Greybeard33
Established Member
Moderator note: split from
Enforcement of the new rules on social distancing, unnecessary journeys etc.
Buy the telly online and get it delivered. if you live on your own good luck getting it out of the box on your own! Of course you can - you use the well established legal phrase “reasonable“...... Pushing more online orders equals more deliveries with more interactions with delivery drivers...
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- Asking supermarkets to remove non essential items from sale is a complete non-starter. Staff need to be filling shelves, not wasting time emptying them
- Where would the items removed from the shelves be stored. There isn't space in store warehouses to do this. Returning the items to distribution centres would also not work - the staff in these centres are stretched enough picking and loading outbound deliveries to stores. Diverting them to unloading lorries of returned stock would impact the ability to get stock out to stores.
- Sealing off aisles with non-essential goods sounds attractive but who would police this? Supermarkets are already having to police queues outside stores and there really aren't the staff to police other areas of stores as well.
- Much stock is cross-merchandised so you might find frying pans by the eggs. Sealing off aisles would not work where items are cross merchandised.
Hardly an insuperable challenge! Just move the non essential stuff to one end of the store and cordon it off. That would give a more efficient flow of customers around the remaining aisles. No need for staff to "police" it - program the tills not to accept non essential items.
But heaven forfend the supermarkets should be asked to do anything that might dent the extra profits they are raking in during this crisis!
And supermarkets are benefiting hugely from business rates relief, on top of a big increase in turnover and improvement in margins (less discounting).As well as completely missing the point, this is an unfair and misleading remark. Supermarkets are incurring a lot of additional costs.
One clear example of an industry not needing a bailout is the supermarkets, which are set to receive a £3bn business rates holiday this year as a result of the government’s support package. Shortly after the rates holiday was announced, Sainsbury’s put out a stock market announcement welcoming the news and highlighting that the company paid more than £500m in business rates last year. The company’s share price surged – the rates holiday is worth more than twice the company’s annual profit. Tesco has a business rates bill of £700m – equal to 50% of its profits for 2019. On Wednesday, the company increased its dividend by 60% – proposing a payout to shareholders of £637m. What possible argument does the company have that it needs a government subsidy?
No one can deny that the supermarkets are doing an amazing job of keeping the nation supplied. Their workers are putting themselves at risk every day, many earning less than those who are being paid to stay at home. The enormous shift in social habits that has taken place in a matter of days will be putting huge pressure on management, supply teams and other core functions. According to this week’s stock market update, Tesco has recruited 45,000 new staff in the past two weeks. Rightly, we need to thank all working in the industry. Their work really is key.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...permarkets-government-rishi-sunak-coronavirusBut despite the difficulties, there can be no doubt that for supermarkets, the crisis is good for business. Households stocking up on food and essentials in advance of the lockdown meant that March was the biggest month in history in terms of sales. With pubs closed, alcohol sales have surged by 22%.
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