News Photo by Julie Riddle A cashier wipes down a counter at Tom’s Family Market in Onaway. Daily cleanings with a specialty sanitizer help promote safety and keep the coronavirus at bay while shoppers shop.

ONAWAY — Hand sanitizer is hard to find, in most places.

At Tom’s Family Market in Onaway, it’s in Aisle 8.

Ryan Howell, store co-owner, orders four cases a week — some to sell, and some to use — of a suspiciously alcoholic-looking liquid, a specialty product made by a distillery in Boyne Falls that switched up operations and now sells pints and fifths of hand protection in the battle against the coronavirus.

The product, in shot glass-worthy bottles that may someday be mementos of one of the strangest times in recent memory, is expensive, Howell said.

Still, he said, the store has to be clean, and its staff needs to be safe.

News Photo by Julie Riddle Co-owner Ryan Howell puts out meat trays at Tom’s Family Market in Onaway. Like all essential businesses, the store works to take care of the community while keeping employees safe.

The whiskey-bottle-clad germ killer, poured into a spray bottle, is used to sanitize the store many times a day, Howell said, with employees giving registers, counters, carts, and any other available surface a wipe-down as often as possible.

On the job when many people are staying home, grocery workers are responsible not only for keeping themselves safe, but also for protecting the people who come to them for the food and supplies they need to stay alive and healthy.

If it takes four cases a week of pricey hand sanitizer to do that, then that’s what it takes, Howell said.

At least in his small town, customers have been appreciative of him and his fellow employees, at least most of the time. Cashiers sometimes have to ask a customer to step back behind the six-foot-distant mark on the floor to wait for the customer ahead of them, and sometimes they get surliness in return.

Mostly, though, folks are glad he’s there, grateful the store is still open.

News Photo by Julie Riddle A distillery-made hand sanitizer protects customers and staff at Tom’s Family Market in Onaway.

The only grocery store in the small community, the market not only serves as a convenience for locals, but also keeps them from travelling to a larger city, where they may be more exposed to illness such as COVID-19, the sickness caused by the coronavirus.

“Look at it this way — we have very few cases in this county,” Howell said, wiping a counter. “If you can stay in this county, that’s probably a good thing.”

He’s not nervous to come to work, the grocer said, and his employees, for the most part, have been willing to be there, doing their job.

Sometimes the young employees need extra reminders to cover their mouths and wash their hands, he said parentally.

The store is as stocked as he can get it, what with supplies of some products — from toilet paper to meat — dwindled and deliveries further apart, he said. Fewer customers come to the store these days, but those who do put more in their baskets.

With tourist season just ahead, Howell is hoping anyone who has moved north to their cottage on Black Lake remembers to quarantine themselves and not come into the store for groceries until they’ve been here for at least two weeks.

In the meantime, he’ll keep ordering sanitizer.

Julie Riddle can be reached at 989-358-5693, jriddle@thealpenanews.com or on Twitter @jriddleX.