As the province gives the green light for some businesses to open their doors to the public, there is a mixed reaction from those on the approved list.
On Wednesday, Premier Doug Ford announced that starting Friday, all nurseries and garden centres would be allowed to open, followed by hardware stores and safety supply stores on Saturday.
On Monday, retail stores with street entrances will also be permitted to reopen for curbside pickup only.
Despite a decrease in sales, Will Heeman, chief day maker of Heeman’s Garden Centre, said just because they have the go-ahead does not mean they plan on opening to the public Friday.
“We don’t feel like it’s the right time for a garden centre like ours to be opening, especially on two days’ notice right before the second biggest weekend for garden centres in Ontario,” Heeman said.
“We want to make sure when we do open — because we will — that it’s because of local data and local health figures.”
As of Thursday, the total number of confirmed cases in London-Middlesex was 436, of which 284 have recovered — about 65 per cent of cases — and 42 have died.
Heeman’s, which owns the garden centre and a strawberry farm, voluntarily shut their doors to the public and switched to curbside pickup on March 17 before the province shut down all stores.
Since then, the garden centre has been working quickly to expand its online website to include over 6,000 products with both colour options and detailed descriptions.
Heeman tells Global News May is their busiest months of the year, usually accounting for 50 per cent of all sales, and in the past week alone, they have had over 1 million people visiting their website.
He said they have over 130 staff working at designed times and sections of the store fulfilling orders and that they make sure the teams stay consistent in who works when and that things are sanitized when each shift ends.
The Garden Centre has increased the number of staff they would usually have at this time of year by 15 per cent to ensure they can fulfill as many orders as possible.
“It’s a small fraction of what we normally would do in a single day, but this decision is because we think it’s right for the community,” Heeman said.
“I know we are putting our money where our mouth is because it is costing us significantly.”
Others like Steve Copp, president of Copp’s Buildall, have a cautious plan to move forward. The store will be limiting access to only 25 customers at a time.
“Our business has not been firing on all cylinders, but it has been better than what I expected, but we are here for the long run.”
Copp tells Global News both he and his staff are looking forward to letting in customers and getting back to some normalcy.
The company has five stores within the London region, employing over 200 staff, all of whom Copp said he was grateful to not have to lay off.
Since all non-essential businesses in the province were closed, the store has still been able to offer customers curbside pickup.
“People are calling, and they are trying to describe what they want, and we are getting a lot of whatchamacallit on the thingamajig, and we don’t want to give them the wrong product,” Copp said.
“Now, they can come into the store and pick it out.”
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