Last week Winn-Dixie said it would not require shoppers to wear masks in its stores, even after its competitors announced they would. But the southern supermarket chain changed its mind just hours after President Donald Trump tweeted that “wearing a face mask is patriotic.”
“Starting Monday, July 27, we will require customers to wear masks to help reduce the spread of [Covid-19]”Joe Caldwell, director of corporate communications and government affairs for Southeastern Grocers, Winn-Dixie’s parent company, said in a statement, adding that the company believes that wearing masks in stores should be required by law.
In an email to the Washington Post, Caldwell denied that the change in policy had anything to do with the president’s tweet. Caldwell did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
Winn-Dixie operates more than 500 stores in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi, all states that Donald Trump won in the 2016 election.
At the end of last week Kroger (KR), Kohl’s (KSS), CVS (CVS), objective (TGT)and Walmart (WMT) They all announced that they would require customers to wear masks at every location in the US, and the National Retail Federation, the industry’s largest lobbying group, also asked companies to require masks in their stores.
But last weekend, Caldwell called the masks a “highly loaded problem” in an email to the Washington Post, around the same time as Florida, where most Southeastern Grocers stores are located, reported more than 12,000 additional cases of Covid-19.
“We do not want to put our associates in a position to navigate interpersonal conflicts or prohibit customers from shopping at our stores,” said Caldwell.
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