ByBria Bolden|May 17, 2020 at 5:36 PM EDT - Updated May 17 at 11:50 PM
SAVANNAH, Ga. (WTOC) -As states like Georgia continue to lift their restrictions, some businesses are taking extra measures to keep their employees and customers safe.
Brighter Day Natural Food Market here at home has created a mask or face-covering requirement for shoppers.
Co-Owner Kristin Russell says they decided to put this policy in place in late April once restrictions were being lifited and business was picking up.
She also says because they’re a small store, they want to help reduce the spread of the virus and this is the best way to protect each other’s health.
“It just seemed like the prudent thing to do," said Russell. "It’s not a huge imposition for a short period of time that you’re shopping meanwhile our staff is there all day with constantly in the front of the public so it seemed like a fairly logical and simple step to make that requirement. It’s a small store, it’s crowded, you walk around the corner, bump into someone and sneeze. You know we’d like to help reduce the spread of the virus until we get it a little more under control.”
“Knowing that business was going to be picking up and wanting business to pick up but also realizing that we’re not there yet, so what can we do to mitigate and allow people to come back to work and the economy to keep moving, this is part of it.”
Russell says they’re also providing face coverings for shoppers who show up without one.
“It makes me feel much safer coming to work knowing that as an employee that, I am valued enough that our boss wants to make sure that we’re working in a safe environment," said employee Chelsea Haddad. "But on top of that I think that the service that we provide here to the community is very important and so to be able to keep our community members safe as well is really important to us because everything we do every single day is for our shoppers.”
“We catch people coming in the door and we offer masks and sometimes they seem a little surprised but they mostly seem very glad to have a free mask to put on so I think people value feeling safe in the environment their shopping at.”
“I think that as a community that it’s a really important thing that we come together. It’s a small thing that everybody can do to keep each other safe and for me it makes me feel like I’m doing something that’s apart of the greater good of our community and so I hope that other community members will start doing that as well.”
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