Have you heard about Food Lion’s new changes? December 9,  New Market’s Food Lion opened their doors for their official “launch day” in honor of the completion of renovations. Over the summer, Food Lion has been making many changes to completely rework the whole store. Some of the major changes include: 

• The entire layout/design of the store has been remodeled 
• New uniforms 
• Self checkout 
• Hot bar
• Offers new curbside delivery; “Food Lion to Go”

Since the remodel, Food Lion has also been hiring new employees, many of whom are high school and college students who are home during COVID-19. 

One of the many Linganore students working at the New Market Food Lion is Paige Kapeluch, a cashier.

“Working at Food Lion has been a pretty good first job for me. Everyone I work with is super friendly and fun to be around,” said Kapeluch.

One of the popular new features at Food Lion is the hot bar. There are many options of warm, fresh food such as wings, mozzarella sticks, and much more. Customers are able to go right up to the hot bar, where they can choose what they want. Because of COVID-19, there is currently a server who will get the food for the customer, that way only one person is coming in contact with the food. 

Food Lion has also expanded their inventory with many new products to make shopping more efficient for customers. One downside to this, though, is that everything in the store has been rearranged, leaving some ‘getting used to’ for customers. 

“I think the only complaint customers have really had about our new store is not being able to find things” said Paige Manseau, the front end manager.

Even though there are signs down each aisle and the store is pretty easy to navigate, it’s still easy to get confused in a big store. 

Food Lion to Go is another new feature at the store. This new service allows customers to order groceries online, and then pick them up outside the store, or have them delivered to their house. This service is similar to Insta-cart. Some would say Food Lion to go is more reliable, because the person preparing your groceries actually works in the store. One of the main reasons Food Lion to Go is so helpful/convenient right now is due to COVID-19. It offers a safe way for cautious customers to get all of their grocery shopping done without having to put themselves at risk for COVID-19.

Self checkout is another new part of Food Lion that has been helpful during COVID-19. It makes shopping a lot easier/more efficient for people with only a few items, or who want to do the checkout process themselves. Self checkout also eliminates the face-to-face interaction with other people, which can make checking out a lot safer during the pandemic.

Overall, Food Lion has gone through many changes this summer, some due to COVID-19, some to keep up with competing grocery stores, and some just to spice up the store.