Harvest Foods becomes coronavirus front line

Over the past few weeks, employees at grocery stores across the country have suddenly found themselves on the front lines of the COVID-19 outbreak. The situation is especially serious at Harvest Foods in Bigfork, the small grocery outpost that singlehandedly serves the unincorporated town on the northeast shore of Flathead Lake.

Harvest Foods employees have experienced frenzied customers, unprecedented shortages and concerns about their own health while working at Bigfork’s lone grocery store through the pandemic.

“It’s been crazy,” said Christian Evans as he pushed a row of carts through the Harvest Foods parking lot.

“People realize it’s more essential than they thought,” he said. “We’re kind of the last traditional business.”

But statewide directives that have closed restaurants, bars and nearly every other business have put a strain on grocery stores, particularly small, isolated shops like Harvest Foods.

“We’re getting gutted almost daily,” said assistant store manager Tom May.

Like most stores, Harvest Foods has been hard-pressed to maintain reserves of popular items like toilet paper, pasta, rice and canned goods. May said he has also noticed customers stocking up on cold medicine, cereal, milk and infant formula.

“Everybody’s buying the same stuff,” observed Marcus Balgos, who co-owns the store with his wife.

Balgos and May explained that Harvest Foods has a particularly hard time meeting the demands of their stockpiling shoppers because the small store only receives two truck shipments of products per week, compared to multiple shipments per day at other, larger grocery stores in the area.

Balgos added Harvest Foods is part of a supply chain with a warehouse based in Spokane, so the extreme measures and higher instances of coronavirus in Washington state have exacerbated their shortages.

“It’s been a challenge,” May said directly. “The other stores have more of an opportunity to get products.”

But even though Harvest Foods has a smaller pool to draw from for their product supply, they have seen an influx in customers due to panic over the coronavirus.

Shoppers have been flocking to Harvest Foods from all over the Flathead Valley — some believe they may be safer from becoming infected by shopping at the small grocery store than they would be at the larger shopping centers like Walmart or Costco in North Kalispell. Others have turned to Harvest Foods in search of hard-to-find items that have disappeared from shelves at the busier businesses.

“People in Kalispell hear, ‘Harvest Foods has this,’ and it’s like a NASCAR race to get to Bigfork,” May said.

“I worry about the local clientele,” he added.

Harvest Foods has resorted to rationing popular items like toilet paper and eggs to try to give every shopper an opportunity to get their essentials. They have even started selling single toilet paper rolls, with a limit of two individual rolls per customer, which they keep behind a staffed counter.

“We still haven’t caught up,” Balgos said. “It would be nice if we could catch up a little bit.”

Online orders are also “blowing up,” according to Evans. Harvest Foods offers the option to select items in-store and pick them up curbside, which many shoppers see as a safer alternative to shopping in-store.

Balgos said this option benefits everyone involved, since it could help keep people who might be at higher risk from getting exposed, or from potential carriers of the virus from infecting others. He noted Bigfork has a significant elderly population, a demographic which has a higher risk of having more serious complications from the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also observed a lot of “snow birds” are now returning to Bigfork from their winter homes in warmer areas, potentially bringing the virus home with them.

“It’s good if they stayed out of the store,” Balgos said.

Plus, Harvest Foods employees noted a lot of the customers in the store have not been on their best behavior because of the stress of the virus outbreak.

Rather than getting sick, May said, “what’s more stressful are the customers.”

He said he has seen a lot of shoppers’ “true colors” emerge in the form of extreme hoarding, aggressiveness, impatience with workers and a lack of understanding about shortages.

“I want people to stop freaking out,” Evans said candidly.

Balgos said the store’s checkers have also noticed a lot of the same customers showing up every few days to buy out the store’s limited supply of its most popular products. “It would be nice if they used what they already had,” he said of these repeat customers.

“I feel bad for the community, for the people who really need those items,” Balgos said. “I’m hoping we have enough for this community. I just want everybody to have some.”

May agreed with this assessment; he said he was disappointed to see one young woman load up on almost all of the store’s boxes of Cheerios.

“What about the older people?” he pointed out. “The people that have to go without — it’s sad.”

But beyond the concerns about filling the shelves, Harvest Foods employees expressed other worries about their own health risks from working in the store during the pandemic.

“We are all worried about that,” Balgos said. He said a few workers have decided not to come into the store over coronavirus fears, including a few pregnant women on the store’s staff.

Evans said some of his coworkers have also mentioned they were staying home sick, but he didn’t know of anyone at Harvest Foods who had been tested for the coronavirus.

For his part, Evans said he felt uncomfortable being around all of the customers from across the valley. “There’s only so much I can do by wearing gloves,” he said, but he pointed out, “the bills won’t pay themselves.”

Balgos said the management has considered implementing some precautions like asking workers to wear masks or putting up sneeze guards at the cash registers, especially since, “the checkers are so close to everyone.”

But he said, “I’m not sure if it actually is effective … we’re taking it day-by-day.”

“We’ll see once it gets more here,” he added, since the Flathead Valley has not seen the explosive numbers of the virus in the same way as larger metropolitan areas.

May, meanwhile, wasn’t too concerned about catching coronavirus on the job. In his mind, his drive to work already puts his health and safety at risk on a daily basis.

“Even if it’s a big deal, you have to have those people who step up,” he insisted. ■

Reporter Bret Anne Serbin may be reached at (406)-758-4459 or bserbin@dailyinterlake.com.