Grocery stores taking precautions to keep employees, customers safe during coronavirus pandemic

Grocery stores are taking precautions to keep employees and customers safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

"A sanitizer station similar to what you would see in any food service kitchen," Phil Cantor told FOX 29.

General manager at Rittenhouse Market Phil Cantor says his staff is constantly scrubbing down everything. It's part of his efforts to follow state and local health directives to businesses during the COVID-19 outbreak, but more challenging he says is the call to manage crowd control.

"We try to move people through as quickly as we can," Cantor said.

Crowd control is nearly impossible at large grocery stores like Acme, so is sanitizing shopping carts all over and the hand baskets have been put away because there's no way to keep them clean like a neighborhood market.

Acme is leading the way with the social distance measures they are taking, including plexiglass barriers separating clerks from shoppers and x's marking off spaces between other shoppers at checkout, the deli counters, and other stations where people come face-to-face for service.

"It protects everybody. I just want to be protected," customer Keisha Hawkins said.

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