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COVID-19 UPDATE
IT’LL ALL BE OVER BY 21 JUNE... MAYBE
PRIME MINISTER BORIS JOHNSON HAS UNVEILED HIS ROADMAP OUTOF THE PANDEMIC WITH A PLAN THAT COULD SEE ALL RESTRICTIONSLIFTED IN JUNE.
Boris Johnson has unveiled a new four-step plan to ease England’s lockdown that could see all social contact restrictions lifted by 21 June. That would only happen if strict conditions are met, however, but Johnson said his plan aimed to be “cautious but irreversible”.
Under the roadmap: schools will reopen on 8 March; outdoor gatherings of six people from two households would be permitted from 29 March; nonessential shops and hospitality could open on 12 April; and two households would be allowed to meet indoors from 17 May.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon took a more cautious approach, with a plan to revert to a ‘levels’ system of restrictions by the end of April. Non-essential shops and hospitality may begin to re-open from 26 April, and stay at home restrictions could be lifted on 5 April.
BESTWAY ROLLS OUT LATERAL FLOW TESTS FOR ALL
As the Government rolls out asymptomatic testing for businesses with essential workers or with employees who are unable to work from home, Bestway Wholesale has implemented Lateral Flow Testing – available for all its staff who are needed to ensure groceries reach retailers and customers, working out of all depots and office locations.
Dawood Pervez, Managing Director for Bestway Wholesale, commented: “All of our staff are encouraged to be tested at the local Borough Council offices during work time, every two weeks. So far, we have been able to identify four asymptomatic members of our team. In these positive cases, (which were all in the same area), we have a rigorous policy of self-isolation, cleaning premises, and safeguarding other colleagues.”
QUINN’S HITS 6K COVID DELIVERIES
NORTHER IRISH SPAR GROUP QUINN’S HAS DESPATCHED OVER6,000 HOME DELIVERIES UNDER COVID USING THE APPETITE APP.
Quinn’s Spar Group, which owns two Spar stores in Cookstown, Co Tyrone in Northern Ireland, is celebrating served over 6,000 home deliveries in 10 months since setting up the dedicated service for the local community.
Martina Kilpatrick, co-owner, began home deliveries in April last year for those living in the area. She said: “We introduced Appetite shortly after the initial national lockdown in April 2020. The service was established as a community service during the lockdown for the vulnerable and selfisolating and for those who wanted the local service they were used to from visiting the Quinn’s group of stores.
The service grew quickly, peaking at over £21,000 in May with average basket spends of £54. Around 90% of Appetite users are new customers.
Appetite is one of the only worldwide home delivery, click-andcollect and food-to-go apps that can be fully linked with Henderson’s EDGEPoS EPoS system, ensuring live stock reporting on the app and on EDGEPoS back office at the same time.
BAG CHARGES SUSPENDED FOR DELIVERIES
The requirement to charge for single use carrier bags used for certain types of delivery and collection has temporarily been suspended in Scotland until 31 May 2021, in response to the Covid-19 outbreak and at the request of retailers.
The exemption from the requirement to charge will apply to:
grocery deliveries, no matter how the order is placed
collection of groceries ordered in advance (for instance click-and-collect services offered by supermarkets)
both the collection and delivery of takeaway food.
It should be noted that this does not prevent any retailer continuing to charge for SUCBs used for these purposes if they choose to do so, and does not affect the wider charge or the existing exemptions from it.
The minimum price of a single use carrier bag is set to increase from 5p to 10p from 1 April 2021.
FOOD BANK DEAL
Baby and toddler foodcompany Piccolo, backedby Prue Leith, is running a‘One for you, One for mum’campaign with Waitrose untilthe end of this week. Everypouch purchased throughWaitrose will be matched andgifted to a food bank. So farthe campaign has seen thebrand donate over 50,000meals to vulnerable families.
BE KIND CALL
With the prospect of nonessentialstores reopeningon 12 April, retail trade unionUsdaw is calling on customersto follow the rules and respectshopworkers, and for retailstaff to be prioritised forvaccination. Incidents of abusetowards shopworkers doublingduring lockdown.
RECORD ONLINE SALES
The latest ONS Retail Salesdata for January shows thatthe proportion of retail salesthat were completed onlinereached a record high. Widerretail sales plunged at thefastest rate since the pandemicbroke last year as Januaryblues were heightened byfurther lockdown restrictions.
CUSTOMER COUNTING TECH
Digital signage software pioneer Navori Labs has launched Aquaji, an AI-driven marketing analytics software that counts unique visitors and gathers demographic data, length of stay, wait time and attention span KPIs over segmented time slots. The solution helps retailers understand consumer habits and profiles, and create new opportunities for growth and profitability through stronger visitor engagement. Aquaji identifies and recognises each visitor while protecting visitor anonymity using face and body detection and coding instead of facial recognition. Find out more here.
