IGA has extended its home delivery service of essential grocery packs, Priority Shop, to include eligible frontline healthcare workers. At initial launch, the service was available to the elderly, vulnerable or isolated.

With the extension, IGA has partnered with St Vincent’s Hospital Sydney to provide 30 healthcare professionals a Priority Shop pack each week for the next month.

The service offers four standard grocery packs that can be ordered online or via phone. This includes ‘The Essentials’ pack with milk, bread, butter, eggs, cereal, toilet paper, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables and soup; the ‘Pantry Plus’ pack with The Essentials Pack items plus tea bags, instant coffee, cheese, rice, pasta, pasta sauce, red meat, chicken and/or pork, chocolate block, sweet biscuits, frozen meal for one, long life juice, canned seafood, tissues, toothpaste and soap bar; the ‘Dog Pack’ with wet and dry dog food and the ‘Cat Pack’ with wet and dry cat food.

Metcash Food CEO, Scott Marshall said, “Supporting local communities is at the heart of what each of our 1,400 independently owned and operated IGA stores across the country do, which is why it was clear that we needed to open up this service for those who are working on the frontline during this pandemic. We hope it provides relief for these workers.”

IGA has also partnered with businesses including Ola and Uber to help bolster their current delivery offering.

“IGA will continue to support its local communities with the Priority Shop boxes for those who have no support and are unable to access essential items. We are pleased to be able to make this offering available to more Australians.”

For those shopping in IGA stores, various measures have been implemented to keep staff and customers safe including additional cleaning of common touch points, one-way aisles in smaller stores and introducing shopper limits to make sure social distancing guidelines are achieved.