at my local sprouts grocery store they were out of some of the bulk section bins: 2 or 3 of them. But, the other 17 bins were still mostly full. So, I don't think the full panic has set in yet.
That is actually entirely possible, I imagine supermarkets try to minimize storage as much as anyone else so shortages might just mean that people are just synchronously doing normal shopping.
In at least a few cases though I doubt it was not panic buying.
As long as shelves remain empty, people will panic. You can not be panicked, see other people panicking, and then become panicked yourself. So it's going to be difficult for supermarkets to reverse what's happened unless they implement quantity limits.
It's one of the bulkiest consumable products people buy. Which means a whole shelf is only equivalent a few families worth of demand. So it only takes a few buyers stocking up for a few weeks of use to empty the shelves. And once the shelves are empty the panic sets in.
Where I live in the US, the shortage only lasted a couple weeks, where you couldn't get certain brands. There was only a few days where the shelves were totally empty. I work at a grocery store so I saw the whole thing start to finish.
I found a Whole Foods out of corn on the cob. Corn stores just fine, so that's quite unusual. But Safeway was out, too. Strange, because the US has a corn glut.
The thin-inventory thing is getting excessive. The local CVS has been out of distilled water twice, and only had one pack of small paper cups. All those things have a very long shelf life; there's no need to maintain tight stock control.
Supply is normal, demand is up. My guess is that panic buying will dry up fairly soon.
Staff at the grocery store can find out when new stocks are coming in. The orders have already been placed, the trucks are already scheduled to arrive, and staff are scheduled to stock the shelves. It’s just a pain to answer questions from so many people.
Stores here (NYC area) had stockouts in bread earlier in the week. The stockouts are happening less, they’re less severe, they’re not lasting as long. Your experience will depend on where you live, exactly which store you go to, and what time you go to the store. My personal experience is that some stores will stockout much sooner than others, e.g., Trader Joes, maybe because the clientele is more prone to panic buying, maybe because of differences in stocking.
The catch here in NYC is that plenty of people just eat out and don’t know how to cook, don’t have food stocks, don’t have tools. Our household bakes bread anyway so we stock flour.
They actually talked to the California Grocers Association, and quoted the CEOs of Albertson's, the nation's largest supermarket company; and Conagra, one of the largest food companies on the planet. Not exactly anecdotes. These are people with access to real data.
I haven't seen any, myself.
I've seen it.
I have a regular bi-weekly list, and a lot of the items are getting harder and harder to find.
I have to try two or three stores, and even supplementing with Amazon Fresh, I still can't get everything.
Two of the chain supermarkets near me have signs up apologizing for the empty shelves, saying they're stocking them as quickly as they can. Which tells me this is a staffing issue, not a supply issue.
How long has the panic shopping been going on? In Poland, when it started, it cleared out the basic long shelf life goods (rice, pasta, etc.) and TP from most of the cheaper stores for about two to three days. For some reason, some kinds of meat also disappeared. But it seems to be going back to normal now.
If after couple of days your stores are still empty of most staples, it suggests some serious problems higher up in the supply chain.
In the short term, shelves will probably take some time to be adequately restocked from all the panic buying.
Grocery supply chains are good, but if people are continuing to panic buy things, then it will be difficult for the grocers to keep their shelves full. Also, if grocery store workers start to become sick en masse, then it might become more difficult for the grocery stores to stock shelves.
It took about a week for retailers in the midwestern US to restock and put buying limits in place on TP and staple foods. The buying limits (i.e. limit 2 packages of 12 rolls of TP) were pretty sensible, and for the most part, solved the problem here. It was surreal seeing 1/2 empty shelves at grocery stores, though.
The grocery stores are low on stock because of selfish people panic buying, not because there's not enough food. The supply chain is still functioning normally.
I'm in Hamburg, only spaghetti and hand sanitizer are still sometime missing in my neighborhood. During the past 2 weeks you could see some empty shelves depending on the time of the day, but it seemed to be temporary, due to the rapid increase in demand.
But now that people filled their shelves, I guess that store supplies are back to normal.
I'm in Seattle, and the grocery stores here are almost exactly in the same state. 90% back to normal. Just no one's posting on social media the full shelves now.
The shelves are only empty because everyone is stockpiling at the same time. There are no food or toiler paper shortages. But the toilet paper truck doesn't come every 2 hours, so if people buy up all the stock they need to wait until the next regularly scheduled shipment arrives.
It's really not much of a problem, beyond the problem people have created by stockpiling too aggressively.
> There'd need to be an apocalypse before we had trouble stocking grocery shelves over any sustained period of time
I live in Chicago, which is one of the major nodes of the US food distribution network. I'd seen lots of photos of empty store shelves on Friday night as panic-buying set in.
I went to my local grocery store on Saturday morning and the shelves were full of everything but toilet paper. Workers were constantly bringing pallets of food out to restock as people were buying tons of food. Nobody was panicking, everyone was polite; I think the overwhelming availability of food was a calming effect.
Costco and Aldi manage their own distribution networks and may not be seeing the benefit of the hundreds of independent distributors that have this under control.
I'd like to hear about experiences in Houston - that's another huge node. My guess is that things are fine there too.
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