LEISURE & RETAIL FACILITIES THE RETAIL REACTION
What are the cleaning and hygiene challenges facing the retail sector today, asks Essity’s Stuart Hands. And how can shopping centres improve the purchasing experience for customers while ensuring their premises remain safe?
Major changes are taking place in the retail sector - just as they are everywhere else.
Today’s shopping centres are having to up their game to ensure that customers feel safe and welcome. But if safety were the only consideration, the task of reopening would have been relatively easy.
Retail centres would simply have closed all their changing rooms, restaurants and coffee bars in a bid to reduce the risk of cross-contamination. They would have strictly limited the number of customers coming into their premises at any one time to facilitate social distancing. They would probably also have prohibited shoppers from handling the stock.
Customer toilets would also have remained closed, just as many of them were back in May 2020 when non-essential shops reopened after the fi rst lockdown.
But while such measures may have potentially improved customer safety, they would have been unpopular and unsustainable. This is because they go against the very reason why many of us choose to head for the retail centre in the fi rst place rather than shop online.
Going back to the shops is all about being able to try on clothes, test out the products and feel the quality of the items we plan to buy. And if all these practices are all off the table, why bother to leave the comfort of our homes?
Many shoppers also enjoy the buzz of the retail centre environment and appreciate the opportunity to shop with friends, stopping for a convivial coffee whenever the retail experience becomes too exhausting. But when the cafes and restaurants are closed, this is impossible and the task of shopping becomes a much more functional and less enjoyable experience. The food and drink outlets are also an important revenue stream for shopping centres.
So, it is important that the cafes should remain open and that customers should be allowed to try on clothes, test the products and pick up items from the shelves. And when people are touching surfaces and products, they need to have access to hand hygiene facilities – which are usually to be found in the washroom.
This is not the only reason why washroom provision is vital in a retail centre. Toilets should be made available to anyone visiting a food court café or restaurant to allow them to wash their hands before eating. Customers and diners are likely to curtail their shopping centre visit If there are no washrooms in use, something that would have a detrimental impact on footfall and sales.
But while washroom provision is crucial, a stressful visit to the toilets hampered by long queues could ruin a shopping
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trip and may prompt customers to choose a different retail centre next time - or even decide to shop on line.
Retail centres therefore face a diffi cult task. They need to recreate the pleasant, carefree shopping experience for which many customers crave. They must ensure that toilet and hand washing facilities are made freely available.
And they need to ensure that nervous customers feel safe. So how can they combine all these elements?
“In May 2021 the British Retail Consortium reported a total shopping sales increase of 10% compared with the same month in 2019.”
Scrupulous cleaning regimes and being ‘seen to be clean’ will help to improve safety and provide reassurance to shoppers. The sight of staff members continually sanitising seats, tables, lift buttons and other frequently-touched surfaces will inspire customer confi dence while the provision of hand sanitiser dispensers in strategic positions throughout the complex will supplement hand washing facilities for busy shoppers.
Particular attention needs to be paid to toilet provision – which is where most people will go to wash their hands. Hand hygiene is to be encouraged, but shoppers will be deterred from visiting washrooms that are crowded, messy or unhygienic or where supplies of soap, toilet paper or hand towels have been allowed to run out. So extra care should be taken to ensure that the washrooms are kept clean and well stocked at all times.
This can be achieved with the aid of high-capacity systems and digital technology. Smart systems that allow dispensers to be checked remotely such as Tork EasyCube will remove the need for frequent physical checks on retail washrooms. Tork EasyCube allows the management to assess washroom usage and dispenser levels via a smartphone or tablet, helping them to keep on top of cleaning and refi lling requirements.
A high capacity soap system such as Tork Foam Soap works well in a retail centre. The dispenser contains 2,500 shots of soap compared with around 1,000 in most liquid
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