As our country works together to flatten the curve of the coronavirus, early signs indicate our collective efforts are making a positive impact. While we still have a long road ahead, I’m hopeful that we’re heading in the right direction toward a path of recovery.
Meijer remains committed to being a community partner you can count on. For more than 85 years, we’ve been guided by our purpose to enrich lives in the communities we serve. Right now, our focus is on making our stores as safe as possible for our team members, customers and communities. We’re also committed to supporting our communities when they need us most.
As essential workers, our team members come to work every day because they’re committed to serving you. For their safety and yours, all our team members participate in daily health screenings and temperature checks. If they aren’t feeling well, we have many programs in place to support them so they can stay home and get well. We’re also pleased to be able to provide our team members with a clean new mask and gloves at the start of every shift.
While some of our stores have already been operating with mandatory mask requirements, we are now requiring all team members, vendors and contractors to wear a mask or facial covering while working at Meijer. We also encourage our customers to do the same when you shop in our stores. This aligns with current guidance from the CDC and helps ensure we are all doing our part to help flatten the curve.
Our team members are heroes in our eyes, and we know many of you think so too. That’s why we’re pleased to extend the appreciation bonus we’ve been paying our hourly front-line team members for an additional month. It’s one more way we can show our teams how thankful we are for the difference they make for our customers and communities every day.
We live and work in the communities we serve, so we know that many local restaurants in our communities have been hit especially hard by this crisis. We wanted to help, so we’ve partnered with more than 300 local restaurants in our communities to provide meals to our front-line team members. This partnership allows us to support the small local businesses in our communities that mean so much to us, while showing some well-deserved appreciation to our teams.
Addressing food insecurity is a cause that’s always been important to us, especially now with more people relying on food pantries. I’m pleased to share that in addition to donating $2.2 million to our Simply Give food pantry partners across the Midwest, we’re also working with the State of Michigan as the official supplier of shelf-stable items for food pantry emergency relief across the state.
Community is at the heart of what we do, and as a customer, you’re the reason we’re here. We’re honored to be here for you and serve our communities during this challenging time. It’s our belief that we’ll get through this together and our community will be stronger than ever.
Thank you.
Rick Keyes
President & CEO, Meijer