With the coronavirus upending people’s routines, impacting their finances and causing many grocery shoppers to check out the competition, what’s a grocery store to do to inspire confidence in their customers and keep them coming back?

They can try reaching to the past, to bring a once-popular pricing promotion into the present.

New England’s Big Y grocery chain has become one of the first to reinstitute a “price freeze” program, which became popular during the last economic downturn about a decade ago. “Despite the current volatility of food prices, Big Y has pledged to hold the line” on more than 10,000 items from now through July 1, the retailer announced recently. Among the locked-in prices for staple items are $2.99 a pound for boneless chicken breasts and $2.99 for a pound of butter sticks, while brand-name items are also on the list, including $5.99 for DiGiorno frozen pizza and $2.49 for a jar of Skippy peanut butter.  Here’s the Coupons in the News article.