Panic buying hits DKH Sainsburys

[gromit316]

It's like a warzone going shopping now, there is such an eerie atmosphere.

[Bic Basher]

Blah Blah Wrote:

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> I have been finding the small express stores are

> doing better at getting stock out each morning.

> The government have also removed restrictions on

> night time lorry deliveries too, so hopefully more

> stock will now get to those big supermarkets

> (providing there are the lorry drivers to do it).

Agreed, Sainsbury's Local and Tesco Express have been a lot better for fruit for example.

[Carissa88]

jonnywalker Wrote:

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> Question: My mother is 80, she is house bound as

> well as now on lockdown, lives in Essex 1hr drive

> away. How am I supposed to get food for her?

You should reach out to her local mutual aid group on Facebook. There are lots of people volunteering to get shopping for the vulnerable or people who need help.

This lists them out: https://secretldn.com/uk-community-aid-groups-by-area/

[JohnL]

Carissa88 Wrote:

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> jonnywalker Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > Question: My mother is 80, she is house bound

> as

> > well as now on lockdown, lives in Essex 1hr

> drive

> > away. How am I supposed to get food for her?

>

>

> You should reach out to her local mutual aid group

> on Facebook. There are lots of people volunteering

> to get shopping for the vulnerable or people who

> need help.

>

> This lists them out:

> https://secretldn.com/uk-community-aid-groups-by-a

> rea/

These groups then sub-divide into street level whatsapp groups.

Just in case - whatsapp is a phone app.

[jonnywalker]

Seems like smaller local shops are better than supermarkets at present. Thankful that this area of London still has community highstreets that have butchers bakers etc rather than mobile phone repair and vape shops

[lindylou]

Went to Sainsbury's local on lordship lane this morning to get some milk for my parents. Just about got 2 bottles. The shelves were empty. When I left the store at 8 am the delivery lorry pulled up. Went back in at 1pm and the shelves were still empty. Looks like nobody had bothered to restock. Same with M&S food hall, lots of crates waited to be emptied and put on shelves, but no staff restocking.

[Sue]

Possibly staff are ill?

[KidKruger]

Unfortunately there were many years where we had no butcher, grocer, fishmonger on LL.

Not long after SainsburysDKH opened (against a lot of local protest) LL was pretty much decimated.

So we're actually lucky with the timing, in a weird way.

jonnywalker Wrote:

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> Seems like smaller local shops are better than

> supermarkets at present. Thankful that this area

> of London still has community highstreets that

> have butchers bakers etc rather than mobile phone

> repair and vape shops

[lindylou]

Johnnywalker have you actually looked at the prices of these local shops lately? I, for one, can't afford their inflated prices. So, no, we're not lucky to have them in the current climate. Unless money is no object.

[lindylou]

Sue Wrote:

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> Possibly staff are ill?

No, I doubt it. Plenty of staff wandering around or outside smoking their fags.

[lpool]

Nipped in about 3.45pm to see what the fuss was about. More like a ghost town in DKH Sainsbury?s with very few shoppers. Think the herd has moved to Lordship Lane. They had both anti bac soap and toilet rolls when I arrived. Toilet rolls (packs of 16) soon went but plenty of people seemed to have managed to get a pack.

[sally buying]

Did you manage to get a look at the rest of the goods on display?

Feedback would be appreciated

[lpool]

Not much in the meat veg or fruit although quite a lot of ready meals. They had clearly been busy stocking as a lot of empty boxes around the store.

[vic.ham]

Lindylou, are you deliberately making inflamatory remarks because you have nothing to do?

Do you seriously think that staff in supermarkets cant be bothered to put stock out? Are they not entitled to breaks?What do you mean by wandering about?Not possible that there might be staff sick or self isolating?

The staff are under incredible pressure, and your negative comments(and some others on here)just reflect your selfishness and ignorance.

I for one think they are doing a great job,and feel sorry for the abuse and rudeness they have been putting up with.

[Bic Basher]

I ended up going to Sainsbury's in Bell Green today, they seemed a bit better than DKH over the last week, but couldn't get bread or toilet rolls.

Forest Hill was down to their last Kingsmill No Crust loaf this afternoon. Local on LL had no bread or loo rolls.

[IlonaM]

Latest email update from Sainsburys CEO:

- Change of opening hours across stores:

'From Monday 23rd March, we are consolidating our opening hours and all our supermarkets will be open from 8am to 8pm, Monday-Saturday, including those with an Argos store. Sunday opening, Sainsbury?s Local and petrol station opening times will stay the same.'

- Dedicated hour:

'Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, all our supermarkets will dedicate 8am - 9am to serving elderly, disabled and vulnerable customers, as well as NHS and Social Care workers. They will just need to show us their pass or ID when they visit. Some of you fed back that you couldn?t find what you wanted during that hour, so we will try our best to have essential items on shelf for these customers. We will be working to keep our shelves well stocked and would encourage customers to arrive throughout the hour to prevent queues forming and to help everyone keep a safe distance.'

- Payment by card rather than cash prefered

- Social distancing & respect for all

Full email below:

'Dear [],

I wanted to write to you again to update you on the steps we are taking to make sure everyone has access to food and essential items. I'm also sharing more information about how we are supporting our colleagues in these challenging times and how you can help.

An increasing number of you have told me that you're not always able to get the items that you need when you need them. We are working with our suppliers to get even more stock of essential items and we are adding warehouse capacity on a daily basis. You will have seen that we put restrictions in place this week to ensure that more products are on shelf for longer. From Monday 23rd March, we are consolidating our opening hours and all our supermarkets will be open from 8am to 8pm, Monday-Saturday, including those with an Argos store. Sunday opening, Sainsbury?s Local and petrol station opening times will stay the same.

This means we can focus our store colleagues? time on keeping shelves stocked and serving our customers well during the times that most of you are already shopping.

Last Thursday, we set aside an hour for elderly and vulnerable shoppers in our supermarkets. Many of you have told me how much you appreciated this and that you would like this to become a regular event. Some of you also said we should extend this to members of our hardworking NHS and Social Care workers. And we will be doing just that.

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, all our supermarkets will dedicate 8am - 9am to serving elderly, disabled and vulnerable customers, as well as NHS and Social Care workers. They will just need to show us their pass or ID when they visit. Some of you fed back that you couldn?t find what you wanted during that hour, so we will try our best to have essential items on shelf for these customers. We will be working to keep our shelves well stocked and would encourage customers to arrive throughout the hour to prevent queues forming and to help everyone keep a safe distance.

Hundreds of you have written to me to thank our amazing colleagues who are working around the clock to serve our customers. A number of you have also shared your concerns for the safety and wellbeing of our colleagues. I want you to know that we are doing all we can to support everyone who works in our business. We have committed to paying all colleagues who are unwell or need to self-isolate for the full period of fourteen days. We have also committed to paying vulnerable and elderly colleagues in full if the government decides they should isolate for 12 weeks. We hope this will go some way to helping our teams through this uncertain time and we are looking at other ways to thank our colleagues for their extraordinary efforts.

To keep our colleagues safe, I need to ask again for your help. Please do your best to stand one metre away from colleagues in our stores where you can. And we would prefer you to pay with card rather than cash at our tills. Please also treat our colleagues and other customers with kindness and respect. These are unprecedented circumstances and our colleagues are being asked to come to work every day while so many others are being asked to stay at home. We all need them to keep coming to work to feed the nation ? a small thank you goes a really long way.

I hope you will join us in looking out for each other and the communities that we serve.

Best wishes

Mike'

[IlonaM]

This is what is on the Sainsburys Groceries website this morning:

Working to feed the nation

We are working round-the-clock to provide customers with more information around how we plan to continue serving our customers in the current climate, especially those who are elderly and vulnerable.

How we?re responding to COVID-19 (coronavirus)

We have listened to your feedback and taken further steps to make sure everyone has access to food and essential items, and to keep supporting our colleagues

From Monday 23 March, we are consolidating our opening hours and all our supermarkets will be open from 8am to 8pm Monday-Saturday. Sunday opening, Sainsbury?s Local and petrol station hours will stay the same. This means we can focus our store colleagues? time on keeping shelves stocked and serving our customers well.

Many of you have told us how much you appreciated the hour we set aside for elderly and vulnerable customers on Thursday 19 March, and that you would like this to become a regular event. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, all our supermarkets will dedicate 8am to 9am to serving elderly, disabled and vulnerable customers, as well as NHS and Social Care workers.

Helping elderly, disabled and vulnerable customers access food online (from Monday 23 March)

Adding more Click & Collect locations (from Monday 23 March)

Putting limits on certain products (from Wednesday 18 March)

Closing our cafes and counters (from Thursday 19 March).

You can read the latest from our CEO Mike Coupe at the bottom of this page.

How we?re helping our customers

From Monday 23 March, our existing online customers who are over 70 years of age, vulnerable or who have a disability will get priority access to online home delivery and access to click & collect slots.

We?ve already been able to identify some existing customers who are elderly, vulnerable and disabled through the information that we have about them and we will be emailing these customers over the course of the weekend, but we know that we haven?t been able to identify all of our vulnerable customers. We?re working hard, alongside the government and retail industry, to identify more of them.

We are also working hard to make further home delivery and click & collect slots available for our delivery pass customers and will be contacting these customers over the coming days. As we have shared, we are increasing access to our click & collect service and we hope to make that available to more customers very soon.

Identifying our elderly, disabled and vulnerable customers

From Monday 23 March, our existing online customers who are over 70 years of age, vulnerable or who have a disability will get priority access to online home delivery and click & collect slots.

We?ve already been able to identify some existing customers who are elderly, vulnerable and disabled through the information that we have about them and we will be emailing these customers over the course of the weekend, but we know that we haven?t been able to identify all of our vulnerable customers. We?re working hard, alongside the government and retail industry, to identify more of them.

There?ll soon be a process in place so you can tell us that you?re elderly, disabled or vulnerable and get added to our vulnerable list and we?ll let you know how to do this through our website.

Delivering to self-isolating customers

If you are self-isolating, please let us know using the delivery instructions box ? this can be done when you are placing or amending your order at checkout. Otherwise this can be found in My Account > My addresses > Add your delivery instructions.

Our drivers will call ahead to let you know when they will be dropping your shopping in bags on the doorstep.

If you have identified as being in self-isolation our drivers will ask you to wait inside before bagging up your order, placing it on your doorstep and letting you know that it is ready for you to pick up.

We are unable to accept any returns on the doorstep from self-isolating customers however, customers can receive a refund for any substitutes by getting in touch with our Contact Centre.

Finally, our colleagues will not ask you to sign for your delivery.

Doorstep deliveries

In order to protect the safety and wellbeing of our customers and colleagues we are taking a number of steps to ensure that we are able to deliver to you as safely as possible.

We have taken the decision to deliver your shopping to your front door rather than taking it inside. If you live in a flat, we will still bring your shopping to your own front door.

A handy tip can be to keep some shopping bags, cardboard boxes or even your laundry basket close by when your delivery is due to help bring your shopping into your house.

Drivers will use alcohol based hand sanitiser regularly throughout their deliveries.

Delivery slot availability

From Monday 23 March, our existing online customers who are over 70 years of age, vulnerable or who have a disability will get priority access to online home delivery slots and access to Click & Collect services.

We?re working to identify more vulnerable customers and hope to be able to open this service to new customers soon. We are also working hard to make further home delivery and click & collect slots available for our delivery pass customers and will be contacting these customers over the coming days.

As we have shared, we are increasing access to our Click & Collect service and we hope to make that available to more customers very soon.

Product availability

We want to acknowledge that are we are experiencing extremely high demand for certain products currently and as such have introduced some quantity restrictions.

Customers will be able to buy a maximum of three of any grocery product and a maximum of two on the most popular products including toilet paper, soap and UHT milk.

We have enough food coming into the system, but are limiting sales so that it stays on shelves for longer and can be bought by a larger numbers of customers. 

Substitutions

We want to acknowledge that are we are experiencing extremely high demand for certain products currently and as such have introduced some quantity restrictions.

Customers will be able to buy a maximum of three of any grocery product and a maximum of two on the most popular products including toilet paper, soap and UHT milk.

We have enough food coming into the system, but are limiting sales so that it stays on shelves for longer and can be bought by a larger numbers of customers.

We are unable to accept any returns on the doorstep from self-isolating customers however, customers can receive a refund for any substitutes by getting in touch with our Contact Centre.

Customers without a Delivery Pass

If you fall into the definition of a vulnerable customer then we are working through how to identify you and give you access to priority home delivery.

If you do not fall into this category then you can still access grocery online through our expanded click and collect offer. At the moment we?re focussing on customers that need our help the most.

Click & Collect

For our Click and Collect online customers who can travel to our stores, from Monday 23 March, we will operate an expanded ?click and collect? service.

We are significantly increasing the number of collection sites across the country over the coming days in preparation for this.

Customers can place their order online as usual and pick it up from a collection point in the store car park.

[x5243]

Is anyone else concerned that Sainsbury?s decision to give access to NHS and social care workers in the over 70s and vulnerable hour somewhat negates the purpose of this special shopping hour? Shouldn?t it be reserved for those self-isolating as they pose much less risk to each other than healthcare workers who are going to be exposed to a lot of the virus?

Have a shopping hour for healthcare workers but don?t combine the two!

[sally buying]

To allow more deliveries to be made why can they not bring back the use of plastic bags.

Will help drivers drop off quicker and customer to carry stuff in doors.

[gumshoe]

sally buying Wrote:

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> To allow more deliveries to be made why can they

> not bring back the use of plastic bags.

>

> Will help drivers drop off quicker and customer to

> carry stuff in doors.

Sally - I believe they are, especially as a way to reduce contact.

[rupert james]

I have to think about going shopping, can people post the situation regarding Sainsbury;s.

It would be appreciated.

[pearl1]

There was plenty of fruit and veg an hour ago.

[adelyn1034]

Lol so funny and true if people spent the time washing their hands instead of buying all the food handwash and hand sanitiser would life not be grand? Be kind to people.i gave an elderly woman the last pack of uncooked chicken in sainsburys last week and when i got home my friend dropped off a bag if shopping for me. Be jind.

[gromit316]

Nhs staff should have a separate time.

[DulwichFox]

Was at Sainsburys today at 10.00 - 10.30

Very Civilised. Plenty of fresh fruit & Veg, Fresh Meat, Pizzas, Milk.

Bread a bit low. NO Rice. Did not see any Pasta...

A few Kitchen towels left.

Lots of staff restocking shelves.

Not looking so Bare,

Customers limited to 3 of some items.

Queues at checkout short.

No panic buying.

No Paracetamol on shelves. Notice on Pharmacy counter saying No Paracetamol

I asked at counter and they said shelves were filled this morning but were snatched up.

They asked if Paracetamol was for Me and then got one pack of 32 for me when I said yes.

Much better.

DulwichFox