Last Coronavirus Impacted Municipal Liquor Store Reopens In Richfield

Press release from the City of Richfield:

June 8, 2020

Over the past several weeks, Governor Walz has been “turning the dial” and slowly opening up the State of Minnesota to more commercial and recreation opportunities for residents. Richfield too has been working on offering more and more in-person services to residents, while still protecting both residents and staff from the spread of COVID-19.

On Monday, June 8, the city reopened its Shops at Lyndale, 7700 Lyndale Avenue, municipal liquor store location.

“Customer health and safety is our primary concern at our city liquor stores,” said Liquor Operations Director Bill Fillmore. “We needed time to make the necessary upgrades to the store and the temporary closure allowed us to keep serving customers at our other locations while the work was done.”

The Shops at Lyndale location was closed along with the store located at 6400 Lyndale Avenue in part to ensure adequate staffing was available as Minnesota adapted to a new way of life during its Stay-At-Home order. The store also needed to install Plexiglas partitions at the cash registers and floor marking to encourage patron follow social distancing guidelines.

During its COVID-19 closure, the store received an extensive renovation that saw all retail shelving, products and fixtures removed. The store was re-painted, countertops were replaced and new product shelving was installed.

“Liquor store employees have put a lot of time and effort in retrofitting their stores to ensure that customers and staff are safe during the shopping and transaction process,” explained Community Health Administrator Jennifer Anderson. “The stores have a good plan in place and customers can rest easy when they are shopping in our municipal liquor stores.”

Throughout the pandemic, Richfield’s municipal liquor stores have been regularly amending its business practices. The stores have established floor markings to demonstrate and encourage social distancing, installed Plexiglas barriers at cash registers, stopped accepting cash as payment for transactions, turned off in-store ATMs, and continually sanitize touchpoints, carts, handles, payment terminals and shopping baskets.

Stores also limit the number of customers inside to six at a time, ask customers who appear ill to immediately leave the store, don't allow employees who do not feel well to come into work, decline all returns or exchanges and suspended the sale of lottery tickets.

“A lot of work went into remodeling and adding virus mitigation features to our Shops at Lyndale store,” remarked Fillmore. “We are excited to welcome our customers back into the store. I hope residents appreciate the time and effort we put in to make the store more modern and customer-friendly.”

This press release was produced by the City of Richfield. The views expressed here are the author’s own.