Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

[Brian Lutz]

Made a trip to Costco (the Smokey Point location in Marysville/Arlington WA) last night. They were out of toilet paper and the Kirkland Signature brand paper towels (they still had plenty of Bounty ones), but for the most part they seemed to be stocked normally. Some things like rice and pasta were low, but still in stock. Didn't bother looking at things like hand sanitizer and bottled water, but I imagine those would have been out of stock as well. My wife was able to go to Walmart and find toilet paper and paper towels there though.

[marshd1000]

So I did my normal grocery at the Renton Center Fred Meyer and there are shortages on sanitation, cleaning and flu supplies. I was in the rice and pasta aisle and a lot of those products were out! The store was busier. It was a weird feeling!

[Alpha8472]

Now sales are up due to panic buying. Will sales go down as people start hiding at home from the coronavirus?

Restaurants are eerily empty right now. People do not want to be around crowds. I passed by a Chinese restaurant the other night and it was empty of customers. I do not know how they will be able to stay in business if this goes on for months or years.

[storewanderer]

Smiths up here in Nevada has well stocked paper products aisles based on what I saw the past few days. Bleach wipes are in short supply as is hand sanitizer but they actually had some of each tonight.

Fred Meyer is really letting customers down not stocking its shelves, and losing sales in the process. What is the matter with them? I think Fred Meyer has become quite poorly run the past few years (Smiths still seems to be run better) and I don't understand what has happened. Fred Meyer has already completely downplayed the non-food side of the store so it is extremely important they get the food part right given they have pretty much gone "all in" on food at this point.

I noticed Wal Mart's grocery shelves last night were very empty, that part of the store looked halfway through a liquidation sale and it was across all categories. Other high turn areas like pet and drug were well stocked. I know it was the first of the month but I have never seen them get that big of a run before on the first of the month there. But that is Wal Mart. You don't expect perfection there. Nor do you pay for it.

[Super S]

In my area there has been a run on masks. People are now turning to places like Home Depot & Lowe's, hardware stores, auto parts stores, and other sources. I have been to several places like this for other items and have noticed they were out of face masks.

[Alpha8472]

A friend of mine who works for Walmart said he saw a man and woman fighting for many boxes of masks. It was obvious that they were selling them on ebay or something similar. No one fills an entire cart full of stuff like that.

Every single store was empty of hand sanitizer except for Safeway. Safeway was selling tiny bottles of candy scented hand sanitizer with various flavors as Icee, Blow Pops, etc. They were not even full. They had a lot of air in them. It was a rip off.

Sadly, I bought one and only realized my mistake when a few drops of sanitizer came out of the bottle. I would feel bad about trying to ask for an exchange.

[mjhale]

Here's what the cold and flu remedies aisle looked like at the Walmart closest to me on March 3rd. I'm in Northern Virginia outside DC. We go crazy over toilet paper, bread and milk when snow is predicted. But this is beyond anything I've seen and I've lived in DC my whole life. A friend told me that he was in Costco on March 2nd and they were stripped clean of water, toilet paper, paper towels and general cleaning supplies. Amazing.

[Brian Lutz]

Made a visit to the WinCo in Everett tonight, aside from stuff like hand sanitizer and wipes everything seemed to be stocked pretty much as normal. Didn't check bottled water (not that I'd expect this to disrupt the water supply), but toilet paper was available. Aside from a somewhat longer line at the self checkout than usual it seemed to be about the usual number of customers I'd expect.

[klkla]

I visited a Vons tonight. Hand sanitizer was the only item not in stock here, as well. Everything else seemed normal.

[arizonaguy]

At Sam's Club this afternoon (in Phoenix) the store was almost fully out of toilet paper, facial tissue, and paper towels. There was plenty of bottled water, however.

The HBA aisles and cleaning supplies aisles seemed fully stocked.