A MESSAGE FROM RETAIL FOOD GROUP’S EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN & CEO

At Retail Food Group the safety and wellbeing of our people and community, including you, our valued customers, has always been our priority. This commitment hasn’t changed, and we are taking every step necessary to better ensure our franchisees, their teams and customers are safe.

As Australia and the world faces this increasingly uncertain and challenging time, I wanted to reach out to you to tell you about the precautions we are taking to ensure your health and safety so you can feel comfortable interacting with our stores.

HEALTH & SAFETY

We believe it is critical that we all play a constructive role in supporting both local health officials and government as they work to contain the COVID-19 virus. We also feel it is important to take a calm and balanced approach, making sensible decisions and focusing our efforts on practical, meaningful actions that prioritise the health and wellbeing of our people, customers and communities.

You may see our store operations modified to better ensure we protect everyone’s safety as we navigate our way through this situation and ensure we are strictly following the expert advice provided by our health officials and government.

Whilst these modifications may vary by community or store, they may include the closure or limitation of seating areas to promote social distancing and in extreme cases, the closure of certain stores where required.

REINFORCE HYGIENE

Our stores follow strict cleaning, quality control and hygiene procedures. However, we’ve increased cleaning and sanitisation of all contact surfaces in our stores, including counter tops, tables and chairs, EFTPOS machines, table numbers and door handles to better protect you.

Our store teams regularly and thoroughly wash their hands using alcohol based hand sanitisers and anti-bacterial soap and water, including after handling money. We’re also making sure hand sanitiser is available in our stores for you to use as necessary.

INSTORE SERVICE

You may have noticed we’ve also moved our coffee and condiments sections to ensure our instore teams are completing coffee, food and other beverage orders behind the counter, rather than allowing the public to handle cup lids, sugar, stirrers, spoons or straws.

We’re only using disposable cups and crockery, rather than re-usable items, to help limit to the potential spread of viruses. As well, there is no human handling of food within our stores, with food-safe gloves and other implements, such as tongs, used for your safety.

NO CONTACT DELIVERY

Our pizza stores follow strict food safety and hygiene guidelines, including regular handwashing, sanitisation and wearing clean gloves when making and garnishing our pizzas, the pizzas are also passed through a 230+ degree oven. All deliveries are also correctly sealed in packaging before being handed to a delivery driver or rider to ensure the safe handling of food throughout the delivery process.

No Contact Delivery has also been made available on request should you feel the need for this added security. This will ensure you receive your pizzas hot and fresh like usual, but with no contact between you and your delivery driver or rider.

A BALANCED & INFORMED APPROACH

All of our stores are also following the government’s advice regarding the need for self-isolation in prescribed circumstances, what to do should symptoms potentially attributable to Coronavirus emerge, and the necessary precautions which should be taken in those circumstances, including store cleaning and sanitisation.

Our leadership team is also meeting on a daily basis to monitor developments and the guidance provided by government, to assess the situation, and ensure our people are safe and supported. We are regularly in contact with our stores and people to ensure they have the information they need to best navigate this situation and provide you with the quality, service and safety you expect from our stores.

SUPPORTING YOUR LOCAL STORE

During this time, we also ask that you appreciate that the vast majority of our stores are owned and operated by franchisees, who provide employment opportunities and make valuable contributions within the local communities in which they operate. We would ask that during this challenging time that you support them as we are – together we can all make a difference and help each other through this difficult period.

In closing, we’d like to reassure you that we are taking this issue extremely seriously and will continue to do so. We thank you for your continuing support whilst we do.

 

Peter George,
Executive Chairman