Shop­pers took ad­van­tage of Tru Valu’s in­no­v­a­tive What­sApp ser­vice over the week­end, util­is­ing the pop­u­lar text and voice mes­sag­ing ap­pli­ca­tion to place and col­lect their or­der and lim­it­ing the time spent in stores while pro­mot­ing so­cial dis­tanc­ing and ad­her­ing to COVID-19 health and safe­ty pro­to­cols.

Cus­tomers, lo­cal and for­eign of all ages utilised the ser­vice which proved to be a boon es­pe­cial­ly to the el­der­ly and those with im­mune-com­pro­mised sys­tems, at the des­ig­nat­ed What­sapp ser­vice reg­is­ters at their five lo­ca­tions in El So­cor­ro, Val­park Shop­ping Plaza, Di­a­mond Vale, Trinci­ty Mall, and Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, the lat­ter two had the bulk of or­ders.

Sharon, a cus­tomer at the Long Cir­cu­lar Mall branch said, “I used the What­sApp Ser­vice to or­der some gro­ceries yes­ter­day (Fri­day) and I re­quest­ed that I col­lect them to­day (Sat­ur­day). I got a re­sponse stat­ing that I could col­lect them yes­ter­day if I de­sired to do so. This I did and was very im­pressed with the ser­vice.

“Next week please God, I will or­der more gro­ceries again.”

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day about the back­ground of the ser­vice, Kier­an Khan of Huck­le­ber­ry Me­dia Com­pa­ny Ltd, the agency re­spon­si­ble for Tru Valu’s dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing said, “The What­sapp Ser­vice and Call and Or­der Ser­vice were in­tro­duced by Tru Valu ear­li­er this week to mit­i­gate foot traf­fic com­ing in­to stores as a re­sult of the COVID-19 chal­lenge.”

“These ser­vices al­low per­sons to send their full list, our staff bun­dle and pre­pare and cus­tomers come in to col­lect with­in a win­dow of time giv­en.

“The ser­vice will be pro­vid­ed for the fore­see­able fu­ture and is han­dled in a san­i­tary man­ner in keep­ing with guide­lines from the Su­per­mar­kets As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (SATT).

“The ser­vice was launched di­rect­ly on Face­book (/tru­va­l­uTT) and on In­sta­gram (@tru­valusu­per­mar­kets) and has been wide­ly shared and cir­cu­lat­ed­—re­flect­ing that it was a much-need­ed ser­vice at this time.”

He said the ser­vice will be pro­mot­ed fur­ther in the press, but the su­per­mar­ket chain want­ed to en­sure that its sys­tem worked ful­ly be­fore it did that.

Speak­ing on the up­take of the ser­vice, Megan Mo­han, Tru Valu Mar­ket­ing De­part­ment said cus­tomers at present seemed to be test­ing the sys­tem to en­sure its vi­a­bil­i­ty.

She said or­ders ranged from $200 to $500 per per­son with high­er up­take in the Long Cir­cu­lar Mall and Trinci­ty Mall lo­ca­tions, but it was in­creas­ing across all branch­es and they had 100 or­ders and grow­ing in two days.

Mo­han said cus­tomers were pur­chas­ing the usu­al items at this time, such as rice, eggs, milk, tea and sug­ar but not pan­ic buy­ing in any way.

She said cus­tomers or per­sons they des­ig­nat­ed could pay with ei­ther cash or cards and su­per­mar­ket staff would guide them to the near­est check out for pay­ment.

Mo­han said the su­per­mar­ket had al­so in­tro­duced ear­li­er 7 am to 8 am shop­ping hours for se­niors, the dif­fer­ent­ly-abled and those with im­mune con­di­tions in line with oth­er su­per­mar­kets.

“We have al­so in­tro­duced a Call and Col­lect ser­vice for per­sons who did not have What­sApp or da­ta or who didn’t use What­sApp.”

Ex­plain­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two ser­vices, Mo­han said Call and Col­lect was avail­able Mon­day to Fri­day while the What­sApp ser­vice was avail­able sev­en days a week and both ser­vices were from 8 am to 4 pm.

In a state­ment, Tru Valu’s CEO Sunil Ma­hara­jh said, “This is a very in­for­mal sys­tem which al­lows cus­tomers to con­tact the Tru Valu store near them and send their list. We are try­ing to of­fer this at a time when every­one is jus­ti­fi­ably con­cerned about be­ing in a crowd­ed space such as a su­per­mar­ket and this will be par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful to high-risk cus­tomers such as our se­niors.”

He said the su­per­mar­ket had set up ad­di­tion­al sinks at its stores to al­low both staff and cus­tomers the fa­cil­i­ty to wash their hands eas­i­ly.

Ma­hara­jh said they had man­dat­ed their staff to wash their hands every 30 min­utes and were al­so sani­tis­ing as much as pos­si­ble every 30 min­utes.

He said, in ad­di­tion, the su­per­mar­ket was in­stalling mark­ers on the floor at the check­outs to show their cus­tomers where they need­ed to stand when in line.

Ma­hara­jh said this would al­low Tru Valu to com­ply with the re­quire­ments for so­cial dis­tanc­ing.