Bed Bath & Beyond (BBBY) has extended the period the majority of its stores will stay closed. In an update on its operations published on Friday, the retailer says its new cutoff is May 30; it was previously May 16. The workers who have already been furloughed will have that absence extended to the same date, although the company will continue to pay their healthcare premiums.
Meanwhile, Bed Bath & Beyond has devised a strategy for reopening those outlets, which will be done in phases.
One of these is the expansion of the buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) contactless option that is currently its lifeline to an additional 200 of its stores. This would bring the total to approximately 750, roughly half of the total store count in North America. Bed Bath & Beyond is also strengthening its delivery efforts, with the goal of shipping online orders within two days to customers.
Image source: Bed Bath & Beyond.
It has also drafted and will implement a new store safety plan to guard the health of both customers and the company's many employees.
Bed Bath & Beyond sounded a confident note about its return to real-world brick-and-mortar retail: "Our strong financial flexibility and liquidity allows us to take this measured, market-by-market approach to reopening stores."
It also struck a reassuring tone by writing that "[w]e will only open our doors to the public when we believe it is safe to do so, while carefully managing costs and monitoring performance as we scale up our operations over time."
Investors might be feeling a bit less confident than the company. They bid its shares down by slightly more than 4% on Monday, in contrast to the gains enjoyed by other consumer-goods stocks and the top equities indexes.
