Publix had a lot.
Kroger–very little.
Last weeks, I was able to score a half-gallon of bleach & some antibacterial soap bars at Walgreens.
Is that Food City, or something even smaller and more local? I only visit Phoenix max twice a year, but that’s my favorite place to shop (The one in Chandler and Ray). Great food court, too. I know there’s a number of locations, but it does seem to be relatively lesser known, as far as I could tell, by non-Hispanics.
My local hardware store had big spray bottles of Clorox-based cleanser for under $3.
I have to go to the grocery again tomorrow. I’ve been trying to only buy what we need but we are going through it fast because everyone is home all day and we haven’t been eating out. There’s too much empty space in the pantry and fridge now.
We are running through our remaining TP faster, too. We still have a couple of rolls each ( I have 3, plus a small roll of novelty Trump TP) but we are using paper towels and Kleenex for anything that isn’t stinky or gross and putting it in the wastebasket.
Plus people probably just eat more when they’re home all day with too little to do. The stores are going to be struggling to keep up.
I’ve been having this feeling since about Thursday. I’ve been considering starting a “talk me off the ledge” thread!
We likely won’t see a CostCo for another few weeks but I managed to break through the snowbanks today and reach the small county seat and its WalMart. Driving downhill, I started taking audio notes on merchant status, but quit halfway down because much of what’s up here must be essential. Beauty parlors, bars, decor shops were closed. Minimarts, takeout eateries, hardware and dollar stores were open.
WalMart was busy but hey, it was midday Saturday. Paper products were well picked over. TP was gone but we’re supplied. Vinyl gloves, isopropyl alcohol, OTC respiratory meds, canned meals - gone. Many picnic items were featured. A shopper said panic buyers had swept in from Sacramento (1.5 hours away) and even Nevada (2+ hours) to empty this store of certain items.
The big bargain store was less busy but sold out of cheap wine, packaged flan, decent coffee, and many jerkys. We’ll necessarily be back Tuesday for a scheduled grocery pickup at a major market. I hope the town stays calm.
Petty nitpick: Costco, not CostCo.
Was at Wal-Mart this morning they were out of: canned pasta(i.e. ravioli, spaghetti rings), ramen, most of the canned soup, dry pasta(the boxes they sell $1); pasta sauce(well the tomato based ones they still alfredo sauces left); macaroni& cheese, most of the canned tuna/meat(they plenty of sardines left though!); nut meat in meat case; most of frozen chicken products(i.e nuggets and patties) were gone; the frozen pizza were most sold out(except, luckily for me, the still had my favorite brand!!); canned vegetables gone; canned tomatoes wre gone; almost all rice was gone; almost all instant mashed potatoes were gone.
The local Dollar Tree was sold out of ramen and its canned food aisle was depleted.
The local Hannaford had most of the same products as Wal-Mart sold out or vastly depleted. The Hannaford was out of milk and butter as well.
They were purchase limits on toilet paper and paper towels and most cleaning products in all three stores; there wasn’t much of them on there shelves.
Apparently when they decided to close NH schools for three weeks a lot of families weren’t prepared and that’s when the panic buying and hoarding began. I hope the panic buying eventually calms down.
I would really like to buy eggs. We usually go through about a dozen each week and I haven’t been able to get replacements.
Everything else I’ve needed (we don’t need toilet paper) has been available, although we got the second to last milk last weekend.
And it’s time for my regular Costco run but I don’t want to deal with the lines.
We went out shopping at the beginning of March, before we had a positive test in Colorado and bought supplies for the family for a two week quarientien and our normal monthly supplies. By the middle of next week, after the first positive test, the TP isle was bare and they were stocking it on pallets in the isle and the milk was sold out.
Yesterday, I went to the store and bought the last bag of shredded cheese and the only fresh meat was a 10.5 pound pork loin that i think scared people away but it was only $20 so it came home with me. I bought 4 of the lastt 8 one pound bags of pasta left in the store and mostly finished off the frozen chicken selection. There were no paper products of any kind available and the canned isle was 80% empty. They we also mostly out of the 5 pound bags or potatoes but I was able to snag one. We’re starting to run low on TP and I would have bought some it if was available and paper towles too. We may have to shop early in the morning this week to get enough for next month.
The clerk at the grocery store was hopeful, apparently she had heard rumors that Washington and Oregon were back to normal shopping habits and since we were about two weeks behind them in starting that we would stop in two weeks too. The manager at the liquor store told me they were worried about the people hoarding liquor who were going to try and return what they didn’t drink after this blows through he thought it might bankrupt the store. I told him about Costco refusing returns on commonly hoarded items like TP and he looked thoughtful.
Sadly, Washington and Oregon aren’t back to normal shopping patterns.
It’s The Dope! We LOVE petty nitpicks! 
In my part of Canada, panic buying has largely been limited to toilet paper (and similar things like serviettes), hand sanitizer and surface wipes. They have limited TP to two rolls, but still have none in stock. The message soap is better than sanitizer does not seem to have been received, but sanitizer is obviously more convenient.
We just went out for a walk and passed by the beauty supply store (it’s one largely aimed at professionals, not retail trade) a couple of blocks from home. It was completely boarded up. I think they are not anticipating being open again for a while - they sell things like disinfectants, and gloves in large quantities. I imagine they are afraid of break-ins.
The paper products at the local Albertson’s is emptier today than it was a few days ago. I think it will continue to be scarce for quite a while because the “missing” items snapped up by the earliest panic buyers and would-be eBay toilet paper barons can’t be immediately replaced by the manufacturers. They don’t have the capacity to double their output in order to catch up. Unless and until shoppers see that the shelves are fully stocked all day every day, panic buying and shortages will continue.
I didn’t look for eggs, but I’ll bet the same applies there. Chickens, too, are incapable of ramping up egg production for one day or one week to to replace the extra product that was bought during the first days of the crisis.
Speaking of Soviet-era shortages of consumer goods, I wonder now to what extent they were caused by panic buying as opposed to actual shortages. Because here today we have people queueing up in the morning cold, hoping they can buy TP.
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Unless things have changed since I was in public school, and I sure hope they have, nobody ever wants to take a dump there because the stalls have no doors. So if the need arises, kids hold it until they get home, if at all possible.
Just by the way, here is Saudi we got TP. No hand sanitizer however. I suppose since most everything is imported we probably have quite a bit of stuff in reserve.
Still no eggs available in the stores near me. I’m not going to drive around all over town trying to find some. It is kind of scary. Also they have limited stocks of other things that are not staples like eggs but still kind of freaks me out - like you can pretty much get vanilla ice cream only. No fun or unique flavors. I guess I’m pretty spoiled and obviously ice cream is not a necessity, but it just kind of freaks me out that you can’t get all the flavors anymore. Something that seemed ubiquitous and easy to get and I never gave a second thought is now apparently too difficult to supply.
I worked in a small town in Russia for about six months. It was after the end of the Soviet era, but there were plenty of people who remembered. One guy told me that people stockpiled consumer goods. He said that in the stores there was no bread, no sugar, no chocolate, no vodka, yet when you went to peoples homes they had closets full. He called it a “Soviet miracle”. People bought stuff they didn’t need because they didn’t know if the stores would have it when they did need it.
“Grandfather, what is queue?”
“Why, in Soviet Union, we used to stand in a queue to buy butter.”
“Grandfather, what is butter?”