The Rochester supermarket’s workers were filling shelves as fast as they could on Thursday morning as demand increased due to continued rainfall and the prediction of flood waters hitting the town over the next 48 hours.
A major delivery arrived at the IGA on Wednesday evening, expected to be the second last major grocery delivery to the town before trucks could not access the business.
In 2011 water began seeping into the supermarket on Saturday morning and the business was closed for three days, before reopening on the Wednesday, as a result of the water level.
If Rochester supermarket owner Brad Major was feeling the pressure of servicing the grocery demands of his home town population under the threat of flood waters, then he wasn’t showing it.
He said if people were panic-buying he hadn’t seen it “yet’’, although there had been a significant increase in foot traffic through the doors of the business.
“There are more people coming in, but no-one is going crazy,” he said.
Mr Major, and his family, have a 30-plus-year history of providing the Rochester community with their supplies. He was not about to hit the panic button on the eve of a flood event predicted to match the disaster of 2011.
When The News spoke with him on Thursday morning he was busily organising final deliveries to the Gillies St IGA supermarket, expecting not to have any deliveries on Friday.
“We got a load of 16 palettes last night, to get back on to our shelves today, and we get a freezer delivery tonight.
“After that it is a little unknown,” he said.
Mr Major said the supermarket had not put any grocery limits in place, in regard to product restrictions, as there was “too much else going on to worry about what people are buying at the minute”.
He said the store would “be open as long as it could be’’, referring to a potential forced closure if flood waters were to impact Gillies St.
Mr Major said some of his staff lived in low-lying areas and his first thoughts were for ensuring he could help them, and their families.
Major’s IGA has been a family business since the 1990s, but this is potentially the second flood event Mr Major will have to endure; the first one four years after he took over the business.
He said home delivery clients were currently being contacted to reorganise arrival times for their orders.
"We usually deliver five days a week, but I don’t expect us to be doing any deliveries on Friday,“ he said.
“Our guys have been ringing around to let the regulars know to get their orders in today,” he said.
Gillies St is usually the third of the major CBD streets to be affected by water, following Mackay and Campaspe streets.
Mr Major said he was regularly being updated on river levels by people he knew who lived further to the south of Rochester, on the river.
"We will get a heads-up. In 2011 there wasn’t much of a heads-up for the general public,“ he said.