COVINGTON, Ga. — The Salvation Army is reopening its family store in Covington this week.
The Covington Family Store closed its doors at the end of March in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. While its food pantry and financial assistance program for utilities continued standard operations, the store itself was closed throughout the month of April.
“We took that time to close, really go through our cleaning process here in the center and make sure that all of our store operations would be functional for the new way that we opened our business,” Director Steve Wallace said.
Beginning on Wednesday, May 6, the location will be open three days a week — Wednesday, Thursday, Friday — from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For the time being, however, donations will only be accepted on Mondays.
Wallace explained the reasoning behind limiting donations to one day a week, noting that donated items must be quarantined for 72 hours before employees can handle them.
“One day a week is probably all that we can handle for now as we rotate those donations out of the warehouse and into the store,” he said.
The Covington Family Store will continue following CDC recommendations for keeping its facility safe for employees and customers. Hand-sanitizing equipment will be placed at several locations throughout the store, gloves and masks will be made available and social-distancing measures — such as limiting the number of customers permitted inside at one time — will be enforced.
The end goal is to return to operating six days a week, but the store’s top priority at this time is ensuring customer and employee safety.
“On behalf of The Salvation Army, and of all the people that have supported us for so many years, we’re blessed and honored to be able to reopen back to the community in a very safe, very protected environment,” Wallace said. “We certainly want to continue to provide resources to our community in every way we can. We’re honored to have this sort of grand reopening week. We hope the public will come out and enjoy some time with us.”
