Woolworths will temporarily convert its Dandenong Plaza, Watergardens South and Mountain Gate supermarkets into online delivery hubs as Melbourne enters stage 4 restrictions.
The three stores will close to in-store customers from Tuesday 4 August at 7:45pm to solely serve online grocery delivery customers until further notice.
The conversions will enable Woolworths to pick and dispatch tens of thousands more weekly online orders to customers in the surrounding suburbs. This includes online orders for the most vulnerable in the community through Woolworths' Priority Assistance service.
During March and April Woolworths undertook similar conversions in a small number of stores in Sydney and Melbourne to meet online demand and service customers staying at home in line with government restrictions during the early stages of the pandemic.
The three stores have been carefully picked to minimise the impact on local shoppers and have the following alternative stores within five kilometres:
- Dandenong Plaza: Dandenong South and Endeavour Hills
- Watergardens South: Watergardens, Watervale and Taylors Lakes
- Mountain Gate: Ferntree Gully, Scoresby and Boronia.
All team members in the three stores will be retained to either pick online orders or work in neighbouring stores. There is no impact on jobs as a consequence of the conversions.
Woolworths Supermarkets Victorian General Manager Andrew Hall said: "The demand for online delivery continues to grow at pace with more customers in self-isolation or seeking to limit their outings.
"This week we'll be converting three of our Melbourne stores to online delivery hubs to help meet this demand and support the most vulnerable in the community.
"We understand this will be inconvenient for some of our in-store customers and have sought to minimise this as much as we can by converting stores in close proximity to others.
"It's an uncertain time for many in Melbourne and this will ensure we have the delivery capacity to support the essential grocery needs of many more customers online."
Woolworths' online orders continue to be fulfilled out of the dedicated customer fulfilment centre in West Footscray and across over 150 supermarkets in Victoria.
