“We continue to see increased demand for everyday goods,” Migros spokesman Patrick Stöpper told the AWP news agency. At the top of the shopping list are baking ingredients, side dishes, preserves, eggs, meat, vegetables and washing and cleaning products as well as household and toilet paper.
“In the branches, the situation with the empty shelves seems to be calming down slowly,” says Stöpper. The “droplet system” was also well established. Long queues are rare and only in isolated cases.
Avoid crowds
Coop also said: In the meantime, the demand for all everyday products has settled at a high level – after the increased demand for longer-lasting food in the past month. In general, bottlenecks at Coop are still not an issue, said Coop spokeswoman Rebecca Veiga. “The supply is guaranteed.”
However, with a view to the approaching Easter weekend, both major distributors are advising to plan purchases in good time. Veiga may have to wait in the meantime before the holidays, said Veiga. Customers have already been asked via social media and the website to do their Easter shopping early this week. In addition to the longer waiting times, it is also a matter of avoiding crowds.
For a good three weeks now, grocery stores and other shops that also offer groceries or items for daily use have been allowed to remain open, unlike the rest of the retail trade or restaurants. However, this is only possible to a limited extent due to the measures taken to contain the corona virus: hygiene rules must be observed, and currently only one person per ten square meters is allowed in each branch.
In the early days, employees in the Swiss supermarkets also sometimes failed to fill up the empty shelves, despite special shifts and extra journeys when transporting goods.
Sports colleagues sort goods
This is why helping hands are required in the current exceptional situation: At the moment it can happen at Migros that you are served by a fitness trainer or golf instructor. A large part of the employees of the leisure facilities currently support colleagues in the supermarkets, said Migros spokesman Stöpper. That was a matter of course within the group at these times.
Sports and fitness centers must remain closed until April 19th. The individual cooperatives had therefore formed a pool of employees, with whom you could volunteer to help out, explained Stöpper. Occasionally, however, it could also happen that someone is obliged to step in, where a lot of additional work is required. The employees of the sports offers help in particular with refilling the goods or also with the admission control.
The retailer Migros is also the largest provider of leisure facilities in Switzerland with over 130 fitness and seven golf courses.
At Coop, around 13,000 employees from the closed non-food areas support colleagues in the supermarkets and in logistics.
(sda)
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