Just talking about cities like NYC and other very densely populated areas. I know NYC is among the densest. But anyway what is the situation for needed supplies? Food and things like TP?
I’m in Boston, and while shelves have been stripped clean at times, the next morning they are fully stocked. Certain items, mainly cleaning products, are still in short supply, but if you need pasta or fresh produce you can get it.
Plenty of fresh veggies and fruit here in Atlanta, but the canned foods haven’t been restocked, nor the paper goods (and we’re down to our last two rolls of TP, :eek:). Starting to run low on pet food and soup, I noticed today. With so many people out quarantining, I suspect they simply don’t have enough people to stock the shelves.
Haven’t been out of the house for a while. But items that are delivered daily — produce, milk, eggs, bread — are plentiful.
Chicken disappears fast, but there’s plenty of pork and beef, etc.
Bulk items like rice, grains, dried beans, which everyone’s been panic-buying, have not been restocked.
My boyfriend works on trucks for the Cleveland Food Bank (among other entities) and he said their trucks are turning around three times as fast as usual. So the need for food in the Cleveland area is great but the amount of food getting to the people is, hopefully, keeping up with demand.
I live in New York City, right above Central Park. I went to the local grocery store just across the street for some lunch food. But out of curiosity I went up and down the aisles. Plenty of everything, including meats and fruits and vegetables. The were only out of one thing, and you guessed it: toilet paper…:smack:
The stupidest thing right now is some states are closing their highway rest areas. Something about how they cant keep them clean.
Some places are also closing truck stops.
Damn it, those things are needed by truck drivers for rest and a place to use the restroom. I dont care if you have to have the national guard to keep them clean but they NEED to be kept open to help ensure the delivery system.
Years ago I used to work at a WalMart and I remember constantly having to restock that section. Lot of that was because it was cheap and a loss leader to get people into the store. At least twice a day. Granted we always had more in stock but there were new shipments every day.
So frankly, I dont think TP was ever in abundance even in normal times.
Toronto has no significant shortages of any kind. For reasons I really don’t understand people buy up all the toilet paper the instant the stores restock, and they’ll run out of stuff like pasta and instant noodles, but there is a ton of food.
No real problems here (Seattle.) Dried legumes have often been wiped out, but in the last week I’ve been able to buy lentils, black beans, and pintos all in 1-2 pound bags. Tofu has been hard to find, oddly enough, but finally got a block of it today. And I haven’t needed TP yet, but I have occasionally seen it on shelves.
I went to a grocery store in Chicago about 1pm this past Saturday and didn’t notice any bare spots on the shelves. I didn’t check paper goods, though. This was quite different from a visit to two stores Monday evening a week ago (the 16th) when I struck out on bread and only found rice since someone dumped a bag on an unrelated shelf.
Just went shopping here in the Bay Area at a sizeable supermarket. Paper products were completely stripped of course( Jesus people, get a grip )and canned goods/pasta/bread were reduced with gaps on the shelves, but still in reasonable supply. Everything else was fairly normal - produce of all sorts, meats, frozen goods, dairy, beverages, etc.
It’s going to take a much, much larger disruption than this to seriously impact the food supply/distribution network. I seriously doubt we’ll get there.
Sacramento, CA here. I haven’t physically ventured into a store in at least a week, fearing the crowds (I don’t shop on Black Friday, either). I do know that both Walmart and Instacart are swamped with delivery orders. Normally, I would be able to get same-day delivery with Instacart if I put it in before noon. Now, it’s 72-hour lead times. Walmart just isn’t scheduling more than a day or two out for grocery delivery right now.
Dublin, Ireland. All the luxuries and necessities in local Supermarkets today. Rice in short supply though.
Topeka, Kansas: went to the Dillon’s (Kroger) at 8pm and it was like a plague of locusts had been through. Produce was mostly ok, except for potatoes, but almost the only bread was hamburger buns, the meat case had some roasts and a handful of chubs of cheap ground beef but no chicken and limited pork, pasta reduced to the oddballs (the stuff made out of chickpeas, some expensive imported stuff) and no marinara but plenty of alfredo sauce. Cereal was sort of ok (had plain Cheerios and plenty of the organic brands, but no Malt-o-meal in any variety and the oatmeal was seriously picked over). No rice or dry beans/lentils. Dairy case had gaps but mostly ok. Canned fruits and veggies had maybe possibly as much as ten percent of what they normally do, soups about the same, frozen veggies had only artichokes, asparagus, and okra. No toilet paper, only a few rolls of paper towels. Pet food seriously depleted. Lots of cheeses. No flour or yeast, only confectioner’s sugar.
The only real “shortages” we’re having in my store at this point are on nonperishables that have a longer production time and aren’t generally expected to sell in massive quantities - canned vegetables, ramen, spaghetti sauce, flour, beans, Chef Boyardee, canned meats, TP, etc. We got picked pretty clean the weekend of the 14th, but since then we’ve had plenty of fresh meat, produce, milk, bread, eggs, and other essentials on our shelves (though we’re limiting quantities on some of them).
Now that most businesses are shut down and we’re limiting how many people we let in the store, we don’t expect a repeat of last weekend.
I haven’t gone grocery shopping since last Wednesday, but even then it wasn’t horrible. I went to two small local groceries (one for milk and yogurt, and one for fresh produce - we are usually well stocked for pantry staples, but had been out of town for the panic shopping and were low on perishables). Both had everything that they normally carry, except the produce market (which is more like a small full-service supermarket) had no disinfectants, and the all-purpose flour shelf was empty, but I found another stash past the checkout and went back through (which was easy - the store was nearly empty of customers).
The next day, I went to Costco, in part to shop for my 77-year-old immunosuppressed mom. There were a handful of things missing (toilet paper, Lysol spray, Mucinex DM, generic acetaminophen, russet potatoes), but everything else was in stock, including giant gallon-plus jugs of liquid Lysol concentrate, so I bought one of those.
My sister reports that Imperfect Foods is no longer taking new customers, at least locally. I signed us up for a CSA that will start the week of April 7th to hold us over until our garden veggies start coming in; it’s one of the few locally that delivers door to door.
The interesting part is going to be Mom, who (I just learned yesterday) has no debit card and refuses to use a credit card anywhere on the internet. Apparently efforts to convince her that credit card companies have fraud protections (and that the only time she was financially defrauded was not on the internet) have been unsuccessful. I think I will have to give it another shot. And I will also try to convince her that she should sign herself up for the CSA, too, before they are all oversubscribed.
Boston Area
Plenty of food to be had, with odd items being sold out (the Mexican food section is devastated in every store; anything that cooks for an army, like kitchen ready tomatoes and ricotta cheese are sparse). But the low supplies are not in any way concerning, as there’s plenty of food available. Cleaning supplies are not so easy to get.
Food supply lines haven’t really been affected except in that there are some things missing from shelves due to hoarding and inflexible restocking routines, but there’s no need to start worrying about getting food.
Grocery store workers are exempt from lockdowns as they are considered essential workers along with health care providers etc.
Convince her to use prepaid Amazon cards.