Coborn’s Inc. announced this week another new measure the company is taking to disinfect its shopping carts after guest use. The company’s supermarkets, including Cash Wise in Jamestown, are now utilizing electrostatic cleaning sprayers to disinfect carts in an effort to minimize surface spread of the COVID-19 virus. Once shopping carts have been returned to cart areas, staff use a Victory Cordless Sprayer to lightly mist disinfectant on the carts.
The cordless electrostatic cleaning sprayers hold enough product to clean a fully stocked cart room twice. The staff replenishes the product frequently to ensure carts are always clean. Once carts are cleaned they are pushed forward for guests as they enter the store, ensuring that guests always have a cleaned cart as they begin their shopping experience. As used carts are brought back into the cart room, employees separate them from cleaned carts. As rows fill up, a fine mist is sprayed over the top and then they are pushed forward after they have been disinfected. The process usually takes about two minutes and is done as carts are used throughout the day, depending on the day’s business.
Since the pandemic began in early March, Coborn’s Inc. has implemented several procedures to ensure all stores are providing a safe and sanitary environment for guests and employees. This new safety measure is in addition to the many other cleaning and sanitation measures the company has implemented including mandatory masks for store employees, reminders to guests to wear masks while in the store, plexiglass shielding at checkout and service cases, frequent cleaning of surfaces and high contact areas, social distancing practices, special senior shopping hours and making disinfecting wipes and hand sanitization stations available to all guests. The company recently became Ecolab Science Certified, using many of the same cleaning products and procedures that hospitals and clinics use utilizing Ecolab-certified cleaning products. All of the company’s Coborn’s, Cash Wise and Marketplace Foods stores offer online shopping with options for curbside order pick-up as well as home delivery in select markets.
