By Pete McIntyre

Company flooded with requests for free sanitizer, asks public to be patient after line-ups outside store

Mar 25, 2020 | 11:33 AM

An effort to help curb the spread of COVID-19 by a local company has turned into a bit of a nightmare.

Okanagan Spirits Craft Distillery has been making hand sanitizer at its locations to give away, but is now deluged with thousands of orders.

The demand led to a long lineup outside the store on 5204 24th Street.

The company’s CEO Tyler Dyck is asking people not to come to the store as they are distributing to front-line workers and essential service workers first. Once the initial distribution is made, staff will provide product to the general public.

He said at one point they were planning to have a general public release today, but that plan changed over the last week. Dyck said some people relied on information from older news stories and showed up.

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“We’re just trying to ensure public safety and social distancing,” Dyck said, adding a “tsunami of requests [came] in.”

“We’re still targeting those key groups like emergency front-line workers, care homes, ambulance and fire personnel at this time because we’ve literally had thousands of orders come in for those groups and we’re kind of behind the eight-ball and trying to catch up,” he said.

Dyck tells Vernon Matters there was more than 40 people lined up outside the store when they got to work this morning.

“We just are not able to accomodate that from a safety factor, and also we don’t want to disappoint people. We also don’t want a stampede factor like there was for toilet paper.”

Dyck asks the public to be patient as they will have product for the public once they clear the backlog for the essential workers.

by Pete McIntyre

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