Retailers that revisited masks reverse course
When the parent of Southern grocery chain Winn-Dixie said that it wasn’t going to require customers to wear masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus, the response was brutal, with some loyal patrons vow
ing on social media never to shop there again.
Days later, Winn-Dixie reversed course and said that it would mandate masks in states or localities that had no requirement.
The about-face on Monday followed another highly-publicized reversal last month by AMC. Less than a day after
the nation’s largest movie theater chain said it would defer to local governments on whether masks should be worn, it came up with a new message in response to social media backlash: Customers who don’t wear masks won’t be admitted or allowed to stay.
Even as pockets of resistance remain, the tide appears to be turning on masks. Three out of four Americans favor requiring people to wear face coverings while outside their homes, according to a survey by The Asso- ciated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Even President Donald Trump has changed his stance after months of downplaying the
importance of masks and igniting a partisan cultural war on the issue.
“Whether you like the mask or not, they have an impact,” he said earlier this week.
As the number of new virus cases have surged in a slew of states, particularly Florida, Texas, California and Arizona, national chains like Walmart, Target and most recently McDonald’s are issu- ing mask mandates as health officials repeatedly advise
that covering your nose and mouth can be one of the most effective ways to reduce infections — itself a reversal of earlier messaging at the begin- ning of the pandemic.
“I believe brands need to pay attention to the new
consumer activist,” said Stefan Pollack, president of his own Los Angeles-based pub- lic relations and marketing company. “Brands no lon- ger have the luxury of stay- ing neutral.” Southeastern Grocers, the parent company of Winn-Dixie, said that it initially rejected a mask mandate because it didn’t want to put its workers in the position of
policing shoppers. But it real- ized it needed to pay attention to the well-being of its customers, workers and com- munities. Winn-Dixie’s 500 stores are located in Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia in addition to Florida — all states that are grappling with rising coronavirus cases.
Still, small businesses don’t have the luxury of enforcing nationwide policies and are more sensitive to the prevailing sentiment in their regions. And plenty of resistance from shoppers remains, with viral videos of mask-rule defiers continuing to surface on social media.
“There has been a trend that has switched in favor of wearing masks,” said Neil Saunders, managing director of Global-Data Retail. “But there are people whose minds will still not be changed by this. It’s easy to put a policy in place. It’s much harder to enforce it and have your workers on the front lines.”
In fact, the parent of Dollar Tree and Family Dollar went in the opposite direction, loosening its mask restric
tions. It had initially started mandating shoppers wear masks along with suppliers and employees in stores, but then changed its policy last week to “request” face coverings in stores where there’s no state or local mandate.
A Dollar Tree Inc. spokesman didn’t respond to emails from The Associated Press, but Saunders believes the company realized its barebones staff wouldn’t be enough to police the rules.
Others think that it wanted to siphon away anti-mask customers from Walmart and others.