COVID-19: A MESSAGE FROM OUR CEO PETER VAN STOLK

To our valued customers and supporters,

We view our service as an essential service and we understand the responsibility that we have for our community.

None of us have operated in a pandemic, so this is new grounds for all of us. Our number one goal is to make sure we can support our team members and deliver groceries to nourish your families. 

We have all been into stores over the past week and seen the barren shelves and the impact that the initial shock that this crisis has created.  We are seeing our favourite shops, and restaurants close and like you, we are feeling the enormous stress that has been created by this crisis in such a short period of time.

The initial shock overloaded our entire system and to compound the situation, we have all our team members who can work from home, working from home. This means our customer care, purchasing, communications and IT teams. We have locked down our facility to ensure we have a safe environment and all this happened at once. I am not making any excuses, we are all dealing with extraordinary challenges in this scary time. We acknowledge the responsibility we have at this time. We also know that this will not be over soon, so as a company we are working tirelessly to prepare for consistency and dependability.

The fact is our entire system was overloaded from the initial shock and operational changes and we need to re-calibrate this week and weekend so we can be the service that you are proud of for the length of time that is required.

That being said we are taking dramatic steps this week and weekend to ensure we are set up for the long term.

We are working with local restaurants who were forced to close by hiring their team members to support us during this period. With any new team member, we are now focused on training them so that can be effective.  We are working with other companies to onboard their trucks and drivers to support them during this period. We have added more people to help with sanitization and cleaning. We are looking at how we can use boxes to deliver food because we are not receiving back the bins. We are training drivers on new procedures to ensure everyone is safe.

I have communicated to every team member that we are in a marathon not a sprint and we need to breathe and get this fixed now because we are an important service to the community.

I also believe that over the next few weeks, we will all deal with issues that we have never faced before and in those moments we will find our true inner strength. The strength to smile when we are frustrated, the strength to be sensitive and compassionate knowing that other people are facing burdens far greater than we are. The strength to trust that this will end and we will be stronger.

Thank you so much for your dedication and support.

Peter van Stolk, CEO