Retailers Explore Tentative Reopening Plans

At long last, the retail community can start discussing plans to reopen. The Trump administration’s informal guidance released on Thursday (April 16) did not exactly clarify the situation, but some nonessential retailers are going public with reopening plans, and these might provide a roadmap for smaller companies.

According to the Trump administration’s guidance, decisions are essentially left to the states and cities, but it does set out several conditions under which businesses can reopen. Those conditions are detailed in three phases, primarily based on the momentum of the virus outbreak in each individual state. If a state still has increasing infection rates, it’s likely that reopening plans will have to wait until those levels start to drop. At any rate, the sight of masks on consumers will become commonplace, according to the guidelines.

The plan also depends on expanded testing. For example, the CDC is sending teams to eight states that are showing low levels of infection to boost tracing efforts. Those states – New Mexico, Wyoming, Idaho, Alaska, North Dakota, Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio – will likely become test cases for reopening retail. The exact timeline for individual states will hinge on which have fewer hospitalizations and the ability to do extensive testing.

California has been the most aggressive in laying out a local plan for reopening. On Thursday (April 16), Los Angeles County Department of Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer outlined a plan for retail stores that includes “limits on how many people can be in a store at any given time so that people who are there can maintain a lot of distance between themselves,” she said at a news briefing.

“But it’s become clear that some orders will probably be lifted before others,” she continued. “It’s possible some retailers could open with such safeguards as mask wearing and social distancing policies. Some recreation space, trails and beaches could reopen in this early phase, with strict distancing rules.”

Apple took one step up and one step back on a store opening plan two weeks ago. Now that Starbucks has checked with its own tentative plan, it will likely revisit the reopening issue. In a letter on Thursday (April 16), U.S. Corporate President Rossann Williams said the company would begin reopening “as many stores as we can” starting May 4.  However, it “will do so with modified operations and best-in-class safety measures,” with the goal to allow healthy staff members to return to work, according to QSR.

“When Starbucks provided a business update earlier in the month, it noted that 76 percent of its drive-thru locations were open … Additionally, roughly 55 percent of licensed stores were operating, the vast majority of which were in grocery stores. Starbucks’ footprint consists of about 9,000 domestic corporate restaurants and 6,000 licensed locations,” the report stated.

CEO Kevin Johnson said in a separate letter that the brand is “ready for this new, dynamic period.” He added that about 80 percent of orders were placed “on-the-go” even before COVID-19.

“As states begin to relax their stay-at-home orders and more communities prepare to reopen, we will need to get our stores back up and running, wherever it is safe and responsible to do so, so we can keep every partner employed and be a light for our communities through this next phase of rebuilding and recovery,” Williams wrote in a statement. “We will use the strongest data available to help us assess a store’s readiness, considering things like the trajectory of the virus, local mandates, operational capabilities and customer and partner sentiment. And even if we can reopen a store, we will always pause to consider should we reopen, so we can support our field leaders in making the best decisions possible.”