The outgoing chief executive of Tesco has used an interview with Sky News to plead for customers to shop normally as coronavirus restrictions are ramped up.
Dave Lewis told Ian King Live that stockpiling was “unnecessary” as there was no disruption in supply chains as a result of the new measures, which fall short of a full lockdown to tackle rising COVID-19 infection rates
Supermarket shelves were overwhelmed in early March as households stocked up on essentials – with toilet rolls among the items rammed into trolleys as a siege mentality set in ahead of the stay at home order.
Image: Empty shelves for household essentials were common in the run-up to the national lockdown in March
Tesco and its rivals were forced to implement purchase limits on a range of products which were slowly lifted as stocks recovered.
“The message would be one of reassurance. I think the UK saw how well the food industry managed last time, so there’s very good supplies of food,” Mr Lewis said.
“We just don’t want to see a return to unnecessary panic buying because that creates a tension in the supply chain that’s not necessary.
“And therefore we would just encourage customers to continue to buy as normal,” he concluded.
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Mr Lewis, who is due to step down at the end of the month after six years in charge, said he did expect to see some limited precautionary purchasing initially but signalled it would be nothing on the scale of the scenes witnessed in March.
The grocery sector has been forced to invest heavily in its online delivery operations to meet demand as it was one of a handful of core services to remain fully open during the dark days of the lockdown.
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Tesco – the country’s dominant supermarket chain by market share – announced last month that it was creating 16,000 permanent roles to bolster its delivery capabilities.
Online sales now account for 16% of its grocery business.
Tesco said then it was serving 1.5 million customers a week online, up from around 600,000 at the start of the outbreak.