UK supermarkets are widening restrictions on sales of certain items, reducing services and shortening their opening hours as they battle to contain panic buying.
J Sainsbury and Asda both said that they would close cafés and meat, fish and pizza counters to free up warehouse and transport capacity and focus staff efforts on groceries.
“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 number of customers,” Sainsbury’s chief executive Mike Coupe said in a message to customers.
“We still have enough food for everyone — if we all just buy what we need for us and our families,” he added.
Rival Tesco has scaled back the opening hours of many of its largest stores, with formerly 24-hour hypermarkets closing at 10pm to allow for replenishment. Asda will close its 24-hour stores between midnight and 6am.
Wm Morrison, the smallest of the “big four” chains in the UK, said that it would extend in-store picking of groceries ordered online to another 100 stores, allowing it to expand its home delivery capacity.
It will set up a telephone ordering line for those who are less comfortable with using the internet, and introduce “essential boxes” that will be assembled at its distribution centres and delivered by courier.
According to one senior executive, last week was busier than Christmas as stores were repeatedly cleaned out of toilet paper, painkillers, dried goods such as rice and pasta, eggs and long-life milk.
Government advice for people to remain at home wherever possible is likely to add to demand, as spending shifts from restaurants to homes.
Dave Potts, chief executive of Morrison’s, said that retailers were used to coping with big spikes in demand. “But this time is different. There’s been no time to plan for it and we don’t know when it will end,” he said.
“Customers are clearly worried and that has translated into some very exceptional buying patterns,” he added.
All of the “big four” supermarkets have now extended the number of products on which per-customer limits apply, beyond items such as hand sanitiser, soap and toilet tissues. Morrisons now has such limits on 1,250 different product lines, according to Mr Potts.
So-called “silver hours” — special shopping periods at the start of the day when the elderly and other vulnerable customers can shop in less frenetic circumstances — have been adopted by all the major supermarket chains. The concept was first introduced in the UK by an Iceland Foods store in Northern Ireland at the weekend.
