Abstract

With the characterization of the COVID-19 outbreak as a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11, 2020, numerous countries fell into panic across the world trying to devise a plan of containing the virus and protecting their citizens. Due to the lack of government procedures, each country has taken different steps on how to approach the pandemic. With a mixture of social distancing measures, emphasis on proper hygiene, and warnings of how the virus can spread, the United States responded to the pandemic with the closure of non-essential businesses paired with stay-at-home orders across different states. Essential businesses that continue to operate, such as grocery stores, have been faced with increasingly large consumer demand while having to continually adapt to government health precautions and restrictions as they change daily. The goal of this paper is to identify the specific measures that grocery stores have taken to keep their businesses afloat and to establish a framework for other grocery stores and essential businesses to follow in the event of a future pandemic. This analysis includes an evaluation of consumer demand, resource availability, logistics, and the economic effect on these essential businesses.