The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

Super Value's principal yesterday revealed he is seeking to build six months' worth of food inventories as he branded the extended shopping hours as a "relief" for both merchants and consumers.

Rupert Roberts voiced optimism to Tribune Business that the extension to 10pm will "work a lot better" and reduce the mammoth lines experienced by all New Providence food stores as Bahamians and residents raced to stock up ahead of the five-day Easter weekend lockdown.

Acknowledging that no rule book existed for managing the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr Roberts suggested that the government had realised its shopping schedule had "squeezed it to tight for consumers to get in and get out with what they need".

"It's a relief to extend the hours. It's a relief for us and relief for the consumer," he told this newspaper. "By and large the public have co-operated, but the ones that don't, the shorter hours cause them to have disrespect or a disregard for the social distancing.

"I think three more hours per day makes it nine more hours, which is another day for the week that the Government has given them to shop and us to serve them so it will work out a lot better. It's a crisis and we've lost the text book for this one. We're going to make mistakes, but once we make them we have to correct them and let's hope we get it right."

The Government earlier this week launched its "shopping schedule" as the latest tool in its fight to prevent the COVID-19 virus spreading throughout The Bahamas. This meant Bahamian households had to designate a specific shopper who could only go to the food store at certain times during the week based on their last name.

This, coupled with just the three shopping days provided this week ahead of the five-day Easter lockdown, created chaos and huge lines stretching out of food store parking lots as Bahamians rushed to stock up. To alleviate this, the Government has extended food store shopping hours to 10pm yesterday and today, with essential workers to shop on Thursday.

Mr Roberts yesterday said the frequent changes without much notice did create some difficulties for food store operations. He explained: "We brought on staff this [yesterday] morning to get off the job at 7pm, and then found we had to work them until 10pm.

"They then have to settle up, and we have to stock up. We try to stock up during the day when shoppers shop, and after we close we complete the bulk of it."

The Super Value chief then revealed he is seeking to acquire six months' worth of food inventories to guard against the possibility of supply chain and logistics disruptions elsewhere in the world, increasing this from his previous three-month target.

"It's really changed," he told Tribune Business. "I said to tell my buyer that I wanted a period-and-a-half - that's six weeks. When this came on I extended it to a period-and-a-half plus three months. When we speak she tells me she's added three more containers, five more containers to build the stock back up to three months.

"I have to tell her to add five more containers to back that up. We've had to change from a three-month build-up to six months' build-up because we don't know what's going to happen, but I'm going to supply the country with food as long as the Ministry of Finance has foreign exchange to do it.

"Once we started buying and orders were being cut, we realised we had to get more serious and make sure we over-ordered to build up an extra three months. My goal is more like six months instead of three. I discussed bringing in an extra three months with Dr Duane Sands, and he agreed, although he thought I was over-doing it and people would hoard, but it turned out worse."