LAS VEGAS — ShopRite is seeing sales increase fourfold when orders are placed online for home delivery, Joe Sheridan, executive vice president for Wakefern Food Corp., Elizabeth, N.J. — which licenses the ShopRite name — told a general session at the National Grocers Association's annual convention here yesterday. Where orders at store level average $40, Web-based orders at the 50 stores that offer ShopRite From Home average $166, Sheridan said. He also said a growing number of customers are using self-checkouts. He made his remarks as part of a panel discussing consumer issues. Asked what keeps them up at night, all panelists agreed it is the challenge of food safety. "We've got to be on our toes on that issue at all times," Ken Hubbard, president and chief executive officer of Western Supermarkets, Gardendale, Ala., said. Robert Harmon, vice president of the customer at Harmon City, Salt Lake City, said, "You can go through all kinds of checkpoints and infrastructures to ensure food safety, then have one employee not wash his hands and problems result." According to Sheridan, "We owe it to each other in this industry to do all we can to ensure the safety of the products we sell.”

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