How you provide a safe store

The new normal today is social distance, strict rules, and people that hesitate to visit physical stores. As a retailer, this means that you need to prove to your consumers that your store is safe and offers social distance.

Time to consume: 3 min
30 April 2020

To provide a safe store, there are plenty of things you can do. Here are some good examples:

  • Minimize queues
  • Protect your customers in hot spots
  • Offer hygiene products to use
  • Brand your store as a safe place
  • Below we give you ideas on how to achieve this.

Minimize Queues

At first, identify where your queues arise. Is it outside your store, in the checkout area, the fitting rooms, or in your café area? If it is outside your store, a virtual queue supported by automated people counting with digital information screens can help. The same solutions can help at specific well-visited areas in your store as in the café area.

To reduce ques in your checkout area you must analyze your typical consumers. As an example, if you have a lot of consumers with baskets in smaller sizes, smaller self-checkouts are better. If you have many consumers who do their weekly shopping in your store, with lots of items, a traditional solution gives you higher capacity.

The most common is that a mix of different checkout solutions, suitable for your different customers, enables the highest throughput and minimizes your queues.

Protect your consumers in hot spots

Identify where your consumers regularly are forced together. A place that normally can be perceived as safe can now be a big threat to your customers. For example, where you pack your bag after the purchase when they meet the cashiers or staff. Here is a good idea to install human shields in Plexiglas or invest in self-checkouts.

Offer hygiene products to use

An easy step, but so important. To just offer hygiene stations regularly in your stores will make your customers feel so much safer.

Brand your store as a safe place

Let your consumers be aware of that you care a lot about their safety by telling them you do so. Put notes inside and outside of your store to highlight the initiatives you do to care about their safety. It can be a piece of information about the max capacity of the store or a sign over your self-checkout zone that says: Hey! Use me if you want to avoid the queue!

If you need help in any of these areas, don’t hesitate to reach out and we will try to help you.

 

Article written by
Emma Berger
ITAB

OUR SAFETY SOLUTIONS