Amelia Rappaport, grocery team leader at Woodstock Farmers’ Market in Woodstock, Vt., spoke with Specialty Food News about navigating the current business environment amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Has anything unexpected happened during the pandemic?
Well, in order to concentrate our energy on keeping our original store running, we had to close our recently-opened new store, for now. We also have gone to all curbside pickup, click-and-collect model, with customers filling out an online order form and employees picking items for them.
Did you merchandise your store in any way to accommodate this new way of shopping?
We have set the store up so that it is easy for our employee pickers to find items and fill orders. Basically, that means no merchandising at all—we are pretty much tearing open boxes and making it convenient for us to pick.
If and when we open for limited customer shopping, we may have more grab-and-go options such as pre-packed salads from our deli case and bagged cookies in our bakery, which are right now full-service areas.
Are people buying differently?
People are certainly cooking! We are selling lots of pantry items such as pasta and rice, but also dry beans, soup mixes, flour, and yeast—things people use to make stuff from scratch. Normally we don’t see as much investment in foods that require a lot of time to prepare. Dairy is also a big seller—milk and yogurt.
Also, with curbside only, there is no impulse shopping. When you think about how you normally shop, even if you go to the store with a list, what you bring home probably is more than what you intended to buy. As a result, sales of chocolate bars and other snacks are way down.
How are you handling securing supply of hard to get items?
We are making it clear on our order form that we will make substitutions for popular items if we need to, although customers can opt for “no substitutions” if they prefer.
We have limited the number of options per category and just get more quantity of each—for example, instead of carrying 20 different pasta shapes, we just have four. Instead of 10 flavors of a particular yogurt we may just have the three most popular—and multiple cases of those three. We ask people to be flexible, and for the most part they are.
When we ran out of bagged flour, for example, we opened up the 50-pound sacks from our bakery and re-packed them into 5-pound plastic bags.
How are you protecting employees and what kind of social distancing are you implementing?
As our store is small, it is really hard to keep space between people. We are asking staff to wear masks and gloves, and to do their best to stay six feet apart. We are not currently allowing customers into the store, but when we do, we will ask them to wear masks, limit the number in the store at a time, and double down on sanitizing all high-contact surfaces. We are also looking into getting Plexiglas to shield our cashiers and deli staff from face-to-face contamination.
Are you giving back to your community in any way?
We are continuing to support the local farmers who supply us with an outlet for their products, and we are continuing to support our local food banks.
Do you expect any assistance from the government related to the Cares Act, for instance?
We will be relying on any assistance available to us.
What do you predict the future of shopping will be at your stores? What procedures may remain in place?
Our stores are small and in rural areas, but many of our customers have a primary residence in Boston or New York and are accustomed to the convenience of click-and-collect shopping. We’ve wanted to provide that service to our customers for a long time, and now we are making it a priority!
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