Sainsbury have become the latest supermarket to introduce limits on what customers can purchase.
In a message to customers early this morning, Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe said shoppers will be able to buy a maximum of three of any single grocery product from now on, and a maximum of two of the most popular items including toilet paper, soap and UHT milk. “We have enough food coming into the system,” he said. “and are limiting sales so it stays on shelves for longer and can be bought by a larger numbers of customers.”
Sainsbury’s is also introducing a “silver hour” at the start of each day for older customers to shop, and an expanded “click and collect” service to allow self-isolating customers and others who cannot get a delivery slot to order online and then collect their pre-packed shopping from the car park.
Asda has announced it is restricting all customers to buying up to three items on all food, toiletries and cleaning products amid a surge in demand following the coronavirus outbreak and will also be this week temporarily closing our non-essential services, such as cafes and pizza counters.
The Co-operative convenience chain has also today introduced restrictions for the first time for the most popular products. Shoppers will be able to buy no more than two each of hand sanitiser, soap, antibacterial wipes, toilet and kitchen roll, past, rice, Long Life milk, sugar and also baby milk, baby food, nappies and wipes.
Meanwhile Selfridges has announced that it is shutting its Manchester City Centre store from 6.00pm tonight along with its two London stores and its premises in Birmingham.Its online shop will be unaffected.
Glastonbury 2020 has been cancelled. Tickets for this year will roll over to next year say the organisers.
In a statement on their website they said:
“Clearly this was not a course of action we hoped to take for our 50th anniversary event, but following the new government measures announced this week – and in times of such unprecedented uncertainty – this is now our only viable option.
We very much hope that the situation in the UK will have improved enormously by the end of June. But even if it has, we are no longer able to spend the next three months with thousands of crew here on the farm, helping us with the enormous job of building the infrastructure and attractions needed to welcome more than 200,000 people to a temporary city in these fields.”
Planning rules will be relaxed so pubs and restaurants can operate as hot food takeaways during the coronavirus outbreak, the Government has announced.
The measures will apply to hot food and drinks. Serving of alcoholic drinks will continue to be subject to existing licensing laws.
McDonalds restaurants are to become takeaways, drive-thrus and delivery operations as the company attempts to cope with the outbreak.The Company also announced that all emergency services personnel and health and social workers in the UK would be able to collect free drinks at all restaurants while government guidance allows them to stay open.
