Despite enhanced public health measures announced last week by the province, a local grocery wants to make sure there are enough supplies for everyone.
Earlier this year, items -such as toilet paper- were in short-supply in grocery stores, and Peace Country Co-op General manager, Stephen Suvanto says the company is taking precautions to reduce the chances of shortages.
“Our suppliers are holding back to make sure everyone can get various items,” he says.
“If we see massive amounts of specific items going out the door, we will be setting limits and that will be monitored by my department managers to make sure everyone gets what they need for the Christmas season.”
Suvanto, who has Co-op locations in Peace River and Grimshaw tells us based on the limit of 15 percent of a building’s capacity, both stories can have 58 customers inside at any given time; and that does not include store employees.
He does not expect that to cause any major problems.
“Our customers are pretty consistent,” explains Suvanto.
“We don’t expect to be hitting any of those limits except maybe during peak-hours and then we are doing hourly counts to make sure we do not exceed those limits.”
Suvanto adds that staff regularly sanitize the carts and other areas of high traffic within each store and has sanitary wipes at the front of each store as well.
He also says revenues are up in one area since the start of the pandemic, but down in another.
“Our food sales have definitely gone up since the start of COVID but what has really been hurting us is our fuel sales have dropped,” he points out.
“As much as our food sales have gone up, our fuel sales have gone down since no one is travelling so I would say our revenue has remained flat.”
He also tells us he has not had to lay off any staff and even increased hiring.
– Kenny Trenton, Trending 55 Newsroom
