Coronavirus: Cherry Hill Garden Center Enhances Social Distancing Efforts To Keep Customers Safe For Mother's Day
CHERRY HILL, N.J. (CBS) -- It wouldn't be Mother's Day without flowers. One local business shared how it adapted so it didn't miss out on sales during one of its busiest weekends.
With social distancing guidelines in place around the Delaware Valley, flowers may be a good gift idea this Mother's Day. For one Cherry Hill garden center, Mother's Day preparations meant less time focusing on floral displays and more time ensuring customer safety.
There are some big changes at McNaughton's Garden Center this year compared to last, all in an effort to keep customers safe.
"We built a new cashier booth to extend our registers," manager Tom Measey said. "Workers also sanitize the carts and other surfaces hourly."
Every hour they are sanitizing the shopping carts. They purchased more carts so they can do curbside pickups. There are normally four cashiers in a booth but this year only two, and directional arrows are posted to encourage social distancing.
This is typically the busiest time of the year for the garden center, according to owner Scott McNaughton.
"Sales are higher because there are not a lot of stores to shop at," he said.
But all the COVID-19-related purchases, from shopping carts to masks, have added up.
To make up for that and to relieve any customer fears of being inside the business, McNaughton's Garden Center has turned to online sales.
"It's something we should've done years ago. We've had over 800 orders since the stay-at-home orders began. This is something very new to us and we are doing it with less staff," Measey said.
The pandemic has really changed the way the company has done business so has the weather and cold temperatures.
The cold weather this past couple of days left some plants battered and bruised.
Still, the owner says they've weathered tough storms before and they'll get through this one.
"We are here for customers," McNaughton said.
For customers, safety is top of mind.
"Of course it is, we wanted to get in before everybody else," Risa Zablin said.
The silver lining is most people placed online sales and picked their flowers up on Saturday. They have 100 online orders and there are 15 left to be picked up.
