Our response to Covid-19

A week before the UK went into lockdown on 23rd March 2020, we started making some big decisions to make sure we were prepared. The result of our brainstorming? A commitment to feed the nation through the pandemic. By the end of March, we were paying small suppliers immediately to help them make ends meet, introducing guaranteed sick pay for our colleagues, providing designated shopping times for NHS workers, and launching a hardship fund for those in need, among other things. We also donated £10M to local food bank by running our bakery, egg and fruit & veg packing sites for an extra hour every day to make, prepare and pack food required to restock.

We make more food than any other single company in the country, and as a result we were constantly rolling out new measures and trying new things in the early days of the pandemic. It was important for us to make sure that we could scale as fast as possible. We quickly established that our colleagues were guaranteed to receive their quarterly bonuses, because we knew how hard they were working to help us with our pledge to feed the nation.

One of our key priorities was getting all of our counters open so that we could continue to support our partners who produce meat and fish for our stores. By the end of May, we were incredibly proud to have made that a reality. We also started selling flour from our bakeries to keep up with soaring public demand.

We reached the milestone of 100,000 doorstep deliveries, which was an impressive feat for our colleagues. Our online and home delivery channels saw a fivefold capacity increase, and we recruited an additional 45,000 colleagues to help out.

During the holidays, we provided 15,000 lunches to school children. We also introduced a quieter hour into all of our stores on a Sunday. The manager of our Berwick store was awarded an OBE for services to the community.

As we entered the second national lockdown, we began to provide lunches for eligible children who were unable to attend school.

Five of our colleagues were recognised in the Queen’s New Year Honours list.

We became the first UK supermarket to pay our colleagues a minimum £10 an hour. They allowed us to feed the nation, so giving back was our natural next step. Our car parks were used as vaccination centres, we provided 1.2million meals to families in need with ‘The Bread and Butter Thing’ charity, and we reached the monumental milestone of 650,000 doorstep deliveries.