To cope with the influx of customers, large and medium-sized stores have taken precautions to sell the masks without creating long queues, as in the Nantes region.

REPORTAGE

Sold at a price of 95 cents maximum, surgical masks arrived in supermarkets since Monday morning, as for reusable cloth masks. If a few queues formed in supermarkets, each brand had its method of avoiding them, as noted by Europe 1 in two establishments in the Nantes region.

Internet orders

At the Leclerc hypermarket in Saint-Brévin-les-Pins, for example, the sale was limited to a box of 50 masks per person and it was not made on the shelves, but at the reception. At midday there was no traffic jam and customers were served in as little as five minutes.

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The Intermarché network proceeded in two stages: an order on the internet was reserved for loyalty card holders notified by email before picking up in store on a specific date, starting today. "I received an email, I signed up and I received the answer on Saturday that I could come and get it from today," says Thérèse, a client. "I'm glad to have it."

Misunderstandings

Intermarché wanted to avoid long queues, even riots like the famous Nutella promotion had caused in January 2018. "If we do it by organizing things well, we don't have this system where everyone goes arrive and jump on it, "explains Marie Crossin, cashier of a store of the brand, in Nantes. "We have to avoid a form of jostling." 

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If there is no hustle and bustle in this average area of ​​the neighborhood, the incomprehension has struck certain older clients who are not necessarily connected to the internet: "I don't have a computer!" senior. "So it will be for next week," replied the head of the cash register. By next week, this Intermarché will distribute 186 boxes of 50 masks to customers who have booked online.