The strategies of largest Russian retail chains during pandemic

As predicted earlier, Covid-19 keeps on threatening the health of the citizens from many countries, and to those countries’ economics consequently. The managers of all the businesses speculates over the approaches to be chosen, and schemes to be adopted.
No wonder, the World Food Moscow’s forum of the leaders of food retail market where top managers of the largest Russian retail brands spoke about their strategies during the spring’ upsurge of the pandemic, created large interest of the audience.
To provide the safety of the staff, 80 special “backup” shifts were organized by Piaterochka (part of X5 Group) in their distribution centres, said Sergey Goncharov, general manager. In case a single person of the shift got ill, the entire shift was dismissed for the confinement to be replaced by the backup team.
To support consumers, Magnit brand organised the collection
of food for people in difficult situation, encouraged its staff to volunteer in taking food to aged people confined in their homes. In every city and town, dozens and hundreds of employees contributed to these initiatives, related Ruslan Ismailov, deputy general director.
During the panics of the beginning of the pandemic, food stocks of some products were drained in no time, said Yohannes Tolay, general manager of Auchan Retail Russia. Nonetheless, company’s IT department managed to fix the delivery within the shortest period.
Thanks to the fast response to the challenges, flexibility and solidarity, our business obtained positive results, informed Martin Shumaher, general director of Metro C&C.
Operating through small stores, it was challenging to accomplish the safety requirements. However, we arranged the app delivery; by August, we have delivered some 900,000 orders, informed Evgeniy Rimskiy, purchase executive.
With the decrease of consumers’ income, Lenta redirected its offer toward cheaper assortment, said Yup Van Vreden, purchase and supplies director. We intend to be closer to our clients.
Marita Koskinene, general director of Prisma, is sure costumers’ safety becomes the basic value and the priority for the retailers. On the other hand, we realized that distance work is very efficient too, she stated.
The Forum was held in the frame of World Food Moscow Exhibition last September.