Woolworths at South.Point in Tuggeranong is one of 41 Woolies stores across the country that will have its trading hours reduced to 11am to 6pm from today, Thursday 26 March.
In a media statement, Woolworths said the move has been taken “to support prioritising the delivery of groceries to the homes of vulnerable customers”.
These 41 ‘Priority Delivery Hubs’ will use the additional hours the stores are not open to customers to pick online orders, with a focus on meeting the increased demand from ‘Priority Assistance’ customers which includes the elderly, people with disability, those with compromised immunity and people in mandatory isolation.
In addition to the ‘Priority Delivery Hubs’, Woolworths is:
- Operating dedicated early shopping hours during the week for the elderly and those with a disability.
- Committing additional support to leading Australian hunger relief charities OzHarvest, Foodbank and Fareshare.
- The delivery of more than 75,000 packs of toilet rolls to date to Meals on Wheels for distribution to elderly in the community via their network of volunteers.
Woolworths Group CEO Brad Banducci said: “To help support getting basic food and essentials to those that need it most, our teams have been doing everything they can to scale up online and home deliveries to the elderly, people with disabilities or those in mandatory self-isolation.
“Following an extraordinary level of demand for groceries in recent weeks, reducing trading hours in a small number of our stores to turn them into ‘Priority Delivery Hubs’ will help us assist more people who can’t access a store to get products they need.”
Social distancing in stores
Woolworths has also rolled out some further measures in stores to support the health and wellbeing of team and customers. These include:
- A store greeter to wipe down baskets, trolleys and direct customers to the notice board for key social distancing, trading hours and product limit information.
- Closing some registers in the self-serve and express checkouts to provide additional space between customers in those areas.
These are in addition to social distancing measures that were implemented by Woolworths earlier this week, including beginning to install plexiglass screens at registers, informative signage to support social distancing in stores and additional cleaning and hygiene processes.
