Panic buying is still in full swing, according to Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci.
Despite calls from the Prime Minister to stop this behaviour, customers are still snapping up toilet paper and pasta as soon as the products land on the supermarket shelves, news.com.au has reported. Guys, please stop this behaviour. It’s unnecessary!
“Amazing as it might seem, we are still seeing almost double our normal demand for toilet paper. Just this week, that was over 20.5 million rolls,” Banducci told news.com.au.
“With pasta, we have an extra 1,000 pallets a week coming in, which is more than half a million extra packs. It will still be patchy for a while, but we are expecting much more stock on shelves next week.”
Customers have also diversified their panic buying, which now includes packet mixes for baking and cleaning products. With many people spending most of their time at home, cleaning and baking seem to be the most popular activities to pass the time.
“Two of our highest growth categories this week have been cake mixes and household cleaning products. A lot more kids are baking and parents cleaning as we all spend more time at home,” Banducci told news.com.au.
“We’re doing our best to keep up with the extraordinary demand for cleaning wipes, including securing extra supply from alternative sources in the short term, much of which will start to arrive in stores in the coming weeks.”
As of today, April 6, both Woolies and Coles have started a ‘one in, one out’ policy in stores. Customers will have to line up outside the supermarket and only a certain number will be allowed in at one time.
According to news.com.au, security guards and police will be present during peak times and enforcing social distancing within the stores.
Woolworths has also implemented a number of new safety measures including asking customers to pack their own groceries, installing Plexiglass screens across the checkouts and rotating staff members at the checkouts every two hours.
The current health crisis is evolving rapidly. If you suspect you or a family member has coronavirus you should call (not visit) your GP or ring the national Coronavirus Health Information Hotline on 1800 020 080.