Grocery stores encourage curbside pickup; Smith's limiting number of people in stores

As critical elements of an essential service, grocery store employees are providing an indispensable amenity to the public at great risk to themselves. To that end, grocery store management has been encouraging people to participate in curbside pickup or grocery delivery to keep everyone, customers and staff alike, healthy and happy during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It used to be about saving time, now it’s about saving germs,” Robin Wright, spokeswoman for Super 1 Foods said.

Within the past couple years, Columbia Falls grocery stores Smith’s Food and Drug and Super 1 Foods have begun offering online grocery shopping and in-store pickup options.

These options require signing into an online account where a shopper can then choose grocery items. Once a list has been submitted, grocery store employees gather the order together. If a customer has chosen at-home delivery, a third party deliverer picks up the order and takes it from there. If a shopper has chosen curbside pickup, they’ll have already selected a pickup time. At the designated time, customers pull into specified parking spaces that are labeled alphabetically and have a sign with a number to call to notify employees they have arrived. Groceries are then promptly brought out and loaded into the vehicle.

Smith’s has seen it’s number of in-store pickup orders nearly double in the last month, from 30 orders to nearly 60 orders per day, said store manager Mikael Ahlstrom. The number of orders have averaged to about five per hour, keeping the five designated staff members quite occupied. The minimum amount of time an order could be ready after being submitted is approximately an hour, said Ahlstrom, but lately orders have been booked out a day in advance. The company is hoping to increase the pickup order staff to help grow the service.

Super 1 Foods has also seen a dramatic increase in curbside and delivery orders, said Wright, a trend the store continues to promote. At the 10 regional Super 1 Foods locations that partner with DoorDash delivery service, which include Columbia Falls and Whitefish, the store is waiving the typical $10 delivery fee until May, Wright said.

Smith’s Food and Drug has also implemented other changes to help protect employees and customers. They have decreased their hours of operation to allow more time for cleaning and restocking and to lessen person-to-person exposure. On Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays the store has also dedicated the first hour, 7-8 a.m., to serving those 60 years and older and any other high risk customers that may wish to decrease exposure to the greater public.

Folks who don’t use pickup are urged to sanitize their hands and carts and the Centers for Disease Control also recommends wearing a mask. Super 1 has also put up glass dividers at its checkout counters. Smith’s also announced Tuesday it would limit the number of shoppers in its stores at any one time to avoid the virus from spreading.