I live about 45 minutes from Los Angeles, and for various reasons have gone to the supermarket 4 separate times in two weeks. I’ve heard of people panic buying toilet paper and rice at local CostCo’s on the news but going to the various grocery stores (Walmart, Target, Vons, and Food 4 Less) I didn’t really notice them any busier than normal or empty shelves. I noticed that hand sanitizer was all gone, and that the cheaper bottled waters were all gone, but gallons of water and aquafina bottled water were still there in normal quantities. Toilet paper, paper towels, and rice which I often hear are mainly being hoarded don’t seem out of stock anymore than usual, same with canned soups and ramen noodles.
However, the one food thing I did see that was fully out of stock everywhere I went was Bar S Hot Dogs. I was in the mood for hot dogs the first grocery store visit at Food 4 Less and I noticed that Bar S Hot Dogs were selling for 88 cents a pack but they were all sold out, which was saying something because Bar S Hot Dogs occupied a pretty large amount of fridge shelf space and they were all entirely gone. No other hot dog brand was out of stock or even approaching out of stock, but the cheapest hot dog brand was.
So my subsequent 3 grocery store visits I made sure to make a beeline to the hot dog section and again and again Bar S Hot Dogs were all uniformly under $1 a pack and also all gone. There was even a display case at Walmart Grocery that advertised Bar S Hot Dogs for 77 cents a pack and was suppose to have an entire case full of them, but everything was sold out and it must have been at least 200 packages.
Is there any real reason why people would be panic buying extremely cheap hot dogs but nothing else in my area?
Yep. Noticed the same thing in my neck of SoCal. What I saw gone at my local Staters was Clorox wipes, bottled water and that’s about it. I was informed by other staff today that Costco was sending people around to the loading bay for water - they couldn’t restock it on the floor fast enough.
Went to Ralphs in the 90024 and water, and everything else that I noticed, is in full supply. But yeah we should all have a two week supply in stock. And people in earthquake zones should permanently have a two week supply.
Just going back to the hot dog clean out, another possibility is some huge event/fundraiser (which I guess Coronavirus could be thought of as also) where they are selling dogs and just needed mass quantities of them and had to buy then from several stores. For our firehouse we do a pizza wing night on certain Fridays, and while we can buy in bulk, sometimes it’s cheaper to buy at the local supermarkets and we do clean them out.
Seems to me that the most likely explanation is that there was a screwup at Bar S or some regional distributor and the stores didn’t receive the necessary amount of product.
I understand the reason for stocking up on TP, sanitizers, canned goods, medicines, etc. in case the virus has us all on lockdown. But why water? Is there a reason our water will be shut off?
I buy the cheapest hotdogs on occasion. I actually enjoy a hotdog every so often, and I can’t tell the difference between .99 cents a pack and 4.00 a pack. But my gf thinks they are so horrible health wise that I have to take them out of the packaging and freeze them in ziplocks.
Yeah, water makes sense for most natural disasters. In earthquakes, fires, floods, hurricanes, etc. the water lines can break, either resulting in no water pressure or in dirty water that’s not safe to drink.
This seems… unlikely to happen in the event of a viral pandemic, although I suppose if you consider worst case scenarios, something else could happen during the pandemic that would cause problems, and then you’d want even longer supplies since it would take longer to fix while society is grappling with multiple issues.
Question for those who have water stored: How do you store it? We have ~10 gallons stored in small containers, but 2 weeks of water supply would be hundreds of gallons. Do you have a big custom water tank somewhere with that? How often do you change it out?
Between the water in the heater tank (50 gal), the tower of bottles for the dispenser (think Sparkletts)(15 gal), and the stash of gallon jugs for the cats (12 gal) we have enough to get by for a goodly time.
Most people storing water are storing drinking water, which is only around 1 gallon per person per day, which is pretty easy to store with camping-style containers, gallon jugs, frozen 2-liters, or the like. ‘Hundreds of gallons’ would include shower water, and I think people in a disaster situation aren’t planning on storing that much.
Ok, is there any reason to actually store water? Most middling sized city and up water department’s treatment plants are considered ‘protected critical infrastructure’ by the Dept. of Homeland Security, and they treat the water well enough to remove any concern of viruses coming in that way (nobody freaks out about it during flu season, for example).
I’d think the main goal would be to avoid having to go out much if the virus is widespread, which would entail a lot of food on hand.
I was just at the local indy grocery and while I didn’t inventory wieners by brand, I saw they were well stocked. Still had hand sanitizer, too, and many jugs of water. They seemed a little low on tortillas, though. Am I missing something?
Where are hot dogs selling for 88 cents a package? Cheap hot dogs here in New Hampshire are still $3 a package. I haven’t seen hot dogs under a buck a package since around 1980.