These days, convenience retail is anything but boring. Since March, retailers have completely pivoted their business practices to ensure they can provide a safe environment for their employees and customers, provide daily essentials for their communities and keep stores operating amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

Retailers have shut down prepared food offers altogether or eliminated self-serve options such as roller grills, fountain (cold and frozen dispensed) and bakery cases. Others have closed franchise foodservice programs inside stores, and some are capping the number of people allowed inside the store—or they don’t allow customers inside at all.

Convenience retailers that were exploring whether to offer food delivery quickly jumped on board to make it a reality, while others have built drive-thrus and implemented contactless pickup options.

Beyond working to keep stores stocked and employees and customers safe, convenience retailers, designated as essential businesses by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 19, have been addressing myriad local, state and even county regulations—including local ordinances where officials initially confused convenience stores as cafés and restaurants.

An increasing number of stores have installed plexiglass sneeze guards at registers, placed decals on the floor directing customers to socially separate by at least six feet and allowed employees to wear masks. As the frequency of cleaning stores and fuel islands has significantly increased, frontline employees are wearing protective gloves and vigilantly disinfecting high-touch point surfaces.

All these actions—this “new normal” for convenience stores—took place within the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic spreading in the United States, and every day it seems like there is something new. There will certainly be further developments between when this article is published and when you read it.

As one retailer commented, “we’re all feeling our way through this, and we’re all addressing new types of employee and consumer concerns, as well as concerns around the safety of foodservice during this time.”

Are Food and Food Packaging Safe?

The short answer is yes. More information about the virus continues to be published, and the broader food retail industry community, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA), continues to clarify questions around whether food and food packaging are potential sources for COVID-19.

“Unlike foodborne gastrointestinal viruses like norovirus and hepatitis A that make people ill through contaminated food, SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, is a virus that causes respiratory illness. This virus is thought to spread mainly from person to person [through respiratory droplets]. Foodborne exposure to this virus is not known to be a route of transmission,” wrote Frank Yiannas, FDA deputy commissioner of the Office of Food Policy and Response, in Food Safety News.

For these reasons, according to Yiannas, the FDA does not anticipate “that food products would need to be recalled or withdrawn from the market for reasons related to the outbreak, even if a person who works in a human or animal food facility (e.g. a food packager) is confirmed to be positive for the COVID-19 virus.” On March 18, during an FDA-hosted call with the food industry community, Yiannas said that the U.S. food supply remains safe. There are no food shortages, and food manufacturing has not been disrupted.

The FDA also notes on its website that it may be possible for a person to get COVID-19 by touching a surface or object that has the virus on it and then touching their mouth, nose or possibly their eyes, but this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.

In general, the FDA suggests that “because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is likely very low risk of spread from food products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient, refrigerated or frozen temperatures. It is more likely that a person will be exposed by person-to-person transmission involving close contact with someone who is ill or shedding the virus.”

For those concerned about the possible contamination of food and food packaging, whether product was purchased from the convenience or grocery store, or delivered from a local restaurant, wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds when you return from the store and after removing packaging from food, per the CDC.

Is Produce Safe?

There are biological factors at play: COVID-19 could be present on food, whether from someone sneezing or coughing on it, for example, but the risk of infection from that product would be very low, and there has been no indication that food could be a source of infection, notes Dr. Ben Chapman, extension food safety specialist and associate professor at the University of North Carolina.

Chapman explains in a video with “Science Comedian” Brian Malow, that COVID-19 wants to attach to and infect respiratory tract cells. So, if COVID-19 were present on food, as the food travels through the digestive system, there aren’t enough respiratory cells for the virus to attach itself to. As soon as the food hits the stomach, the protein coat on the virus will denature. In other words, be destroyed.

In respect to safe food-handling procedures, it is impossible to be 100% risk-free, but there are ways to help manage risk. Hilary Thesmar, PhD, RD, CFS, chief food and product safety officer, senior vice president, food safety, at FMI, wrote on the association’s blog that people could consider using hand sanitizer before and after selecting produce items and avoid touching multiple produce items when making selections.

“As per good food-handling practices in general, wash hands before food preparation or eating, avoid touching the face and consider supplementing handwashing with the use of hand sanitizer. Just before use, rinse your produce under running water. There is no need to wash packaged fruits and vegetables labeled ‘ready-to-eat,’ ‘washed’ or ‘triple washed.’ Do not wash produce with soap, detergent or chlorine as these products are not intended for consumption,” she wrote.

What About Surfaces?

There have been questions around how long COVID-19 can survive on contaminated surfaces. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine suggested that the virus can be detected in aerosols for up to three hours, as well as up to four hours on copper, 24 hours on cardboard and two to three days on plastic and stainless steel.

Dr. Brian A. Nummer, PhD, at the Utah State University Food Safety Extension, shared with members of the Conference for Food Protection that data from the study likely simulates worst case scenarios. “And, how exposure to sunlight, heat or cold can affect COVID-19 survival times is not known yet,” he said, adding that in contrast, a 2011 study found that “the H1N1 flu remained infectious for up to 48 hours after landing on non-porous surfaces” such as stainless steel or plastic; however, most virus particles “were inactivated after nine hours. Both cold and flu viruses survive for much shorter times on porous surfaces such as cloth, paper or tissue, with very little infectious virus remaining after four hours.”

Virus survival also was raised in a CDC report on cruise ships, which suggested COVID-19 could be detectable on surfaces for at least 17 days. In an email to members of the Conference for Food Protection, Dr. Don Schaffner at Rutgers University clarified that the virus does not survive for 17 days: “What the report says is that nucleic acid from the virus is detectable after 17 days, which is not the same as an infectious virus particle,” he said.

The late Maya Angelou once said: “If you’re always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” In today’s context, while everyone is seeking a return to normal, it’s in that journey where we’re learning how amazing this industry and its people can be.