Tom Clark has been in the grocery business for a long time but the recent COVID-19 pandemic is something that caught him off guard.
“The last few months have been quite a roller coaster,” said the owner of Clark’s Market in the Village of Oak Creek. “Every day seems to bring a new set of challenges, from product sourcing to new safety precautions. We are doing our best, every day, to rise to meet these challenges.”
Clark said his stores have implemented a number of new procedures to ensure the safety of their customers and staff. All staff now wear masks. Plexiglas dividers have been installed to increase separation when shoppers check out. Aisles are now one-way to increase distance between shoppers and staff have added markers at the checkout lines so it’s easy for customers to maintain six feet of distance. There is a continuous cleaning schedule and the market has also been closing early each evening for deep cleaning. Clark’s also now has senior shopping hours from 7 to 8 a.m. daily.
With store changes, changes among shoppers have come along with it.
“We are seeing fewer shopping visits with larger baskets,” Clark said. “People are also now shopping early in the day. Customers have also been more interested in meal ingredients than prepared meals as they now have more time to cook at home.”
The store had a large surge in demand at the beginning of the crisis, Clark said, but volume has since returned to normal levels.
One of the most popular items shoppers are now purchasing is baking powder.
“It seems people are starting to bake at home again and we’ve seen the entire baking category grow,” he said.
During this time, Clark said his stores have had a dramatic increase in use of Clark’s online shopping platform, Rosie, which can be found at clarksmarket.com. Curbside pickup is free and home delivery is $5.99.
“Not only is it a great convenience, but it helps protect the higher-risk population from even having to enter the store,” Clark said.
Shoppers everywhere have been frustrated with the lack of items like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, paper towels and cleaning wipes that have been hard to get for the past two months. Clark said as a store owner, he shares that frustration.
“We continue to place orders from every vendor we know and hope they will be able to fill at least part of the order,” he said. “As the manufactures adjust their production to the increase in demand, we should see these products come back into stock. We’ve seen many cases of this already and hope to be fully stocked in a matter of a couple weeks.”
More than anything, Clark said he’s proud of his team. He said a particular strength of the company is that staff are “empowered” to do what is right for the store and the customer. The result is that staff can be more flexible than the larger grocery chains.
“Early in the pandemic, when the industry had an unprecedented increase in demand, we were able to reach out to new vendors, many of which service only restaurants, and were able to get product in that had been originally meant for restaurants,” he said. “These new relationships were able to be set up in a matter of days, which was a win-win for these vendors and our customers, and I’m proud of our team for putting it together so quickly.”
Clark added that once things calm down and life returns to normal — as normal as things can be — he feels many of the precautionary steps they have taken during this pandemic will continue.
“I think many of these safe-workplace practices will stay in place,” he said. “Our customers trust us every day to provide a clean and safe shopping environment, and anything that helps us with that mission will be taken forward.”
