Texas
Related: About this forumInside the Story of How H-E-B Planned for the Pandemic
The grocer started communicating with Chinese counterparts in January and was running tabletop simulations a few weeks later. (But nothing prepared it for the rush on toilet paper.)
The coronavirus pandemic has transformed the country in just a handful of weeks. As Americans focus on the essentialsfeeding our families and ensuring we have the necessary supplies to keep our households clean and safegrocery stores and pharmacies have demonstrated just how crucial they are to a functioning society.
Weve seen chains struggle with the challenges the current crisis presents. Some stores are instituting policies limiting the numbers of shoppers allowed in at a time, creating long waits to enter. Perhaps even worse, other stores are not, leaving their shops a free-for-all without adequate social distancing measures. Staples like flour and yeast, to say nothing of hand sanitizer and toilet paper, are proving difficult to find on shelves. Supply chains are taxed. And the conditions faced by employees vary wildly by chain, with stores developing new (sometimes controversial) policies around sick leave for the workers who have proved themselves essential, and often doing so on the fly.
San Antonio-based H-E-B has been a steady presence amid the crisis. The company began limiting the amounts of certain products customers were able to purchase in early March; extended its sick leave policy and implemented social distancing measures quickly; limited its hours to keep up with the needs of its stockers; added a coronavirus hotline for employees in need of assistance or information; and gave employees a $2 an hour raise on March 16, as those workers, many of whom are interacting with the public daily during this pandemic, began agitating for hazard pay.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/food/heb-prepared-coronavirus-pandemic/
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)Thanks for posting.
Turbineguy
(37,361 posts)Dead people don't need groceries.
ResistantAmerican17
(3,810 posts)HEB has been there for us. People still the best in the biz!
Aquaria
(1,076 posts)But also the delivery system. There's a huge bottleneck right now with getting stuff on shelves, because there aren't enough transportation mechanisms and personnel to get the supplies between food sources to distribution centers to retail stores to get shelves restocked. Truckers, especially, are pulling long shifts and getting no days off. My husband said that some of the guys delivering stuff to his HEB are dead on their feet when they get there, and they have more loads to pick up before calling it a day.
It's only now that people are realizing how vital truckers are to our lives of food abundance.
This situation won't last forever now that the panic buying is calming down, but it will take a while to sort out.
Gothmog
(145,481 posts)Link to tweet
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Gothmog
(145,481 posts)From the article cited in OP
Justen Noakes: What we really started seeing first was runs on N95 masks. I think people were sending the masks back home to their families, and it started exponentially increasing at that point, particularly around cleaning supplies, disinfectant, things of that nature. But I dont think anybody saw the toilet paper rush coming.
Craig Boyan: We did not see runs on toilet paper as one of the first things to go out of stock. That was something we still kind of have a hard time understanding
TexasBushwhacker
(20,209 posts)in the company to their employees based on length of service and their salary. They started it in 2015 and plan on granting 15% of the company in total.