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And speaking of essential supplies, we all still need groceries, but in this time of social distancing, what steps should we be taking to make shopping as safe as possible? Well, you can go to the store when it's not crowded, come back at a different hour if it is, bring along sanitizing wipes, and, above all, refrain from touching your face while in the store. Â It's a lot!  And then what are you going to do with your child?  Leave them at home unattended?

Certain Belize city grocery stores are taking those anxieties into account, and, starting next week, they are offering both delivery and drive-up pickup of groceries. We spoke to Aisha Trapp marketing manager for the San Cas group and she told us what the San Cas stores have been doing to ramp up sanitary conditions in light of COVID-19:

Aisha Trapp - Marketing Manager, San Cas Group
"We've been listening to the press conferences. We've been making sure that everybody's knowledgeable about all the policies and protocols that have been put in place by the authorities so as you can see one of the main things is that we have the tape on the floor with the distance to ensure that customers are prepared with the social distancing policy. What we have our security doing also is that when customers are coming in we have a spray bottle with some solution in there, anti-bacterial, to spray their hands and when they leave we also ask them to spray. We ensure that we clean and sanitize, we do that on a daily basis even before this crisis. Next week we're going to be open to the public 8:00am to 2:00pm only and after that we're going to be doing delivery and pickup service the delivery is an equivalent of $100.00 worth of groceries, the pickup you can just call in. We have our WhatsApp number. We have a messenger and you can email so call us. 223-4777, tell us what you need. We'll get it together for you and we'll give you a time when you can come and pick up your stuff. We're not increasing prices, so you can rest assured that San Cas supermarkets our prices remain the same. Once we don't have any increases in any of our duties or things that we can't control our prices remain the same."

Omprakash Alex - Owner, Sai Bodega
"Since I see this month people are away from the stores, too much crowd, away from the crowd, so you know we've made extra facilities for customers, any customers."

Cherisse Halsall
"And what would you like your customers to be aware of before they enter the store?"

Omprakash Alex
"Well as the customer enter the store the first time I sanitize their hands, I have alcohol there as you can see and when they come I sanitize their hands and just keep our distance like you know three feet and once we have like 5 people in the store we just close the door. We're just offering the customers for the pickup or for the delivery. Anything you have comments just call me or anything you want to know, prices, we're always here."

Grocery pickup from Bottom Dollar Store and Sai Bodega can be done by reaching out to them by phone, e-mail or WhatsApp. Those numbers are 614-2149 and 224-0154 respectively. 

Belize's biggest supermarket chain Brodies today also encouraged customers call in for pick up or delivery orders.  They are also limiting cusotmers, and making out social distancing parameters.