Winn-Dixie Drops the Maskless Look - The Wall Street Journal

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A Winn-Dixie spokesman says masks are a highly charged issue with the store’s customers.
Photo: Saul Martinez/Bloomberg News

Updated July 20, 2020 6:10 pm ET

Weekdays in July are usually pretty humdrum for American retailers, but not this year. Walmart, the largest of them all, began requiring everyone entering its stores to wear masks effective Monday. With many others already having instituted the rule, or preparing to, the list of places where one can buy groceries maskless is shrinking.

But for those in the Southeast, there was still Winn-Dixie. The chain, which operates in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi, said it would leave the decision up to shoppers. A spokesman explained Monday that masks are “a highly charged issue with our customers” and that the company didn’t “want to put our associates in a position to navigate interpersonal conflict or prohibit customers from shopping in our stores.”

But a spate of articles, including in The Wall Street Journal, prompted a change of heart by Monday afternoon—the chain will require masks starting in a week. That seems sensible: The states where it operates have had 137,114 new Covid-19 cases in the past seven days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—more than double the U.S. average on a per capita basis.

Having put awkward news articles behind it, here’s hoping there are no awkward mask rage videos in Winn Dixie’s future either.