Butcheries can now operate by contactless deliveries to customers.
11.15AM
As you may have seen yesterday afternoon, the Prime Minister answered a press question around butchers operating online with contactless deliveries. This morning we have received official confirmation from MPI & MBIE that this is accurate and their websites will be updated to reflect this.
Butchers have been approved to operate an online/over the phone service with contactless delivery. Butchers must keep their doors closed to the public and must not provide a click and collect or pick up service. We will send through the official advisory notice shortly when we receive it.
If you haven't already done this, registration with MPI Essentials will be required if there are more than five staff including the owner working in your business. See https://www.mpi.govt.nz/covid-19-essential-primary-sector-service-registration/
You will have seen in the news that businesses who are unable to achieve two metres physical distancing between staff have been forced to close their doors for the Alert Level 4 period. We strongly advise you to implement adequate physical distancing and hygiene practices with staff:
STAFF MEASURES
We appreciate that many of you and your staff might feel anxious about working during this time. The mental and physical health of yourselves, and your staff is very important, and in fact critical looking forward. Our suggestions for your staff
We strongly encourage you to implement physical distancing measures with your staff. This includes working with sufficient distance between individual staff members, split shifts to reduce the number of staff working at one time, and not allowing staff to take tea and lunch breaks together.
We strongly advise you to provide your staff with adequate PPE based on the job they are carrying out, click here to find out more information for essential non-health workers.
You should encourage staff to travel to work solo, and if they must ride share, create as much distance as possible between each other in the vehicle.
Follow government advice: Employment guidance for businesses and workers
TRADING & CUSTOMER MEASURES
Each of you will of course be making your own decisions on how you trade in the coming days and weeks. Our suggestions are:
You are allowed to do contactless deliveries only. This means dropping the delivery on the doorstep, ringing the doorbell and walking away OR texting/phoning the customer when the delivery person is back in their vehicle.
Please note that you are not allowed to do “Click and Collect”. This option is only available for supermarkets - no other business should be offering this and there are no plans to change this at Alert Level 4.
Keep up your social media and website presence - more than ever, your customers will be heading online to find out more from you.
If you don't currently have an online store, consider taking phone or email orders. Based on the size of your store, you could have one or two staff members working from home taking these orders on the phone and emailing them through to someone at the store.
*The official COVID-19 website states that 'Ordering, payment and delivery must be contactless and the business must operate safely within the general health guidelines such as physical separation and hygiene'.
Look at opening just four or five days per week. Whatever days you decide, it would be advisable to stick with those days consistently e.g. Tuesday to Friday or Wednesday to Sunday etc.
For more information please visit the olfficial COVID-19 government website.
We are lucky to be able to serve and feed our communities so it is really important that we do
our bit to stop the spread of COVID-19. That means putting in place every possible measure
we can to ensure the safety of ourselves, our staff and our customers. We will continue to update you with any further information we receive.
Please don't hesitate to get in touch with us.
Pippa Hawkins, General Manager
pippa@rmnz.co.nz
To visit the official government COVID-19 website, please click here