Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

[storewanderer]

And if what I saw in all three stores is any indication, I'm thinking this meat situation is going downhill real fast.

It's no better a little further 'south' around the Philly area. Stores from Aldi to Costco seem to be getting in very little meat or poultry. Costco was even selling its 'rotisserie' chickens uncooked for $3.99 just to have something to fill up the case with. Wegmans has been a little better, but notable holes. I don't even bother with Walmart for groceries as the stores in my area are always atrociously stocked even pre-coronavirus. Surprisingly, the only place where I've been able to find both on a consistent basis is a franchised Grocery Outlet store if I get there on the right day.

Any idea where Grocery Outlet's meat comes from?

The USDA Circle has a plant number and you can Google where the meat is processed/packaged if you are curious.

I am not noticing meat shortages at all out here in the west the past couple weeks at the usual stores (Smiths, Raleys, WinCo, Safeway). Things are full and look pretty good (some stores are overstocked on meat).

Wal Mart is never stocked well on meat so I don't pay much attention to their meat area. However in a pinch 4-5 weeks ago I did buy 2 one pound containers of "Ground Sirloin" there. At least they have "Ground Round" and "Ground Sirloin" though not much of it, they have much more stuff just labeled as "Ground Beef" - but at least they are offering the Ground Sirloin and Ground Round and not labeling everything as "ground beef" (potential home of pink slime).

[buckguy]

Paper goods are still difficult to find in the DC area. There is stuff obviously diverted from institutional supply chains (off brands made by Georgia-Pacific) that turn up in various places and if you happen to know what day shipments arrive apparently you can find Bounty products. Locally produced hand sanitizer is in a local health food chain (Yes! organic) and name brand stuff is in Ace hardware stores.

Meat has had ups and downs for over a month, but is mostly available, with specific areas being out. Whole Foods has sausage but not fresh bacon. Name brand pasta is missing, although a local upscale limited assortment store (Streets) had DeCecco at reasonable prices. Otherwise, it's very expensive brands or Trader Joe's house brand. It's not just Italian or egg noodle pasta, Asian pasta is difficult to find.

Beans, tofu, grains and rice are back but with variable selections. Baking items are slowly coming back, but yeast is missing.

Produce seems to have odd gaps. Cabbage was difficult to find one week, but basics like citrus, onions, garlic and potatoes are around. The biggest gap besides paper goods is frozen food, although Trade Joe's seems to have a reliable supply. Water vanished in the beginning but is very much around now.

[SamSpade]

I made a few updates based on Google news updates to my list:

Bolded are new or updated cases.

Kroger - 3 in a Nashville Kroger
1 in Colorado Springs King Soopers
1 in Portland Fred Meyer
1 in Skokie Mariano's

Albertsons - 1 in San Jose Safeway
2 in the Boise area Albertsons
1 in Escondido Albertsons
2 in Bakersfield area Albertsons
1 in New Providence ACME
2 in New England area Shaw's

Ahold Delhaize - 1 in Columbia Heights Giant-MD
1 in Scarborough Hannaford

Schnucks - 1 in St. Louis Schnucks

Whole Foods - 1 in San Francisco Whole Foods
1 in Austin Whole Foods
1 in Richmond, VA Whole Foods
1 in Washington DC Whole Foods

Trader Joe's - 2 in Metairie Trader Joe's
1 in Arlington Trader Joe's
1 in Delray Beach Trader Joe's
1 in Clarendon Trader Joe's
4 in NYC area Trader Joe's
1 in Bakersfield Trader Joe's
1 in Fairfield CT Trader Joe's

Publix - 1 in Boca Publix
3 in Jacksonville area Publix stores

ShopRite - 4 in NJ area ShopRite stores

H-E-B - 1 in San Antonio H-E-B Plus

Wegmans - 1 in Syracuse area Wegmans

WinCo Foods
2 in Tigard, Ore.
One in Oregon City
(source: OregonLive.com)

Unfortunately, Oregon sees its first COVID19 death of a grocery employee, a worker at the Whole Foods "Pearl District" (inner Portland) location.

Also, one more case of infection for "Hollywood" store.
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/ ... itive.html

Another case reported in the Portland, Ore. area - this time at a Safeway. King City Safeway on Pacific Hwy. The store is offering any workers that worked on the same day (Wed 4/22) as the employee that tested positive to take a 14 day quarantine pay break.

It seems less helpful for me to keep posting these, so this will be my last unless there is (hopefully not) another death.

[jamcool]

In Arizona the Bashas’ stores are reasonably stocked, still short on paper goods (limit of one on them, and a bunch of smaller brands like Parade and Floria) and cleaners. A lot of unheard of private labels though...Parade, Finest, even IGA items (Bashas’ is a Topco member so their main private brand is usually Food Club)

[storewanderer]

In Arizona the Bashas’ stores are reasonably stocked, still short on paper goods (limit of one on them, and a bunch of smaller brands like Parade and Floria) and cleaners. A lot of unheard of private labels though...Parade, Finest, even IGA items (Bashas’ is a Topco member so their main private brand is usually Food Club)

I wonder where they are getting the Parade stuff from... Parade comes from (at least what used to be) a direct competitor of TopCo. That Parade group also runs a brand called Hy Top. That group still has drug private label too.

Didn't Bashas used to sell Hy Top 20 years ago? Scolaris had that brand in NV until moving to Food Club in the 00's then to C&S Best Yet when they scaled back self distribution about 10 years ago. I never saw that brand in CA or anywhere else on the west coast.
http://www.myparadebrand.com/

[BillyGr]

Was in a Price Chopper and two Hannaford stores earlier today. Huge surprise at the Chopper was they actually had toilet paper in decent quantity. The shelves weren't full but there was enough of multiple brands for everybody if they observed purchase limits. And if what I saw in all three stores is any indication, I'm thinking this meat situation is going downhill real fast. There were a decent amount of empty spaces in each store's meat case. Was able to get a nice bottom round at one Hannaford and the other one wasn't worth buying because it was very small. Can't ever remember seeing a roast being offered for sale weighing just a little over a pound. Guess the stores are trying to stretch whatever supply they have. Aside from the stray family pack of drumsticks, about the only chicken to be had anywhere was of the skinless variety and even there it wasn't that much to buy. There's also a Walmart right next to the Chopper and their website said this location had hand sanitizer available so I took a walk there. Long story short on that-out of stock (naturally) and I also saw that setup mentioned here about the entrance and exits. Why the heck do you block off and close an entire entrance and funnel inbound and outbound traffic on one side is beyond me. I shop at off peak hours so it really wasn't a big deal before 9:00 AM on a weekday but when the place gets crowded even with occupancy limits in place, I can see where this will create huge issues. Would make much more sense to have one side in and one side out but they probably don't want to station somebody at each door because they either don't have the staff for it or they don't want to pay two people to do that job.

Being in all three of the chains today (we are close to Albany so ShopRite comes into play along with your two), while I wasn't specifically looking for meat I didn't see much issue as I passed by in terms of empty spots. Now, that was fairly early in the day (8-10am timeframe) so perhaps it would be worse if someone were to go now.

Also quite a bit of paper items returning to two of the three (third store I didn't get to that section of the store) - in fact ShopRite was apparently confident enough to up the limit on any single roll/box items to 8 per person!

ShopRite finally got the arrows for the aisles (they didn't have last week, while the others did), but still allow bags (as does PC, as long as you pack).

[klkla]

I was in Gelson's at about 40 minutes before closing yesterday and they actually had a couple brands or toilette paper and paper towels. They had been running out of everything by mid-afternoon so this is somewhat of an improvement.

In paper towels they only had a choice between recycled or institutional (made for towel dispensers)

[mbz321]

And if what I saw in all three stores is any indication, I'm thinking this meat situation is going downhill real fast.

Surprisingly, the only place where I've been able to find both on a consistent basis is a franchised Grocery Outlet store if I get there on the right day.

Any idea where Grocery Outlet's meat comes from?

The chicken products are all Purdue branded, and at very good prices to boot. I didn't look that closely at the other meat items, but I'll probably swing on by there tomorrow.

[storewanderer]

The chicken products are all Purdue branded, and at very good prices to boot. I didn't look that closely at the other meat items, but I'll probably swing on by there tomorrow.

Their chicken out west is Foster Farms as I recall.

I went into a Grocery Outlet today as I was near it going to another store, and the store was not well stocked at all. Perishables were especially poorly stocked. This particular location struggles and it is possible they just aren't sending much to it. I haven't been to one of the "good" Grocery Outlet locations in about a month now as I cut them out of rotation to reduce store visits.

[storewanderer]

I was in Gelson's at about 40 minutes before closing yesterday and they actually had a couple brands or toilette paper and paper towels. They had been running out of everything by mid-afternoon so this is somewhat of an improvement.

In paper towels they only had a choice between recycled or institutional (made for towel dispensers)

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I went to Smiths in Carson City and was surprised to see a paper product aisle that was about 40% stocked. They had Kroger stuff, Charmin, Bounty, Northern, and Scott. Sizes were limited. Curiously the kleenex area was basically empty today except for pocket packs (that was full last week when I went into this location... but it had no toilet paper and few paper towels last week). Then I went to Save Mart in Carson City. This was interesting. Toilet paper is now on a different aisle than paper towels in this recently remodeled store (good to see them keeping up with Safeway's confusing aisle layouts of the 90's- long since reversed by Safeway in resets putting the paper all together again like it should be). Previously they were together. Toilet paper was probably 75% stocked and again every brand was there, their private label "ME and my life," Charmin (very limited), Northern, etc. Paper towels wasn't so good with only a couple private label SKUs and those shelves about 20% stocked.

I am still seeing some empty paper products aisles (a Safeway I went to today which had toilet paper last week, had none today). I think hoarding is still happening albeit to a lesser extent and the stores are catching up.

I think at this point they would be best to cut everything into single rolls and limit customers to 2-3 rolls. Somehow this needs to be controlled. The people who have stocked up and hoarded, have more than enough. The people who do not stock up or have limited space (apartment or whatever) and can only buy in small quantities are really being screwed by all of this hoarding and it needs to be cracked down on.

Oh, the other night I went into 99 Cents Only for the first time since this virus mess. The store was noticeably dead of customers and really poorly stocked on the aisles, didn't even have any cat toys. They had pallets of toilet paper (4 packs) and paper towels (BIG single rolls) though. I didn't see any quantity limits posted so not sure what was going on. Produce is back with .99 strawberries again after price increases throughout the winter.