Rozier’s reserves hour for senior shopping

Beginning Saturday, March 21, seniors who shop at Rozier’s Food Centre in Perryville will have the opportunity to do so away from the crowds.
According to president Jay Lottes, the store is offering a special hour for seniors to make their purchases while avoiding the large crowds that have been the norm for the past week as residents try to stock up on essentials during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Customers aged 60 and over — who are considered to be among those most susceptible to the virus — will be able to shop between 6:30-7:30 a.m. daily without having to worry about crowds.
 “At the Chester store and the Perryville location, we're going to do 6:30-7:30 a.m. Ste. Genevieve does a little earlier, they do 5:30-7 a.m. because a couple of their businesses get off a little bit earlier in the morning and they have staff at that time,” Lottes said. “If an individual does come in that could be young in appearance, we're not going to turn them away, but we're going to at least ask them to have courtesy and respect while they're shopping and keep their distance.”
Lottes added that a checkout lane might also be reserved for younger shoppers during the early hours, while the rest would be available for seniors.
“We may see that in the mornings,” Lottes said, “because you do have a few younger people that come from some of the businesses, factory workers. We're out here to work with everybody and the staff is trying to work and we're trying to keep level heads, too.”
Also beginning Saturday, all three Rozier’s locations will begin closing a bit earlier.
According to Lottes, closing hours will be at 7:30 p.m. until further notice.
“We are trying to keep things as clean, sanitized and shelves stocked to the best of our ability,” Lottes said. “This will help us to be able to take the time to do so.”
Lottes said that the past few days have seen large numbers of shoppers — some driving from as far as 150 miles away — seeking products that are sold out in their local stores.

“I’m very thankful for the Perryville community,” Lottes said, “but it got out on Facebook that we had more stock in the store and everybody's been coming from all locations. We’ve had people coming from St. Louis and Cape Girardeau because of their depleted stock.”
Lottes said he didn’t have any concrete numbers on customers, but said it has definitely been a busy week, especially when it comes to restocking.
“We’ve been fortunate,” Lottes said. “We're just trying to keep ourselves having stock in the stores. “We know that some of the northern and southern locations have been getting depleted. We don't want to run into that situation. We started putting limit ones or twos on items so we can keep this stock in there and we don't get so consumed that we're out completely out.”
That strategy has paid off, he said, at least in customer satisfaction.
“We figure we want to kind of keep the buying under control so it's not so hectic and frantic,” Lottes said. “We've been getting many thanks from everywhere.”
The credit, he said, goes to the staff at all three locations.
“All the stores have done a great job with their staff,” Lottes said.
For more on the story, see the March 26 edition of the Republic-Monitor.