Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Ronski]

Another email from Sainsburys.

Update from Sainsbury's Chief Executive Mike Coupe

Dear Ron,

I wanted to write to you again to update you on the steps we are taking to make sure everyone has access to food and essential items. I'm also sharing more information about how we are supporting our colleagues in these challenging times and how you can help.

An increasing number of you have told me that you're not always able to get the items that you need when you need them. We are working with our suppliers to get even more stock of essential items and we are adding warehouse capacity on a daily basis. You will have seen that we put restrictions in place this week to ensure that more products are on shelf for longer. From Monday 23rd March, we are consolidating our opening hours and all our supermarkets will be open from 8am to 8pm, Monday-Saturday, including those with an Argos store. Sunday opening, Sainsbury’s Local and petrol station opening times will stay the same.

This means we can focus our store colleagues’ time on keeping shelves stocked and serving our customers well during the times that most of you are already shopping.

Last Thursday, we set aside an hour for elderly and vulnerable shoppers in our supermarkets. Many of you have told me how much you appreciated this and that you would like this to become a regular event. Some of you also said we should extend this to members of our hardworking NHS and Social Care workers. And we will be doing just that.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, all our supermarkets will dedicate 8am - 9am to serving elderly, disabled and vulnerable customers, as well as NHS and Social Care workers. They will just need to show us their pass or ID when they visit. Some of you fed back that you couldn’t find what you wanted during that hour, so we will try our best to have essential items on shelf for these customers. We will be working to keep our shelves well stocked and would encourage customers to arrive throughout the hour to prevent queues forming and to help everyone keep a safe distance.

Hundreds of you have written to me to thank our amazing colleagues who are working around the clock to serve our customers. A number of you have also shared your concerns for the safety and wellbeing of our colleagues. I want you to know that we are doing all we can to support everyone who works in our business. We have committed to paying all colleagues who are unwell or need to self-isolate for the full period of fourteen days. We have also committed to paying vulnerable and elderly colleagues in full if the government decides they should isolate for 12 weeks. We hope this will go some way to helping our teams through this uncertain time and we are looking at other ways to thank our colleagues for their extraordinary efforts.

To keep our colleagues safe, I need to ask again for your help. Please do your best to stand one metre away from colleagues in our stores where you can. And we would prefer you to pay with card rather than cash at our tills. Please also treat our colleagues and other customers with kindness and respect. These are unprecedented circumstances and our colleagues are being asked to come to work every day while so many others are being asked to stay at home. We all need them to keep coming to work to feed the nation – a small thank you goes a really long way.

I hope you will join us in looking out for each other and the communities that we serve.

Best wishes

Mike

[Bowdon]

That is good from Sainsbury's.

It's about time these superstores started enforcing rules. Because its not like they have an incentive to stop people panic buying other than public outrage at it.

The main online shop I use is Ocado and considering it only as an online presense its totally fell on its backside.

From virtual queues, to shutting down the website for 4 days and saying it'll be open on Saturday. Now the message is saying only people who have current orders can login, and the old "don't contact us, we'll contact you" message is now on there.

The problem I see is that they can't tell who is who, from a casual shopper to people who pay a monthly fee for smartpass, or even just a long standing customers.

I think if these superstores won't enforce proper rules I can see a good case for the police and army getting involved.

[sevenlayermuddle]

One big step I’d like to see is complete cessation of multi buy offers.     Last time I visited Waitrose the shelves where toilet rolls might be was of course empty.  But the price labels were still there, boasting 2 for deals.

Lots of other 2 fors and 3 fors scattered around the shop, above mostly empty shelves, all encouraging greed and stockpiling.

[Ronski]

I wonder just how much food is going to go to waste, people being greedy and buying too much perishable food, which will go off or out of date before they use it.

[broadstairs]

Sainsburys and Tesco have no delivery or click&collect slots available for the next 3 week. Iceland only book 6 days in advance and don't have any slots. I think the government needs to step in and organise something so those in the age group they want to stay out of crowds can get this service. Sainsburys did say they would be able to identify those in the older groups from their existing database, but I don't see how as they never took age or DOB when we signed up, to prioritise this group for delivery etc.

Stuart

[sevenlayermuddle]

I wonder just how much food is going to go to waste, people being greedy and buying too much perishable food, which will go off or out of date before they use it.

Indeed.  When we treat ourselves to a roast chicken, I usually spend upwards of £10 for a decent free range specimen.    Yet waitrose (again) have had their sad-looking ‘essential’ whole chickens on 3 for £10 for ages now, long predating this panic buying.   I’ve often wondered how many of these wretched birds end up in landfill.

[johnson]

I think the government needs to step in and organise something so those in the age group they want to stay out of crowds can get this service.

During the day yesterday I saw a segment on the news that said morrisons was making food packages with lots of essentials in a single box that could be ordered by phone. First and last I have heard of it, but I believe its a sign the big shops are adapting.

[broadstairs]

Yes hopefully but the problem is that many of the younger people are doing home delivery to the exclusion of those in the groups the government wants to keep out of shops, so those people are being forced to shop in store defeating the object and exposing themselves to more risk. The idea of self rationing is alien to many younger folk and they simply don't see why they should. If everyone bought what they normally do each week and no more there would not be a problem.

Stuart

[sevenlayermuddle]

One problem I have been finding with home delivery is, lots of stuff will be missing come delivery day.    That creates an incentive to order more, say a cauliflower as well as a broccoli just to double your chances of getting either one or the other.  Not defending such habits, just pointing out it will be human nature to do so.

Our village newsletter came around today, offering a parish communal shopping service by volunteers, on behalf of those who are isolating or are ill.   Seems like a good idea to me, though the volunteer doing the shopping might need special dispensation to exceed individual item purchase limits.  Not sure how that would work.

[johnson]

Just been out to aldi and tesco.

Tescos had some empty aisles (I couldnt help but laugh at the one with the "household essentials" sign hanging above picked clean), but plenty of fruit and veg, decent amount of frozen stuff left.

Aldi was even better stocked, tins, pasta, jars. Loads of frozen stuff, lots of fresh fish.

The only thing missing from both was toilet roll, hey ho.

Edit: typo + was also great to see that almost all of the checkouts had 2 people on, a trainer and trainee. 

[jelv]

Not all the excess fresh food being bought may go off - I heard today that white goods shops are experiencing a run on freezers!

[Ronski]

Now that wouldn't surprise me.

[sevenlayermuddle]

Just had email from John Lewis partnership, all shops are ‘temporarily’ closing on Monday. 

That’s the Dept stores, Waitrose remain open.  They hint that Waitrose may even benefit, from redeployment of staff.

[Bowdon]

Another thing that is annoying is these supermarket sites let you fill up the basket and then at the end say there is no delivery slots. Even the click and collect slots are booked out.

Today I tried signing up to Sainsbury but it wouldn't let me. They have stopped people making new accounts. I signed up to Tesco and Iceland. But neither have slots available.

How are people managing to buy all the food? Most of the people I've seen look like they are on welfare.

The government needs to stop advising people and start enforcing it. It's not the 1950s were people are saying "oh sorry old chap.. have this toilet roll". The reality is enough greedy people are upsetting the system and unless this doesnt get under control I can see a public backlash.

[broadstairs]

I suspect with Sainsburys it could be that they are trying to come up with a way to identify oldies to give priority to them for slots. Both Sainsburys and Tesco allow you to see slot availability prior to ordering.

Stuart