store again, but it won’t be soon.
When advice came down from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control that self-serve bulk sales at grocery stores be halted due to COVID-19, about 75 per cent of her business came under direct threat.
While major grocers simply put their bulk bins of dried cereal, grains and beans behind yellow tape, Miller had to instantly reorganize her business, which specializes in unpackaged, local, organic and ethically sourced foods. “At that point, our team had to start filling containers for people and our customers were no longer allowed to bring their own containers so we offer a choice of recycled paper bags or jars on deposit,” she said.
For a couple of months, customers were allowed in parts of the store a few at a time to pick their own produce, dairy and eggs, but even that became difficult to manage and too stressful for frontline staff.
Miller now offers her entire product line for orders online and allows “express line” walk-up orders of five items or less. Her customers are buying three times as much each time compared with the preCOVID-19 period, all of which has to be assembled and packaged by her staff.
“We aren’t recouping any of the cost of doing that, we’ve just decided to absorb that cost for now,” she said.
Industry watchers say the pandemic has accelerated adoption of online grocery shopping by about five years.
Walmart is filling “tens of thousands of orders a day” through walmart.ca and providers such as Instacart and Cornershop, a company spokesperson said.
The retail and grocery giant has expanded online shopping to 60 additional stores across Canada, including five in B.C. Walmart has also launched a phone-in grocery ordering service for eligible seniors, people with disabilities and people with health vulnerabilities.
Many grocery store chains were just dabbling in online merchandising before the novel coronavirus changed the rules of retail. They were swamped with orders from customers who were leery of any human contact when physical distancing measures were introduced in March.
The IGA in Gibsons was filling around two dozen online orders a week earlier this year, but that was before the provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, prohibited gatherings of more than 50 people and required lineup controls at stores. Online orders ballooned to more than 400 a week before settling down to about 150 to 170 orders a week in June, according to owner-operator Bob Hoy.
The only in-store changes obvious to shoppers are the lineup dots and sneeze guards at the cash register, but the cost of increased labour has quickly eclipsed those onetime expenses.
The cost of paying staff to shop for online orders, not to mention security staff and continuous sanitizing, has yet to be fully reckoned.
“We are spraying everything constantly, so our cleaning costs are about 10 times higher, and at the peak I paid 370 hours to filling orders,” he said. “We are working on our quarter end (report) now to get a better understanding of how COVID-19 impacted our bottom line.”
He can only hope to make up for increased costs with booming sales of soft drinks, Kettle chips and Hawkins Cheezies.
Online shoppers are fairly satisfied by the online shopping experience, although many complain that it is nearly impossible to schedule ordering and pickup to take advantage of flyer sale prices.
“I am disabled and high risk, so the service is indispensable for me,” said Cherie Chalmers of Campbell River. “I do most of our online shopping at Thrifty Foods, they have been doing online shopping for years and they also deliver prescriptions.”
Grocers that were relatively new to the online market were swamped by the volume of orders in March, leading to delays of a week or more in delivery.
Abbotsford senior Lynn Perrin hasn’t left her property since the trouble began in early March. She had ordered groceries online before, but it has now become her routine.
“I hung on after a shaky start ordering from Save-OnFoods,” she said. “You have to time your order and delivery carefully to take advantage of Thursday to Wednesday flyer prices.”