From our CEO

As the pandemic evolves, UNFI continues responding, adapting, and innovating on two key fronts: maintaining our associates’ health and safety and keeping the grocery pipeline moving.

Despite challenge and uncertainty, we’re proud of the way UNFI’s associates keep rising to the occasion on behalf of the communities we serve, so we may play our essential role ensuring food availability across North America.

I’m inspired and grateful for their display of creativity, nimbleness, and resolve for all UNFI stakeholders. Every day they exhibit their commitment by living our company values: doing the right thing, courageously embracing what’s next, and delivering better together.

 

Sandy Douglas
CEO, UNFI

Our COVID-19 Response

Here are some of the steps we’ve taken over the course of the pandemic to deliver for our associates, customers, and communities:

Supporting Our Associates

Safety

• Enforced all CDC guidelines for social distancing, face coverings, and hygiene protocols
• Supplied masks, gloves, hand sanitizer, thermometers, and wipes
• Implemented enhanced sanitation processes and provisions, and engaged professional cleaning companies
• Recommended personal daily health screenings before coming to work
• Added on-site, pre-entry temperature screening stations at select facilities
• Implemented delivery and order pick-up procedures that limited driver contact with others
• Implemented remote working for most office functions
• Updated our travel policy to reflect CDC guidelines
• Made free, in-home COVID-19 tests available

Pay & Benefits

• Provided our frontline associates temporary wage bonuses and incentives
• Provided temporary additional paid and unpaid time off, and restored paid time off
• Allowed associates to cash out PTO hours
• Allowed associates to carry forward unused PTO into the next calendar year
• Encouraged the use of company-provided physical and emotional wellbeing resources
• Provided assistance grants to associates experiencing COVID-19-related financial hardship
• Distributed care packages for frontline associates
• Provided work flexibility, where possible

Vaccine Access

• Secured first-round, frontline worker vaccine status
• Encouraged and supported vaccination planning through our Vaccine Hub website and posters
• Offered incentives to frontline associates who become fully vaccinated
• Provided on-site vaccination clinics based on interest level
• Provided attendance relief for those experiencing vaccine side effects
• Offered work flexibility to office associates enabling ease of access

Supporting Our Customers

• Continued collaboration with our suppliers, to ensure the best possible support of our customers
• Uncovered alternate sources for essential products
• Hired 8,900 associates from early March through December 2020 to meet volume surge
• Temporarily onboarded drivers and warehouse workers from UNFI foodservice counterparts experiencing loss of work hours due to significant downturn in restaurant activity
• Increased receiving and delivery times and days
• Implemented a 40%+ increase in routes to meet volume surge
• In-store merchandising and space planning teams spent 14,000 hours between early March and late April, 2020 stocking shelves, reallocating sections and sourcing replacement items
• Offered a full line of store-ready solutions from PPE, health shields and PIN pad cleaning options
• Adopted virtual trade shows and product showcases in an effort to keep customers connected with suppliers, new products, and annual buying shows

Supporting Our Communities

• Maximized our capacity to deliver the most-needed products
• Donated N95 masks to state governments and first responders
• Donated more than $1 million to key nonprofits to address food insecurity, including No Kid Hungry, Feeding America, Meals on Wheels of America, MN and RI-based nonprofits, and Food Banks Canada
• Donated nearly 26 million pounds of food to Feeding America in 2020, helping keep food banks and food pantries stocked
• Donated 88 pallets of food, labor, and transportation to the Navajo Nation in partnership with Roadrunner Food Bank of New Mexico

UNFI's Risk and Safety Team
recognized as Gold Winner in
2020 Golden Bridge Business
and Innovation Awards