By Kenna S. Eaton, GM

One of the most common requests we’ve received over the past month is for curbside—or in our case, parking lot—pickup of groceries.  Our staff has been hard at work figuring out the details of how we could make such a program work, and the good news is that we think we have it figured out!

Earlier this month, three of our Board of Director members (Lisa, Monica, and Juri) and a group of wonderful volunteers jumped into the fray by offering to take, shop, and deliver orders two days a week. Word is that it is working quite well, and everyone has been super happy with this (free for now) service, except that we have run into a challenge with SNAP/EBT cards—see Note below. Luckily, we think we have a work around that we can debut shortly. Phew! Many thanks to our crew for getting this awesome program going. 

Now, based on their experience, we have designed another program we’re calling “Co-op2GO,” which we will be launching soon, with April 14 as the first Pickup day. Basically, using our website, you will type out your shopping list with as much information as you can provide, we’ll do the shopping, run it through the register, and then out to your car. You can expect us to call if we have any clarifying questions and again for payment (this part is changing as we explore our options, so look for more updates through email or on our website). Additionally, we are working to develop an online ordering platform that would allow you to see photos of our products and their prices and to enter your debit/credit card information at the time of purchase, but that will take us a bit longer to figure out. Thanks for your patience as we work through these new developments. And many, many thanks to all the wonderful staff and volunteers who have helped get us this far!

Recently, we have been asked to require staff and shoppers to wear masks. As you know, masks should be used in addition to physical distancing, not instead. Requiring shopper to wear masks means we would need to provide them at the entrance for everyone, and frankly we just don’t have nearly enough to hand out. We have provided reusable cloth masks and instructions on how to use them properly to our staff and have asked them to wear a mask when working at the Co-op.

Another suggestion we’re hearing is one-way arrows in our aisles. We’re looking into how those might work successfully in our somewhat organically laid out store, but in the meantime, we have added signage on the floor reminding everyone to keep a safe distance. Our staff are also sporting orange buttons that let everyone know that we are happy to help from six feet away.

Did you know our staff are sanitizing often touched surfaces such as door knobs and handles every two hours, sometimes more often, and we regularly deep clean shopping baskets? We also regulate the number of shoppers in our bulk room, and we clean those surfaces every 10-15 minutes! For all of this work and more, we are hearing lots of appreciation and thanks. In fact, one professional cleaner recently noted that we are doing way more than any other store or business they’ve worked with. That was music to our ears!

Another suggestion we’ve heard is to limit the number of shoppers in the store. The short answer is—that’s already happening on its own. We are seeing only about half as many customers every day as normal. When we’ve run the numbers, that’s an average of 30 shoppers at any one time versus the 66.66 people we technically have room for. So for now, we’ll continue to let shoppers self-regulate. (By the way, our volunteers shop on Sundays between 1 and 4 pm and Thursdays between 9:30 am and 12:30, so if you are concerned about number of shoppers, you might want to choose another time to shop.)

Lastly, thanks for washing your hands often, especially before entering the store; for ensuring that you keep a safe space between you and the other shoppers; and most of all, for supporting your community grocery store—you are the best!

NOTE:  We double checked at the WA Department Of Health and the WA Department of Social and Health Services, the entities that govern usage of SNAP/EBT, who re-affirmed that cashiers are never allowed to touch an EBT card, nor are they supposed to enter in a PIN. Only an authorized representative for the EBT holder is allowed to have to have the customer’s PIN, or both the authorized representative and the store could be stripped of EBT privileges.