Hi everyone,
I want to update you on Walmart Canada’s continued effort to keep our associates and customers safe and healthy during these unprecedented times.
It continues to be a privilege and a tremendous responsibility to be providing an essential service for our communities.
Our stores look different today. We’ve made changes quickly to prioritize safety and to ensure customers can access the resources they need at the low prices they expect and deserve. For example, we have:
- Increased cleaning throughout the store
- Limited the number of customers shopping in the store at one time and are asking stores to encourage customers to limit store entry to only one adult per family.
- Installed plexi-glass dividers at registers, customer service desks and in our pharmacies – with more to come.
- Marked the floor to create social distancing.
- Instituted product purchasing limits to ensure everyone can access products they want.
- Temporarily closed photo kiosks, service deli and service bakery, fitting rooms and bulk foods.
- Temporarily close some of our licensees, such as hair and nail salons and restaurants are closed too.
Demand for online grocery orders through Walmart.ca continues to be high. The team is fulfilling thousands of orders a day. We’re adding more capacity, meaning more pickup and delivery timeslots are opening store-by-store. I want to be fulfilling three-times the orders we are today and we have a bold plan to make it happen. Many of the 10,000 new associates we’re hiring will support our online grocery business.
We’re also piloting a new initiative for our hero frontline healthcare workers. Starting this week, hospital staff can order groceries to a safe location at the hospital. We’re starting with eight hospitals in the Greater Toronto Area and hope to expand as quickly as we can.
Finally, I want to pay tribute to our incredible associates. I continue to be amazed by the stories I’m hearing from around the country. There are so many associates stepping up to provide an essential service in these times of need. Their effort is exactly why we expedited store bonus payments, introduced new wage premiums and bonuses. Thank you for everything you are doing in store, pharmacies, distribution centres, trucks and homes across the country. Keep making us all so proud.
We’ve featured a few of our associates in a new video. You can watch it here.
Thank you. Please stay safe, be kind, wash your hands and practice social distancing.
We will get through this, together.
Sincerely,
Horacio Barbeito
President & CEO
Walmart Canada
