Grocery Shopping at Whole Foods, Hadley, MA

WHOLE FOODS: A Reflection on Grocery Shopping during COVID-19

During these coronavirus times I approach grocery shopping as an adventure, one for which I now block out a few hours of my day and go into with intention, patience, and a long list. Whole Foods, like many other stores, I imagine, no longer allow customers to bring reusable bags, and in an effort to reduce possible contamination, I bring with me only my phone, car keys, wallet, shopping list, and hand sanitizer (all fitting into my coat pockets). With a bandana serving as a face mask, I join the line that forms to one side of the automatic doors; an employee, more recently updated to an official “security guard” role, stands at the doorway, managing the number of people in the store at once. I reach the front of the line, and as a customer leaves with their bags of restocked groceries, I am allowed to enter and take a cleaned cart from just inside. Throughout the store there are signs and yellow circles on the floor reminding people to practice social distancing. Now it is required that everyone wear masks, and some even cover their hands with latex gloves. The wall of bulk item bins remain mostly empty, except for those items such as grains and seeds that can easily be dispensed by gravity rather than using a scoop. The prepared foods deli lies empty as well, “barren islands” in the otherwise fairly well stocked store. Of course, like anywhere else, isopropyl alcohol and other sanitizing products, “due to increased demand, this item is (temporarily?) unavailable”. While many people are shopping for multiple weeks at once, or otherwise trying to stock up on supplies, “due to high demand, [Whole Foods is] limiting the quantities on the following items”. These include toilet paper, disinfectant wipes, paper towels water, butter, milk, eggs, certain canned and dried staples, flour, oatmeal, sugar… A yellow  rope divides the checkout area from the grocery aisles; and the line - marked out in six foots spaces, sometimes wraps all the way around to the meat deli. Numbered squares are taped to the floor at the end of each checkout register, to which we are directed to wait until we are called. Only one side of the register is used so as to maintain social distancing precautions, and a hard plastic sheet provides a shield of sorts between the employee and customer during the checkout transactions. While these changes have mainly been in place since the beginning of our coronavirus experience in this country, some of the details have evolved more gradually as this becomes our current norm. Every three weeks or so when I next go to restock on basic supplies I don’t fully know what to expect - how long the lines will be, what I will be able to find on my grocery list -  hence the adventure. 

While I try to go early to be there when the store opens to the general public, I have also learned that it is sometimes less crowded later. However sometimes it’s a tradeoff, depending whether one desires going when there’s potentially more in stock or prioritizing a time with possibly fewer people there.

-Sylvana Szuhay