Costco by me was predictably stripped bare of any and all absorbent paper products yesterday. No paper towels, TP, or napkins. Seemed to have a normal amount of diapers, so at least babies are probably being taken care of with appropriate quantities at home. Guessing the nature of babies to grow and cycle through the sizes helps fend off hoarding.
Plenty of laundry and dishwasher detergents, but boneless chicken breasts were gone. Not a huge supply of bone-in thighs or whole chickens. They were rolling in a full pallet of eggs when I was there and there seemed to be a good amount of milk. I don’t buy milk at Costco, so I don’t know what “normal” looks like for that.
No visible shortages in the liquor section, so I grabbed a big bottle of Makers Mark.
Overall, it all seemed fairly normal, and the checkouts ran nice and fast.
Usually I depend on peapod for heavy items but they only open up delivery slots for 2 weeks at a time and they are always booked. I needed eggs so went shopping at 5 AM assuming it would not be crowded. Still no paper products but plenty of eggs. I picked up some Diet Coke but probably should have bought more.
Local grocer says the wholesale price of eggs has gone up, so don’t accuse the stores of gouging for that reason. He also says flour & rice is in short supply, and Ramen is impossible for him to get. TP, he’s got plenty!
I went to my local grocery store last night. The paper products aisle was close to empty, other than a few boxes of Kleenex; the other category that I noted was close to bare was canned soup (and canned veggies and tuna were a bit on the thin side).
But, most of the aisles had a lot better availability. Things like fresh meat, lunch meat, cheese, milk, bread, and eggs, which were nearly gone the last time I’d been to the store, a week and a half ago, were close to normal.
Just been checking peapod for delivery slots every 10 minutes starting at midnight. Delivery times for Tuesday 4/15 went from not showing up to all but the 3:30-10pm slot booked between checks. I think I will just have to order things that can sit out if needed.
Yeah, the one slot I could get was the 6:30 to 10 AM slot. I’ll have to make sure to move one of our cars out to the driveway the night before, and get up bright and early to open the garage door (easier for them to drop stuff in the garage, since they can wheel their cart right up there, versus walking further, to the front door, and having to go up several steps).
Canned soup: I wasn’t seeking much, but I thought it’d be good to have some cream of chicken soup to help in casserole-making. They had a bunch of varieties - all out of stock except for the low-fat version.
We get our first CSA delivery this Friday; that should be interesting.
It is funny thinking about my mental image of “enough in the house” changing. For example we have a bin for rice. It probably has about 5 pounds in it right now. We don’t eat rice all that often. But WE NEED MORE (that’s the panic buying kicking in). With 4 adults in the house, we have enough in the fridge alone for 5 dinners, and enough for at least 12 dinners in the freezer that requires no preparation, let alone the raw ingredient type of stuff. But I still feel compelled to stock up more.
Amazon Prime Pantry has more stuff available, though I think there’s some price gouging going on. A 20 pound of basmati rice was going for 60 bucks or so (which I think is high, though I’ve never bought that much). And a one pound bag of Carolina Rice was listed at 14.99. For one pound. That listing actually also said 31 cents an ounce, which would be about 4.99 a pound, so I reported the listing.
Other sellers still have little in stock: Bob’s Red Mill is out of pretty much everything. Ditto North Bay Trading.
You are so much nicer than me. I specifically told Peapod to carry the groceries up a flight of stairs to the front door (on the second level of a 3 level townhouse) so I won’t have to. Then again, I tip very well.
Things are definitely easing up somewhat, though this last delivery there were quite a few substitutions and some no-shows (we did not get the pork shoulder we ordered, nor did we get it the week before). Our local grocery delivery service limits you to 2 units of a specific meat type.
Some odd out-of-stock items (hint: Giant mint chocolate chip ice cream is NOT as good as Breyer’s). And I’ve been trying to get their “crunchy granola style raisin bran” - store or Kellogg’s - for weeks. We got all the produce we wanted this time around, at least.
No yeast available - if I look at the “pick up at the store” version they don’t admit it even exists. The “deliverY” version says it exists but they don’t have any.
We’ve had fairly good luck getting legumes, surprisingly; we got a boxful from nuts.com and another from North Bay Trading.
Baking items (flour, sugar, and yeast) have been among the last items to rebound at my local grocery store, and we’re now like 10 weeks removed from when Illinois first instituted its stay-at-home order, which precipitated the runs on the grocery stores. When I was there last weekend, they had a limited supply of flour and bagged sugar (for the first time since March), but I didn’t think to look at yeast.
About the only other categories which are still that noticeably missing are hand sanitizer and wipes (still completely out of stock); even toilet paper and paper towels are back to about 50% of normal.
Pork processing plants in the Midwest are closed, chicken processors in the South are closed, both because of worker illness. Beef prices are horrendous.
Meat packers in Southern California are closed, including Farmer John. Again, worker illness.
I managed to score a fifty-pound sack of bread flour about a month ago. My new bread machine and all that flour are making the family happy! My daughter bought a twenty-five pound bag of pinto beans from CostCo several weeks ago. Push comes to shove, we could live for quite a while on beans and bread.
~VOW
Seems that everything we usually buy is now available in our (regional) supermarket here in Aus. Prices for fresh fruit an veg are still disgusting at the supermarket though, so we frequent the numerous roadside vendors who have stuff at least half the price!
Finally ran out of the dunny paper that was purchased in early March. Which I think is pretty darned good between two kid-butts and myself sharing the bathroom!
The last time we went shopping everything on our list was available, which hasn’t always been the case. The weekly ad has been getting bigger, and they have re-instituted Friday discount day. On-line coupons have improved also. 6 weeks ago 50% of them were for booze.
I’m going to Costco tomorrow, we’ll see how they are doing.
I read an article a couple of weeks ago that finally explained why you still can’t find counter wipes for love or money. They spoke to someone at Clorox who said that as of late April they have managed to increase production by 40% which sounds like a lot but the article starts off saying demand has increased by 500% since February.
I don’t know if I believe I can get my hands on some this year…maybe if the idea that surface contamination isn’t really a concern gains a lot more traction.
Finally snagged chocolate chips. Not the most critical item, but there was a period of about 6 weeks that there were no chocolate chips at home or in the store.
I’ve experienced the same thing: TP is available, but the brands are unfamiliar and varied. There was a post in the “Went to Costco, it was a bit scary” thread* that may explain it:
*FWIW, doesn’t sound like Costco (or anywhere) is nearly as scary anymore as it was a month or two ago.
Baking Powder: I use it a lot, I noticed my local shop had run out of Bob’s baking powder ages ago. I figured everyone was home baking up a storm, or perhaps disrupted supply chain. As I was running out, I found some on ebay (at double the usual price and with a 2022 expiry date), bought it, tried it out 3 different times and nothing I baked rose… Got a refund from seller. So I remembered I had some Cream of Tartar I had purchased a while ago and mixed 2 to 1 with baking powder worked a charm. So now I’m off buying baking powder forever and will use my homemade mix. Seems purer than the baking powders which add extra ingredients.
Based on the rise in infection across the USA as a whole I’d wager that the food shortages will be slight through end of August.
When the second wave of COVID-19 begins to accelerate through September, it’s going to be, well, I don’t know if we are allowed to curse in this forum, so I’ll just say it’s going to be rather severe.
By mid-October the disruption to the supply chain for food and other materials will be rising. By November 1 things will make April 2020 seem like a walk in the damned park.
I agree with this, but it’s worse than that. The rest of the civilized world is actually dealing with the virus. They don’t want their ships and sailors coming to US ports and carrying more coronavirus home with them to re-start the problem. So I predict that all of the Winter produce we are accustomed to having is not going to be available this year. I’m actually quite surprised that we still have bananas now. I wonder whether Dole has their own ships?
At any rate,we won’t starve, but fresh produce will be at a premium. I recommend to all my friends that they have enough vitamin pills to get them through the Winter with their teeth and gums intact.