LONDON, ON -- Some garden centres in the area opened Friday morning with physical distancing measures in place after the provincial government lifted the closures earlier this week.
Tuckey Home Hardware in Wortley Village opened its garden centre, located in the parking lot behind the store, while preparations were being made inside to welcome customers back Saturday morning.
"We are going to be limiting the number of customers into the store," says Sandy Cheesman, a merchandiser at Tuckey’s. "Right now we’re just going to start with 10 at a time and we’ll go from there, if everything moves smoothly, then we will open it up to maybe 15-20 hopefully within a week or so."
Floor markings, and plexi-glass shields at the cash are just a couple of the measures being taken to give staff and customers a sense of safety as many feel uneasy
"We’ve given the staff the option to wear PPE (personal protective equipment), but we’ll be making sure everything is wiped down after every customer," says Cheesman.
In the garden centre, there are lines on the ground spaced six feet apart throughout, and arrows indicating multiple exits. It’s a departure from how people are accustomed to shop, but Cheesman believes over time it’ll become second nature.
"It’s going to take some time, but I think over time, the repetitiveness of it, everyone will get used to shopping this way."
Starting Monday, retail stores with street access can begin offering curbside pick up. But for stores like Buragina’s Men’s fashions, that won’t be an option.
"To have things totally shut down, still to be able to offer something like curbside is a great option," says Meleny Buragina. “But, it really takes away the majority of what we’ve offered in our business, and built our business on this entire time."
Buragina hopes it won’t be long before rules similar to what hardware stores are implementing will be open for them.
"Even if we only want to serve one customer at a time, they come in, we simply lock the door, put a sign on the door that says we’re only serving one customer at a time. And that next customer can choose to wait or choose to make an appointment."
But she believes the shopping experience will be forever changed.
"Retail was never really easy to begin with, and now it’s going to be that many more steps that we’re going to have to take, just to make sure that people are safe."
The province plans to roll out more retail openings in stages as long as new cases of COVID-19 continue to decline.
