PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The start of the new year marks the beginning for a new manager at Reading Terminal Market.
Annie Allman is replacing short-termed Reading Terminal General Manager Conor Murphy, who was hired at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.
The pandemic has certainly changed the way people shop for groceries — “overall foot traffic has been down in excess of 50%,” she said — so Allman’s job will be to help rejuvenate the market.
However, Reading Terminal board chair Al Mezzaroba said not all merchants are feeling the same impact.
“The butchers are doing better than anyone,” he said. “The fish are doing really well, and the produce is doing really well.”
Part of that has to do with the quick adaptation of online shopping. And while people like to come into the market when they can, he predicts the online component has become too convenient to disappear with COVID-19.
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“It was something that we had to look into, and it made us do it and it made our customers do it,” Mezzaroba added. “A majority of our orders come in the middle of the night, so people are up, they’re shopping, and then it gets delivered the next day.”
The only problem, he said, is they can’t accept EBT online.
“We’re starting to talk to a company now that has a system online, supposedly,” he said. “We’re also looking at having conversations with the governor’s office and the secretary of agriculture.”
Allman, who grew up in Alaska and came to Philadelphia to study at Penn, admitted there are a lot of changes to absorb.
“This is my first week and I’m all about understanding how the building works,” she said.
For more on the changes at Reading Terminal Market, listen to the KYW Newsradio original podcast What’s Cooking on the RADIO.COM app.