By: Leslie Sarasin, President and CEO, FMI
On February 22, 2021, I will be celebrating the hard-working heroes of the supermarket by joining with the industry to proclaim it Supermarket Employee Day. The supermarket has long been acknowledged as the backbone of our communities, but its role has never been more essential than it has been for the past ten months. Here are some of our reasons for proclaiming February 22 Supermarket Employee Day:
Supermarket employees are frontline heroes during periods of crisis.
Be it hurricanes, blizzards, fires or floods, supermarket employees sustain communities; they maintain the critical pipeline of food and supplies that sustain the health and well-being of their customers. But they also go above and beyond by volunteering countless hours and contributing valuable support to community service.
Supermarket employees have helped us stay strong during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When the rest of the world went into home sheltering, grocery stores remained open and employees remained dedicated to their jobs. Supermarket employees pivoted quickly to put measures in place that keep shoppers and fellow employees safe. Maybe most importantly, supermarket employees maintained a high level of customer service that made a difference ns people’s lives – from going above and beyond implementing and practicing CDC guidelines in stores to feeding those most in need. Day in and day out, millions of supermarket employees come to work both at the store level, the corporate headquarters and at every role in between to provide communities with essential services that help them survive and thrive.
Supermarket employees deserve our gratitude.
It hasn’t been easy. There have been tough times, supply chain disruptions, job priority shifts and much uncertainty, but our industry’s workforce has made heroic efforts to keep communities going. Supermarket employees have personified compassion and courage when communities have most needed to be encouraged and, for that reason if no other, they are heroes.
Join in the Celebration of Supermarket Employee Day on February 22, 2021.
For all these reasons and more, I ask you to join in celebrating Supermarket Employee Day. We’ve developed an online toolkit with customizable resources to help get you started in planning. We encourage you to leverage the innovative and entrepreneurial spirit that is the cornerstone of the food industry and develop your own special ways of recognizing your employees on this day or even longer if you so choose. It’s a time for us all to pause and appreciate the accomplishments we’ve had as we look toward the future.
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