Hopkinsville’s two largest grocery stores — Walmart and Kroger — will now require employees to wear a face mask or cloth covering on the job.
Kroger announced the new policy Saturday in an email to customers nationwide.
“To create a safer environment for our customers and communities, we’re providing masks for all of our store associates to ear, and starting this Sunday, we’ll be requiring our associates to wear them in locations where they’re not already mandated,” Kroger chairman and CEO Rodney McMullen wrote.
Walmart said it began requiring store employees to wear a face mask or facial covering starting Monday, April 20.
In an employee memo dated April 17, Walmart cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and studies that show many people with the virus lack symptoms and could spread the disease without knowing they are potentially making others sick.
“With this knowledge, we believe it is simply in everyone’s best interest to use masks or face coverings to curb the spread of this disease,” the company’s executives said.
Mandating a face covering for employees is the latest change occurring at grocery stores as companies try to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. Over the past few weeks, stores have implement several changes. These have included limiting the number of customers allowed in the store at one time, marking social distancing spaces at check-out lines and reducing hours that stores are open to customers to allow employees more time to clean and restock.
Two other grocery chains in Hopkinsville — Food Lion and Food Giant — have not announced that they will require employees to wear face masks.
Food Lion said its “associates will also have face shields available …” but it has not indicated facial coverings will be required.
Food Giant, formerly Piggly Wiggly, is part of Houchens Industries. As of Saturday, Houchens had not announced on its corporate website any policy regarding facial coverings for grocery store employees.
(Jennifer P. Brown is the editor and founder of Hoptown Chronicle. Reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org.)
Jennifer P. Brown is co-founder, publisher and editor of Hoptown Chronicle. You can reach her at editor@hoptownchronicle.org. She spent 30 years as a reporter and editor at the Kentucky New Era. She is a co-chair of the national advisory board to the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, governing board president for the Kentucky Historical Society, and co-founder of the Kentucky Open Government Coalition.
