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Before you head into this Seattle grocery store, you need to get on its waitlist

caption: Groceries
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Groceries
KUOW photo/Kate Walters

Practicing social distancing in a small supermarket can be challenging. But one local store is doing that by limiting the number of people that can come in at a given time.

To get inside the Town and Country Market in Ballard, you’ll have to add your name and phone number to a waitlist on their website. It will then give you an estimated wait time and it will notify you when it’s okay to enter. It’s not too different from being on the waitlist of a restaurant.

“It’s not an exact science,” said spokesperson Becky Fox Marshall.“But it’s trying to keep the population in the market down to something that makes it easier to be the proper distance apart.”

Marshall said the new system allows a maximum of 35 people into the market at a time. Town and Country is likely to also implement the waitlist policy at their Bainbridge store.

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