The Bed Bath & Beyond store at Aldrich Plaza, located at 4075 Route 9 in Howell
By Joshua Burd
Bed Bath & Beyond Inc. is detailing plans to reopen another 600 stores, as it looks to expand its in-store fulfillment and curbside pickup services to more than 1,300 locations.
The Union-based retailer last week announced the new steps as part of an ongoing phased reopening. While the company did specify the exact store locations, it said the plan includes roughly 500 sites in North America.
Bed Bath & Beyond expects to complete the moves by June 13.
“We continue to respond to the COVID-19 situation with measured, purposeful steps to help keep our people safe and our customers served,” said Mark Tritton, the company’s CEO and president. “We recently launched our Store Safety Plan and are guided by our medical team and national, state and local guidance to help ensure customers can shop with us confidently.
The retailer’s newest steps also include reopening around 50 Christmas Tree Shop stores and 50 Cost Plus World Market stores in the U.S., according to a news release. When including its buybuy BABY and Harmon Face Values stores, which have remained open as essential businesses, the company expects to have about 50 percent of its stores open by mid-June.
Meantime, Bed Bath is bringing contactless curbside pickup to an additional 600 locations, bringing that total to roughly 1,350 stores in total and some 90 percent of its portfolio across the U.S. and Canada. The company is also planning to bring some 11,000 associates back from furlough as stores reopen to the public and services are expanded across North America.
“We’re seeing strong online engagement from our loyal customers through this period,” Tritton said, noting that, in recent weeks, U.S. traffic to the Bed Bath & Beyond website and mobile app is up about 30 percent and digital sales have doubled.
The company also said that, with around half of its stores still expected to remain closed, it was extending the furlough of the majority of store associates and a portion of corporate associates until at least June 13.
“Our financial flexibility allows us to take this patient, market-by-market approach, while we invest in rebuilding our business and introducing new services for our loyal customers,” Tritton added. “ I want to thank our dedicated teams for helping us resume operations safely and look forward to welcoming more of our team back into our business as we re-open more stores in the coming weeks.”
