On May 1st, Governor Sununu’s Economic Reopening Taskforce announced new guidelines for retail establishments operating in New Hampshire. We were pleased to see that most of these recommendations and mandates were already being followed here at the Co-op, and had been for quite some time. Among those many notable procedures not already mentioned above are:
- All co-op staff must wear cloth face coverings at all times in the workplace.
- All co-op staff have been trained on proper mask wearing and hand washing.
- Hand sanitizer stations have been set up in all departments, each register, and around the store for shopper use.
- All co-op staff are screened daily before reporting to work with a temperature check from a touchless thermometer as well as a series of health questions regarding COVID exposure and symptoms.
- Signage must be in place inside and outside the store promoting cloth face covering use and 6-foot social distancing reminders.
- All co-op staff are empowered to monitor and enforce the compliance to social distancing practices of customers and staff alike.
- Customer self bagging promoted at the front end to reduce exposure of one more staff member per register.
- Curbside pickup service established to assist medically vulnerable or elderly shoppers.
We are also constantly monitoring the number of customers within the store at any given time to make sure we do not exceed the 50% total capacity mandated by the governor. As of yet, even during our busiest peaks we are well below that number, but we will continue to monitor to make certain. We have limited the number of shopping carts to assist in this measure, so if you arrive and there are no carts available, please be patient and wait for the next cart.
