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SAN JOSE — San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo joined with Safeway executives Wednesday to announce a plan crafted to combat hoarding by offering special hours twice weekly so senior citizens can more easily shop at the supermarket giant’s Bay Area stores amid the coronavirus panic.

The special shopping hours at Safeway will occur every Tuesday and Thursday, starting Thursday of this week, and last until 9 a.m. on those weekdays, officials said.

Target, Whole Foods, Zanotto’s, and Walmart are other supermarkets with seniors-dedicated hours.

“We got this,” Mayor Liccardo said. “Safeway and all of the food providers and retail providers in our community will continue to ensure that we have ample supplies for our entire community.

Target on Wednesday launched a dedicated shopping hour for seniors and others during the first hour every store nationwide is open.

Zanotto’s Market, a San Jose-based local grocery chain, on Tuesday instituted a seniors-only hour for people 60 years of age or older, every day, from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m.

Whole Foods has instituted a seniors-only hour during the hour before the store opens to the general public for the day. So if a Whole Foods store now opens at 9 a.m., people aged 60 years or older can shop exclusively at 8 a.m.

Mayor Liccardo believes ample supplies of food and other groceries are in ample supply in the Bay Area, and to underscore his point on Wednesday, he gestured to fresh fruit, vegetables, juices, and other items in and near the produce section of a big Safeway store on Cottle Road in San Jose.

“The supply chain here at Safeway and all of our grocers is very healthy and is vital,” Mayor Liccardo said. “We know there is a lot of fear out there. And the fear sometimes stokes panic buying and hoarding. I have a very simple message: Hoarding hurts our neighbors.”

The new Safeway program is designed to improve the chances for senior citizens and other vulnerable residents, such as people with disabilities, to obtain goods and products they need, officials said Wednesday.

Starting this Thursday, Safeway store managers are asking that shoppers abide by a rule that will be in place until 9 a.m. on the designated weekdays.

“We are going to allow our seniors 65 and older, and those at risk, to shop during those hours,” Safeway Northern California Division President Brad Street said.

Here’s how the store hours would work. Safeway stores now typically open at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m., so the dedicated hours would run from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. on those days if it’s a store that typically opens later.

For the time being, during the virus crisis, Safeway isn’t keeping any Bay Area stores open 24 hours a day for retail sales. That way, store workers who would otherwise be at checkout stands to handle purchases could instead work on stocking shelves and doing a nightly “deep clean” of the stores, Safeway said.

“We get shipments overnight,” Street said. “In the morning is our best in-stock position.”

Therefore, Safeway is betting the hours right after a Bay Area store has opened for the day could offer the best opportunity for seniors and others at-risk to shop.

The supermarket chain will encourage people to adhere to social distancing during special hours for seniors and to use familiar objects to gauge the distance.

“One way to think about this is two shopping carts is about the six-foot mark,” Street said.

Pleasanton-based Safeway conceded the coronavirus panic buying has jolted the grocery giant.

“Fourteen days ago this hit us out of the blue,” Street said. “It started in Hawaii, then spread to California.”

The grocery company said its wholesale partners have begun to streamline and trim the variety in the products they ship.

“Our suppliers are working to consolidate the variety of products that they send out,” Street said. “They are sending out single or multiple products in bulk versus trying to have the same variety you might have been used to in the store.”

Still, Safeway was confident it will gain the upper hand on the barren shelves for certain items for which shoppers hunger, such as antibacterial wipes, toilet paper, canned goods, paper towels, kleenex, water, and rice.

“We’ll figure this out,” Street said. “It might just take a little bit longer.”

It wasn’t immediately clear how the dedicated hours for seniors on the part of the supermarkets might be affected by California public health department guidelines for supermarkets and grocery stores. The guidelines recommend that supermarkets “eliminate” events or marketing that “target” those people who are identified as being at “higher risk” from the coronavirus.

Safeway didn’t respond to an email request regarding the situation. The state’s public health department has yet to “weigh in” regarding this particular matter, according to spokesperson Wendy Hopkins.

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Coronavirus glossary: Terms that became part of our daily dialogue in the past 6 months Teresa Davis, a San Jose resident who was shopping at the Safeway store on Cottle Road, said she believes it’s getting easier to find even some of the scarce items.

“I’m going earlier in the morning and it doesn’t seem to be as bad as it has been,” Davis said.

Other shoppers agreed they were pleased by what the south San Jose supermarket had to offer.

“I was amazed at what they had here,” Candace Levers, a San Jose resident, said of the store. “I hope these new hours will stop the hoarding. There is a little too much panic happening.”