COVID-19: Woolies Joins Coles In Asking Customers To Pack Their Own Bags

Woolworths has joined Coles in asking customers to pack their own bags at the checkout in order to reduce the amount of time checkout staff have close contact with customers. Both supermarket chains are encouraging customers to use tap and pay rather than cash.

Like Coles, from this week Woolworths will be changing its community shopping hours to have Tuesdays and Thursdays (7am-8am) dedicated to emergency services and healthcare workers, while Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays (7am-8am) will be dedicated to seniors and people with a disability.

In Western Australia, the community hour will be run from 10am-11am on Sunday.

“We are pleased to extend our dedicated Community Hour to emergency services and healthcare workers from next week,” Woolworths Supermarkets Managing Director Claire Peters said. “This service will no longer be offered at our 41 Priority Delivery Hub stores announced earlier this week, so we encourage customers to check local trading hours before shopping.”

From today, Woolworths said that their team members at the checkout will also be rotated out every two hours to limit face-to-face interactions.

Woolworths said in a statement they will be rolling out a range of other preventative COVID-19 measures as well, including plexiglass screens at the checkouts, more social distancing cues and deep cleaning processes.