John Lewis has plans in place to get its shops open and working again as soon as May.
The department store has been closed since March 23, although Waitrose has kept trading in the interim.
Now, with more and more places opening up again, The Mail on Sunday reports John Lewis could be ready to accept customers through its doors again by mid-May.
John Lewis director Andrew Murphy said the plan to get things going again would take six weeks to complete from the starter's gun being fired.
"For the last four or five weeks the crisis has been intense and the demands have meant we've been dealing with circumstances changing almost daily," Murphy said.
"Over the past seven to ten days there has been a shift. For the first time we have been properly beginning to think about a restart."
But some stores would open before others.
"Even in a scenario where we are theoretically able to open all our shops on the first day, we wouldn't do that. We would open in a minimum of three tranches," he said.
First would come stores with big car parks - allowing staff to drive to work and not need to rely on public transport.
Another option would be to use private buses to let staff get to and from shops.
Big stores in places like London, Birmingham and Glasgow would stay closed longer.
Murphy added that keeping Waitrose running also gave the store the chance to learn about what could work at John Lewis too.
John Lewis has also kept it's website up and running during the crisis, but said it would still take a lot of work to get stores running again.
There are particular concerns around public transport - with restrictions likely to be put in place and as many as 2,000 staff needing to get to work in a single large shop.
"We're also really mindful that public sentiment has changed and big business will need to prioritise health and safety above all else," Murphy said.
"There will be no headlong rush to get our shops open just because we can."
"We have to recognise that when we first do this we will learn a lot of things that we didn't expect, even though we will aim to get it broadly right.
"We will learn lessons that mean by the time we get to the end we could be doing things materially differently."
