Columbus grocery stores adjust to mayor’s new guidelines

COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) – Monday afternoon Columbus Mayor Robert Smith announced new safety measures for all Columbus food stores.

The hand-delivered letter featured seven basic guidelines that must be carried out immediately.

Some of the guidelines include things like requiring all employees to wear gloves and a mask, installing a face shield at the register, and maintaining a six-foot distance from all customers.

Dan Price is the store manager and Food Giant in Columbus.

He said the past several weeks have been challenging.

“We’ve struggled with our customers expectations. Ours is to try and provide a safe environment for our customers and our associates as well,” said Price.

In order to provide that safe environment, stores have to be stocked up on the proper Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE.

“We provided the masks for our employees, the gloves for our employees… We try and instill the six-foot rule with our customers and our associates,” said Price.

“We are just constantly sanitizing, spraying our counters down, spraying our meat slicers down, keeping buckets of sanitizer, spray bottles of sanitation… We’re just constantly, in between every customer, every time anyone has anything sliced, we go and we clean the meat slicer,” said Lisa Richardson.

Richardson is the Deli supervisor at Food Giant.

She said her employees are already required to wear things like gloves and hairnets, but finding enough face masks to go around hasn’t been easy.

“We’ve had to reach out to outside vendors that we normally don’t use, and you know, we’re just doing all we can, and anything that they tell us would help them, we are trying to reach out and do for them,” said Richardson.

Down the road at Sunflower Grocery Store, they’re taking a similar approach.

“Extra precautions, you know, extra cleaning every hour, every thirty minutes or so,” said Store Manager Kendrix Morris.

Morris said his store was also abiding by the Mayor’s guidelines before the letter was sent out.

He said it’s all about providing a safe environment for employees and shoppers.

“Be safe. Continue to slow the spread of the Coronavirus, and make sure that we are taking the precautions that were put in demand, and hopefully, everything will work out,” said Morris.

The Mayor’s Office met with specific stores to go over the guidelines.

Mayor Smith said any store caught violating these guidelines could face up to $1,000 in fines.