Amazon Whole Foods Arranges Special Hours For Senior Citizens

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is leaving no stone unturned to bolster initiatives to help the society in fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

This is evident from the company owned Whole Foods Market grocery chain’s latest move. Notably, under this move, Whole Foods stores will dedicate an entire hour to serve only senior citizens in an attempt to keep them safe from crowd as they are more susceptible to COVID-19 infection.

In the United States and Canada, the stores are opening one hour prior to their usual opening time and catering to customers aged 60 year or above. This special facility is available for the customers in the U.K. who are aged 70 years or beyond.

With the latest move, the company strives to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19 infection further.

Moreover, the move is likely to help the company in managing the coronavirus-induced panic shopping crowd, thus delivering better shopping experience to customers. This, in turn, will allow Whole Foods stores to attract customers.

Consequently, this will drive the company’s performance and instill investor optimism in this challenging situation.

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Amazon Joins the Pack

With this initiative, Amazon also joins other retailers which are also setting aside time for senior citizens in order to mitigate the risk of them contracting COVID-19 infection.

Walmart (NYSE:WMT) has recently rolled out an hour-long senior shopping event on every Tuesday, which will start from Mar 24 and last till Apr 28. The event will be hosted across over 5,000 Walmart stores in the United States one-hour prior to opening for the general customers.

Further, Target (NYSE:TGT) has also dedicated the first hour of operation every Wednesday to the senior customers aged above 65 years across more than 1,800 stores.

Additionally, Albertsons and its owned Safeway have designated 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. every Tuesday and Thursday across their stores for senior customers and other vulnerable customers.

Meanwhile, Kroger (NYSE:KR) is reportedly running trials to open its stores for a stipulated time for senior citizens in a bid to support them in this pandemic.

Given the abovementioned facts, we note that retail competition is intensifying despite the coronavirus scare on account of increasing rate of shopping.

Amazon’s Growing Endeavors

Nevertheless, the e-commerce giant’s strengthening initiatives to combat COVID-19 remain noteworthy.

Apart from the senior citizen move, the company has recently taken an initiative to bolster its Same-Day Delivery program by making same-day delivery service available in the cities of Philadelphia, Phoenix, Orlando and Dallas for Prime members.

Further, the company has built mini-fulfillment centers, which are first of their kind buildings. Notably, the new facilities are located closer to customers, which is likely to help Amazon to reduce the number of hours taken to deliver orders via same-day delivery services.

Additionally, Whole Foods stores are closing two hours early in order to sanitize the stores and restock the shelves. Further, the company will continue to deliver Prime orders from these stores during these two hours.

Also, the company’s delivery drivers have been asked to sanitize the delivery vans everyday before going out for delivery.

We believe all these endeavors will continue to drive customer momentum and strengthen competitive position against other retailers.

Currently, Amazon carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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