A COVID-19 update from Countdown

Fiona from Henderson

Received via email:

Kia ora,

The safety and wellbeing of our customers, team members, suppliers and New Zealanders is always our utmost priority. We want to let you know what we are doing in response to Coronavirus (COVID-19).

Good quality, safe food is essential to all of our health, and having access to food and groceries is also really important for our peace of mind.

Keeping food and other essentials in stock
We're very lucky in New Zealand to have some of the best food in the world, and there is plenty to go around. There's no need to stock up.

We're working closely with our suppliers to keep food moving quickly through the network and make more deliveries to our stores. If you're seeing empty shelves or some products missing, it's because the product is on its way. It doesn't mean that we're going to run out.

We'd encourage all our customers to shop as you normally would, and to be thoughtful of others to ensure that all Kiwis have access to the food and products they need.

Good hygiene and safe food
We have always had very thorough cleaning, hygiene and food safety processes in our supermarkets and right through our supply chain.

To make sure we're doing as much as we can, we've also put in place even more cleaning and sanitising for each of our sites, and are installing hand sanitiser and wipes for our customers to use across our network of stores.

We're also following the Ministry of Health's guidelines around hand-washing and cleaning, and have reinforced this with all our teams.

Supporting our team
As a business which comes into contact with millions of Kiwis every day, we have a responsibility to help keep people safe. Right across our business we're following the government's requirements around self-isolation for any of our team members who are returning to New Zealand from overseas travel, as well as any of our supplier partners who are coming into our stores. We are supporting our team with leave if they have been impacted by self-isolation requirements.

Our online team is here to help
Our online service is experiencing high demand, and our personal shoppers and drivers are working very hard to provide a great service. If you're a first time online shopping customer, welcome!

If you're self-isolating, or you'd just be more comfortable with us dropping your groceries off at the doorstep without any contact, please let us know in your Delivery Instructions in the online checkout. We will leave your groceries on the doorstep and send you a text to let you know they're there.

Our teams are doing all we can to serve you during these busy and challenging times. We thank you for your continued patience and support.

Natalie Davis

Managing Director