Shopping or clubbing? Businesses limit patrons to meet state’s order to slow virus
Wednesday marked the first full day of S.C. Gov. Henry McMaster’s executive order for essential businesses to limit the number of people in their stores in hopes of reducing the spread of the coronavirus.
In McMaster’s order, a home-or-work mandate, he also told residents to limit travel to exercise, visiting family or obtaining essential goods or services. The order went into effect at 5 p.m. Tuesday.
Under the order, retail businesses that are allowed to operate must limit the number of customers to five per 1,000 square feet or 20% of their allowed occupancy, whichever is less.
David Martin, owner of Hilton Head Island’s independently owned Piggly Wiggly grocery store on North Forest Beach Drive, said he has been following the fire marshal occupancy rate, which limits the number of people allowed in his store to roughly 80.
“We’ve gotten up to about 65 (people), but we’re going old school with curbside pickup, so those people don’t even have to come into the store,” he said Wednesday afternoon, as Jimmy Buffett played in the background.
From the start, Martin said, he has limited the amount of toilet paper each customer is allowed to buy, and the store has never run out.
“Now, it wasn’t Charmin,” he noted.
At Publix at Bluffton Commons, an employee stood outside, keeping track of the number of the people arriving and leaving and asking people to stand back so shoppers had plenty of space to exit.
Inside the store, blue-tape arrows on the floor marked where customers should enter; X’s indicated do not enter.
Floor tape was the social cue to maintain the recommended 6-foot spacing experts say is helping slow the spread of the virus.
Other stores in the Bluffton area handled the new order in very subliminal ways.
Sam’s Club in Bluffton funneled people into the store, using separate entrances as one employee counted those entering and others wiped off carts.
Target marked the pavement outside its door in case it reached its customer quota, but people were moving smoothly through the store without crowding each other.
At the Publix in Hardeeville’s New River Crossing, an employee outside used a phone app to count those entering and leaving.
The Walmart in the same shopping center used shopping carts to corral people into one entrance where an employee was keeping track of numbers.
Most shoppers weren’t aware they were being counted.
McMaster’s order carries a fine of up to $100 or as much as 30 days in jail for businesses convicted of violating it.
This story was originally published April 8, 2020 at 5:25 PM.