METAIRIE, LA — From the start of the coronavirus pandemic, senior citizens have faced a higher risk of dying from the disease. But they still need to go shopping for groceries and other supplies to stay home while they limit exposure.

Accross the country, items like toilet paper are in short supply. A quick Google search will turn up videos of people wrestling over the items.

That’s exactly what Zuppardo’s Family Supermarket in Metairie hopes to avoid. On Wednesdays, the store will open one hour early, at 8:00, to allow people 65 and older to shop.

For the first Wednesday of the event, on March 18, it looked like Black Friday as a line of senior citizens streamed around the building. As they walked to the door, each was carded to make sure of their age. It was kind of like the movie Cocoon outside of Studio 54. Kinda.

“I have a 91 year old grandmother who is very active and doesn’t have someone to shop for her,” store owner Joe Zuppardo told WGNO. “I thought about all the other grandmothers out there, 65 and over, who may be in the situation where they need to come to the store but they don’t feel safe.”

Even the shoppers couldn’t believe the scene as well as the store’s gesture.

“I mean, I never thought I’d see anything like this,” one shopper told WGNO.

Because the store opened early for the seniors, they could get many of the harder to find items since the start of the pandemic.

Zuppardo’s Family Supermarket plans to open early every Wednesday for seniors until further notice.