NEWS

Grocers see lasting changes from pandemic response

Staff Writer
Fosters Daily Democrat
Karen Weston, one of the owners of Janetos Market in Dover takes a phone order from an elderly woman last month as impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic changed life on the Seacoast. [Deb Cram/Fosters.com, file]

Editor’s note: This article is part of the Rebuilding America series, which explores the reopening of the nation and the Seacoast following the shutdown caused by the novel coronavirus.

DOVER — The coronavirus pandemic has caused consumers to panic buy and hoard items at the grocery store, but as the economy reopens, local industry leaders in the supply chain are confident they’ll come back more resilient and prepared for the next global health crisis, whenever it may occur.

Seacoast Sunday spoke with grocers and distributors to ask what they’ve learned from the pandemic and how the food industry can best position itself to respond to another similar event.

John Dumais, president of the New Hampshire Grocers Association, said many of store-imposed precautions to reduce COVID-19 transmission within individual supermarkets are likely here to stay for at least the near future, such as the social distance guidelines for customers and sneeze guards to protect cashiers.

“Employees will still be wearing masks for a while, we’ll ask customers to be mindful of social distancing for a while. Those things will likely continue through the summertime and that is if everything goes well,” Dumais said. “Salad bars, olive bars within the stores, pick your own muffins in the bakery sections; those might not come back for a while.”

Karen Weston, owner of Janetos Market in Dover, said until a vaccine is made widely available, she anticipates her staff will continue to wear masks and the sneeze guards will remain up in her store.

“We’ll have these safety guards in place at least until the point where a vaccine is available,” she said. “It’s going to be up to each individual business owner to make sure precautions remain intact as the economy reopens.”

Marc Saunders owns M. Saunders Wholesale Fruit & Produce, a Somersworth family-owned wholesaler for more than 110 years. He said in the short term, through the warmer months, the “native product” produce, like berries and corn, grown on Good Agricultural Practice-certified New England farms will reduce the need for his company to ship products from California, reducing the number of people who handle his produce and decreasing transmission risk.

“These are true organic products,” Saunders said. “I’ve known these farmers for 40 years and they are some of the finest people who will keep the (produce) economy going in the summertime. We’re going to come back a stronger nation because of the pandemic. It’s taught us to act to protect the consumer and protect worker safety. It has to be the number one priority.”

Chris Barstow, president and CEO of Favorite Foods Inc., a Somersworth family-owned independent restaurant distributor, said his restaurants that embraced takeout-only service are only doing roughly 20% of their normal business. He said to ensure the survival of his business, he will look to diversify the types of businesses he sells to, beyond restaurant customers.

“We’re looking to diversify so that were not so dependent on one segment of the food market,” Barstow said. “But our strategy right now is doing everything we can to have product here for when our customers reopen. It’s a learning process because we cover three different states opening on varying schedules with varying restrictions how they’re going to reopen.”

Weston said she thought it would be near impossible to build costs associated with future pandemic preparedness planning into her future operations, saying it would be unfair to pass such costs along to her customers.

“There’s no way we can plan on having another pandemic,” she said. “In my whole lifetime, nothing like this has happened, so how do you plan for something that may happen 50 years in the future, or not? We have to address shortages day-to-day, so some things you can plan for and some you can’t; food items and food products, you can’t.”

Dumais said, in time, he hopes supermarkets again become gathering places for small communities where friends and neighbors bump into each other and talk about pressing community issues and catch up on local news.

“It won’t be as casual as it was before, stores will be extra careful and really check on their employees; does this worker have a cold?” Dumais said. “The consumer has to have confidence in the sanitary quality of the store.

“It’s a hallmark of the industry dating back to the early 1900s. The general store was the central meeting place in a community and today the supermarket is the modern version of that. People enjoy going to the store to see the new products and specials, meeting their neighbors. That will all return in time.”

Employees will be wearing masks and customers will be asked to be mindful of social distancing for a while.

Salad bars, olive bars, pick your own muffins in the bakery may not come back for a while.

LASTING CHANGES AT GROCERY STORES