At Last…Longer Store Hours

Good afternoon from Butler & Bailey Market.

I hope everyone is having a good week!  We have had a good week here!  Everything continues to calm down, and I am hoping this continues moving forward.  Our staff has continued to do a great job with a great attitude, and we have all continued to stay healthy!

I continue to be in contact with Martha Buchanan, with the Knox County Health Department, and she continues to assure me that we are taking the appropriate measures for ourselves and our customers safety in the store.

Moving forward, I am going to make some changes to our store hours.  I am actually going to increase them.  We have been in virus mode for about a month now, so I have a pretty good feel for how the staff is doing and what our capabilities are, as far as serving our customers in the manner that they have become accustomed to.  I have also been able to study the traffic patterns in the store for the last few weeks and can predict pretty closely how each day is going to go.  

I have mentioned on several occasions that the best time to shop without crowds is in the middle of day.  The first hour we are open and the hour before we close have easily become our busiest hours.  I will also tell you that the two busiest hours of the week are the ones that we designate for our high-risk customers. I actually tell my mom not to come for those but to wait a couple of hours after we open before she comes to shop.  I guess what I am trying to say is the changes I made for good intentions have not produced the results I was hoping for.  In light of this, I have decided to eliminate the two high-risk hours we have been having every week.  Crowds are the enemy of all of us, especially the high-risk folks.  So, to me, the risk only increases by having these hours.  We were hoping for the opposite.

I am not smart enough to be right every time, but I am smart enough to change things when I am wrong.  I imagine I will get some hate mail about this decision but trust me when I say grocery stores love crowds so obviously, I am not doing this for the health of the business.  It is for the health of us and you!  I am also going to increase our daily hours.

The new store hours will be daily from 9am to 7 pm.

We will continue to be closed every Wednesday and Sunday.

My goal throughout this mess was, is, and will be to provide our staff and our customers the safest environment I can to work and shop in.  I have done my best to match the capabilities of my staff and our limited ability to get inventory to the volume of customers we have every day.  I feel confident that spreading out our store hours will only enhance these objectives.

Finally, I mentioned several weeks ago that we are in a marathon not a sprint to get to the finish of this virus.  I feel like we are now well into this race, and everyone has settled into a comfortable pace.  We have all been trained to the recommended safety practices and as long as we adhere to these, we will finish this race safer and sooner.

The new store hours will start this Monday, the 20th.  Please help us spread the word!

Thanks for letting us be a part of your community!

Tom Butler

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