How Chewy scaled operations and trust during COVID-19

Executive overview

Demand surged unexpectedly when COVID-19 hit — Chewy faced holiday-level order volumes with no warning and no playbook. Pet owners stockpiled, then stay-at-home orders brought a second wave, and a third structural shift in consumer behavior is still unfolding.

Chewy's response ran on three pillars: communicate early, innovate fast, persevere. Trust — with employees and customers — was the core operational lever.

Crisis strips away pattern recognition, so leadership becomes about building trust through visible action and honest communication.

Reading the demand waves

• Supply chain officer flagged spiking baskets four days before the news broke
• Wave 1: existing customers stocking up as COVID emerged on the coasts
• Wave 2: stay-at-home orders — US home-sheltering jumped from 40% to 93% in two weeks
• Wave 3: not yet visible — depends on how long pandemic lasts and whether new habits stick
• Seven repeat purchase occurrences needed to permanently shift consumer behavior

Standing up the COVID response

• Formed a seven-person SWAT team within days — expertise over rank
• Members drawn from communications, customer service, fulfillment, and HR
• First action: briefed all 160 directors to establish shared understanding
• Updated policies across fulfillment centers, call centers, and corporate simultaneously
• COVID committee met daily; all decisions were employee-centric

Protecting fulfillment center workers

• Infrared temperature scanners installed at entry points — non-contact, non-invasive, high throughput
• Primary and secondary screening process to eliminate false positives; rollout across half the network within weeks
• Made masks and gloves available before they were mandated
• Flexible attendance and wage policies: if sick, stay home with no job or pay risk
• When a confirmed COVID case emerged, the worker had been sent home nine days earlier; all contacts self-quarantined; no spread detected

Moving customer service to remote

• Chewy had never operated work-from-home at scale across 13,000 employees
• Built homegrown technology over one weekend to enable chat and email agents to work remotely first
• Removing those agents from sites created physical space for social distancing among remaining on-site staff
• Scaled to phone agents next; over 90% of customer service working from home by interview date

Managing supply chain and backlog

• 70% of sales are consumables; most of that supply chain is US-based, limiting disruption
• Temporary out-of-stocks addressed by updating recommendation engines — pushed customers toward alternative brands and sizes
• Hard goods supply chain (toys, crates) partly international; Chinese New Year timing meant inventory was already in transit before disruptions hit
• Delivery delays caused by fulfillment center backlog, not carriers
• Hired toward 6,000 additional fulfillment associates to reduce backlog; communicated delays proactively to customers

Calibrating growth and the longer-term shift

• Pre-crisis secular shift from retail to online was already underway; COVID accelerates it
• Customers being introduced to home delivery and e-commerce for the first time
• Key unknown: whether behavior change persists long enough to become permanent habit
• Go-to-market retention plans ready to deploy to convert new customers into long-term subscribers
• Stock up ~50% year-to-date; $4 million in product donated to relief efforts including $1 million to the Humane Society