An update from our CEO

An update from Peter Macnab, Superdrug CEO.

Following the announcement regarding the closure of all shops excluding Supermarkets, Pharmacies and essential retail (including health stores and non-dispensing Pharmacies), we’d like to update you on the steps Superdrug is taking as an essential retailer.

Our priority is always the health and wellbeing of our team and our customers and we are doing everything we can to provide the right service to everyone. Our teams are working hard to ensure that we can continue to make essential products, like baby milk, nappies, hand wash, sanitiser, general medicines, pharmacy prescriptions and OTC medicines, available. People rely on us for over 1 million healthcare products a week and it’s for these customers that we’ve stayed open.

From today our focus will be on keeping open stores where we are necessary to support the local community. We won’t open if we don’t have enough people to do this safely. We will be reviewing the situation on a store by store basis and as soon as we can each day, will clarify on our website and our social channels what stores will be open. Any open stores will be operating on reduced hours of 10am to 5pm to ensure there is enough time for deep cleaning, stocking shelves and for our colleagues to rest.

To keep colleagues and customers safe, we have already introduced some key safety measures across all stores. These include 2 metre distancing, perspex screens at till point and pharmacy counter, extra card only tills, the removal of testers and restricting the number of customers per store at any one time.

We announced last Friday a significant employee package because we are hugely grateful to our amazing team and we want to make sure that no one is worse off financially through this time. The package includes paying colleagues in full if they are not able to work through either sickness, self isolation, being a parent, being a vulnerable person, or due to store or service closures. This week we’ve also extended the package to cover those colleagues who live with or care for someone in a vulnerable group.

We’ll continue to commit as much resource as possible to our online services, to help reduce the number of visits customers need to make to a physical store. We’ll be ensuring the items restocked online are essential products, and whilst there might be some delays due to current demand, our Distribution team have been working hard so that we can fulfil orders as quickly as possible.

As a non-dispensing pharmacy, we feel that this is the right course of action to fulfil our duty to customers, colleagues and communities, whilst keeping everyone safe.

We will continue to review the situation and update you with any changes as soon as we are able.

Chief Executive Officer
Health & Beauty UK