Coronavirus Changes: Nugget Markets Requiring Customers To Wear Masks Starting Next Week
WEST SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Walk into about any grocery store these days and you'll find plenty of people wearing scarves, bandanas or masks.
Especially on grocery workers like Leslie Coty, who works at Nugget Market in West Sacramento. The grocery chain just started requiring its employees to cover their nose and mouth with masks.
"I was glad because I've been watching the news and the CDC recommends it. So I want to follow their rules and everybody seems to be pretty happy with it," Coty said.
Soon it'll be a mandate for all shoppers starting, Monday, April 13.
"People, if they want to do the right thing and protect each other, they're going to want to wear the mask. I don't see any issue with it," Coty said.
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Dave Turner hopes his employer, Raley's, follows suit soon.
"I believe we are definitely on the front lines. I mean we come into contact with so many people throughout the day it's not even funny. I fear every day that I may catch it," Turner said.
The California Grocers Association said the move could happen at stores statewide.
"You can read the tea leaves and see that with a number of larger municipalities adopting these guidelines or mandates that it's only a matter of time that it will ripple through the entire state," Dave Heylen, Vice President of Communication for CGA, said.
Grocery store chains Safeway and Save Mart told CBS13 that they don't require employees or customers to wear masks, but they are following and strongly encouraging others to follow them. Those companies didn't say whether they'd consider adopting this requirement.
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Folks in the grocery industry said cutting down on trips to the store is the ultimate protection.
"People trying to come once a week at the most. Try not to come in every day," Coty said.
"Just to protect the community, I would just urge everyone to try to and do the best with whatever they've got. And only in an absolutely necessity come out to the store," Turner said.
That's what the CGA is stress to consumers.
"We really are emphasizing during the very important time that consumers limit the time they're shopping or actually making shopping visits," Heylen said.