I went to Trader Joe’s after work and was amazed at how bare the shelves were. I asked the cashier if it was panic buying or just that the store was having stock-keeping issues. She said the panic buying was two weeks ago and blamed the current state of the store on people being home from work and children being home from school. I was a little skeptical.
How do you like it? I’ve thought about giving it a try.
Yeah, I get wanting to stock up on toilet paper, but I’m pretty sure the town will keep the water running.
It’s pretty good.
Here in the Seattle area, Costco had runs on bread, flour, water, rice and TP about 2 weeks ago. They have since been restocked and the whorders seem to have enough supply now to not fight over TP in the store.
Did our usual Friday shopping yesterday.
Yikes.
Parking lot nearly full like just before Thanksgiving. All lines open.
The produce section was where we go first. Oh, boy. No bananas. Lots of empty spots. Couldn’t get some of our regular items. Mrs. FtG said we were almost out of lettuce, should we get some? My reply: If they have it, buy it.
I mean, I understand potatoes and even onions being cleared out, but who is stocking up on something so short-lived like bananas?
All the store brand milk was gone. Got some pricey stuff and only a half gallon at that. Bread was cleaned out. Ditto most paper products. Cereal was in surprisingly good order. Meat was heavily drained down.
A lot of people blocking aisles while talking on the phone and blankly staring at stuff. Esp. in canned goods. (I’ve noticed that here before during snow panics.)
Got much less than usual and we had been aiming to add a few extra items.
The Saturday situation is going to be far worse.
I wonder how long this “clear out” mentality will last. You can only hoard so much. Esp. bananas.
Waited for an hour (usually never waited more than 2 mins) just to get some beef jerky, water (they ran out anyway, but I did get 2 bottles). No toilet paper anywhere (I called before).
My friends and family all over the US are experiencing the same stuff. Luckily, I did go shopping for frozen food a week ago.
I thought I was the only one.
The Locals are panic-buying Milk, of all things.
Usually only done when Snow is forecast.
Anyone in Chicago? We have been out of town (in Mexico right now actually - it’s pretty surreal to read about all this from afar) and scheduled to come home tomorrow evening. We are in pretty good shape as far as pantry staples, and I am now really glad we bought an extra gallon of milk before we left, and I think we still have a few rolls of TP (and a ton of paper towels if we need to use those instead). I am hoping that everyone else will have stocked up enough by the time we need anything desperately that they won’t need to shop for months?
As of Friday, our local Wal-Mart is totally out of the expected items: paper products, cleaning supplies, dry soup (?), but their produce and meat aisles look normal. Why the panic for TP and soup but not for hamburger, apples, and lettuce?
Lidl today had plenty of water and other stuff but it was more crowded thank usual. I did not look for TP. the main thing they were short on was milk. Lots of produce.
My school district just closed every school one week before Spring Break, so I headed out this morning to Bevmo for supplies. Weird runs - not a single Wild Turkey product to be found, or any non-flavored Beam product. Bacardi handles were non-existent. But plenty of Tito’s and Buffalo Trace, so we’re good!
The local boutique market was stripped of the usual, but the meat cases were full as was the beer cellar and wine cellar. Produce was really picked over, as was the frozen foods aisle. So I bought beer, meat and cat litter. The Kindles are charged and loaded, we have whiskey and a loaded pantry thanks to a restock run earlier in the week before the panic, so I’m just locking the doors and watching the crazy from afar for a few weeks.
Went to the grocery store around noon. I was prepared to turn around and come home if it was a zoo; all I needed were little things like dish soap.
Wasn’t much busier than a usual weekend. LOTS of TP, bottled water, and paper towels staged all over the store.
Wife wanted rice, but they were out of rice. Everything else looked pretty normal.
Oh, the bananas. They were all green, and I mean green. I’ve never seen bananas that green in the store before.
I checked last night and they didn’t. There were a few listings but once you went to them they said unavailable or had an April 10-April 30 delivery date. I think there was one mega box with 80 rolls of really horrid custodial supply grade TP for around $75. No hand sanitizer either.
I went to my grocery an hour or so ago. They were out of TP, almost out of paper towels and out of hand sanitizer and down to a few bottles of hand soap. They were almost out of bulk pack ramen noodles and, except for a couple of 3 packs, out of bulk packs of the cup style ramen (which is what I was after, I’m too lazy to make the other kind.) But they had plenty of individual packages in all flavors and styles.
And all else was good. Plenty of milk, plenty of canned goods -the beans / chili shelf seemed only about half full but it was far from empty.
I wonder how many people have gotten exposed to this virus due to the crowds at these shopping centers over the past few days. Glad I did my prepping over the past six weeks.
The stupid has struck here in Portland, apparently. I stopped at a local Kroger offshoot (QFC) this morning for a few items for soup. The store was full of people with overflowing food carts, and many shelves were empty. I snagged the last package of chicken breasts, but struck out for carrots and bulk celery. Found a package of organic celery and a fennel bulb. Got one of the two remaining packages of egg noodles. Found a lone quart of half & half in the chiller.
The stupidity of hoarding aside, how much sense does it make, in a (CAUTION: SCARY WORDS AHEAD!) declared pandemic, to gather at a grocery store with a hundred or more of your neighbors all breathing on each other?
And I really don’t understand the thinking behind buying up huge quantities of water. Tap water here is some of the best in the country.
I went to Target a few hours ago, just to see how bad it was. The toilet paper and paper towel aisles were completely empty, facial tissue section mostly empty, bar soaps half empty, household detergents also half empty and the Tide laundry detergents half empty, with almost no bottles of liquid detergent left and only some of the laundry pods. Really amazing.
I have a theory about bananas, celery etc. I think people are camouflaging their panic buying. Getting mundane things to make it look like “Oh, me? Nooooo, I’m not panic buying. Just a normal shopping trip. Look! I got asparagus! Who panic buys asparagus, amirite?”
Or they’re out of asparagus.
Saturday: I’m up in the mountains awaiting not-too-much snow by Tuesday when I’ll hopefully motor down below (Sacramento valley) to what passes for “civilization” including CostCo, Target, a major Asian market, Trader Joe’s, and whatever shopping center the Mercedes dealer parks me while they replace faulty RV airbags. I may survive.
Yesterday the local market (of a 3-store chain) had picked-over shelves of sanitizer and TP but with most left. WalMart a couple days before had TP but no cheap mouthwash. I guess there’s a fear-of-vomit panic. Dog help us.
North Alabama here. Went out earlier today, both Kroger and Publix have no TP at all and while I did get a couple boxes of tissue paper at Publix (limit 2), they were down to the last dozen boxes. Bread is still available, as is fruit and veggies, but soup is almost gone (unless you like Cream of Mushroom; they had plenty of that left) and the frozen pizzas look to have been hit hard.
Still, most of the shelves are still pretty full, it’s not like the stores have been stripped. Just ‘essential’ products (whatever they are in people’s minds).
Probably try to get out again Monday when they restock and see what happens.