I am tirelessly interested in Grocery Store Shelves Updates, and so I will just jump to assuming you are TOO, and tell you what my most recent trip was like:
• Raw meat was limited to two of each type per customer: i.e., two beef items per customer, two pork items per customer, two poultry items per customer. This made me feel a little stressed, especially because the meat sections had been consolidated, leaving a vast white empty unit. Also, I was not totally sure I understood the rules, because it looked as if ground beef might be counted as different than non-ground beef, but I couldn’t tell if that was just a signage issue.
• They had flour again! Only one kind but a fair amount of it on the shelves and another pallet in the aisle. Limited to two bags per customer.
• Still no yeast.
• Sugar products limited to two per customer, but they seemed to be in good supply.
• They had rice, several different kinds in several different sizes, encouraging amounts though nowhere near full.
• They had a lot more pasta brand/type variety than before. There’s been only store-brand elbow macaroni and store-brand spaghetti for awhile, but this time there was Prince, there was Barilla, there were shapes other than elbow/spaghetti. The shelf still looked very gappy, but so much better than before.
• Still very low on pizza sauce. Almost no canisters of Parmesan cheese.
• They had some tortillas and taco shells again—not many, but some.
• They had somewhat more soup brand/type variety than before. It still looked very empty, but instead of having nothing except, like, 99% Fat-Free Cream of Onion, they had some family-size cans of cream of chicken, even some cans of chicken noodle and tomato, some cans of other reasonable flavors. Still no packets of Ramen, just a few of the microwave cups of it, and only in the odder flavors.
• Plenty of beans, canned and dried. Those have been well-stocked for weeks, but I’m still jumpy because of earlier shortages.
• Plenty of eggs, plenty of butter, plenty of cream, plenty of milk. Those have been well-stocked for weeks, but again I’m still jumpy because of earlier shortages.
• Yogurt was curiously depleted, with a bunch of kinds missing.
• Plenty of bread but, interestingly to me, still not the kind we usually buy, which is just the store brand whole-wheat. It’s been absent for weeks and weeks. I have chosen a new kind of whole-wheat, and that’s been in stock each time.
• Still no SmartFood kettle corn. It’s such an oddly specific thing to be out of. They do have a couple of other brands of kettle corn in a different aisle, so I’ve been buying those.
• No limes. Perhaps we are not the only ones eyeing our dwindling bar supplies and thinking if we had some limes we could use up that tequila.
• They had RUBBING ALCOHOL and HYDROGEN PEROXIDE for the first time since well before lockdown. Limited to one of each per customer.
• After weeks of zero toilet paper, and then two or so weeks of just 4-packs of toilet paper, they had quite a few 20-packs of the store-brand. Limited to one pack of any size per customer.
• After weeks of NO bleachy/disinfecting cleaning products, they had several different bleachy/disinfecting cleaning products. Not tons of them, and the shelves were still pretty bare-looking.
• No disinfecting wipes, no hand sanitizer. A better supply of hand soap than before, but still pretty diminished.
I am very interested to hear what things are like at your store: things that are hard to find; things that used to be hard to find but seem to be back; things that are rationed; odd little shortages of a specific type of thing.
so you ever make popcorn on the stove? when you add the kernels of corn, add a 1/4 – 1/3 cup of sugar and you will have wonderful kettle corn anytime you need it!
Headed to the store tomorrow and will try to report back. I was going to go today but I have allergies/sinuses and don’t want people tarring and feathering me for my runny nose/sniffles. I haven’t been to the store often in the last month since I’ve been using pickup. When I picked up a prescription last week, I went past the meat dept and it was barren. My pickup order last week was out of stock of both chicken breast and beef roast. Luckily we have some things in the freezer. I’m honestly a little terrified of going to the store, since people in my area (ohio) are lashing out against the lockdown.
we seem to have plenty of flour and paper products now (depending on which store) but no ramen and almost no Campbell’s soup. Plenty of Progresso but low on Campbell’s No yeast to be found. limited chicken. I can’t think of any other shortage right now.
Over here, it’s now impossible to get BAKING POWDER. I have an extra can in my pantry but it is making me unreasonably panicky. But! I got a can of “pizza yeast” which I do not know how it differs from regular but whatevs.
Yes! Baking powder has been out of stock here too! And yeast. Luckily I got yeast before the lockdown and plenty of flour. We got baking powder finally last week which was a relief because I had had to start making it with cream of tartar and baking soda.
Atlanta suburbs: My husband does the shopping and he says there’s still very little chicken and ground beef, though you can get the pricey meats if you want to eat filet. We were able to get boneless chicken thighs for the first time in a while, but still only 2 meat packages/customer. No flour still, no yeast, pasta is super hit or miss. Costco is better stocked with shelf-stable stuff, and I got a 25-lb bag of flour, 15lbs rice, and a 32-pack of TP — in other words, I am RICH! Eggs and butter and milk seem fine for us, but I’m twitchy too and I am keeping an extra dozen on hand at all times.
This is so stressful for a large family (we have 5 adult-size appetites), especially when you can’t always stretch it with carbs like rice/pasta! Normally I would count on eggs to sub in for meat — pasta topped with a couple fried eggs is very nice! — but that won’t work if eggs start getting hit again.
I have been buying meat from restaurant suppliers in bulk, and highly recommend checking around if there’s something like that in your area. My husband asked me if I really needed the 40 lbs of chicken thighs I’m getting next week. I told him that he’s going to thank me in a month since the poultry plants in NE GA are a huge hotspot.
I second the restaurant suppliers suggestion. I placed an order last week with one, picked it up this week. Was able to get steak, 12 lbs. of ground beef, all kinds of pork products, and 10 lbs. of boneless chicken breasts. Plus a veggie box. It worked out well (especially since I have an extra freezer and and a new FoodSaver. I went to our Kroger this morning (inside even!). Haven’t been inside a grocery store in over two months. They had everything I needed and their inventory sounds similar to yours Swistle. After all of this food shopping I’m probably not going to need to go again for a long while. Love your blog (long time reader, first time commenter) and I thank you for the frequent updates.
France has been on lockdown since 16 March. In the first couple of weeks, my local (very small) supermarket was very bare (apparently – I haven’t left the house much at all) and online delivery slots were impossible to get. Once the government started publishing stuff about how there was no shortage of any foods, but that deliveries were taking longer (fewer drivers at work), the panic-buying mostly died down. Since about the end of March I’ve been able to get an online delivery slot within a couple of days of the day I order (I’ve done my food shopping online for years as I don’t have a car – I place an order roughly every 3 weeks as there’s only me and my younger daughter at home, plus 2 cats), and my local (very small) shop has slightly less well-stocked shelves, but very little that’s actually unavailable. Outdoor markets will be able to open again soon, I think (yeah! strawberries!).
The lockdown has been pretty strict here (more so than in the UK (where I’m from) and the US I believe): we need a signed, timed and dated attestation every time we go out, certain reasons for going out are banned, there’s a 9 pm curfew, you can only exercise on your own, for one hour a day, and no more than 1 km (that’s less than a mile) in a circle from your house, there are heavy fines for non-compliance (€135 for a first offence – that’s about $135 I think) but they’re going to start lifting it very tentatively next week. There have been a lot of deaths in France (one of the highest in the world), but very unevenly distributed round the country – the NE quarter has been very badly affected, here in the south has one of the lowest infection/hospitalisation/death rates.
My daughter’s high school claims it will be opening in early June, but it’s not sure at all (and I’m not sure I’ll send her back anyway).
Oh, and while I don’t know what “kettle corn” is, another comment suggested making your own popcorn, so I’m guessing it’s something popcorn-y. There’s microwave popcorn in my local shop (but I don’t have a microwave), but I always have corn kernels in the house because popcorn is so easy to make (and I’m a lazy, unenthusiastic cook).
I am in Canada, so maybe not as interesting, but I like to hear these updates too.
My store is limiting meat to one per person (ie one pork, one beef etc).
Toilet paper is back but only name brand, not the store brand we usually buy.
Flour is available again too, but haven’t seen yeast for a full 2 months.
Pasta is basically back to normal amounts EXCEPT for the gluten free variety. My last 4 trips I’ve been looking for it.
Eggs are limited to one carton each, which is a big problem for our house of 6 people who ALL eat eggs. I heard they aren’t limited at Costco but I haven’t wanted to wait in the huge lines… I might have to just face it this week.
I think some of these shortages on my list might be solved by going to many different stores, but it ruins the effect of shopping once a week and wearing a mask and avoiding busy times if I have to go to 4 different stores.
Though lines may appear very long at Costco because of distancing, where we are (Ohio) they move relatively quickly. It may be worth a trip! We were able to get cleaning supplies, eggs, meat and toilet paper on the last trip, which eased my mind a great deal.
I hesitated to comment because we’re a vegan household so I have no idea of what egg, milk or meat/fish/poultry stocks are like here in the UK. However, I can say that yeast and bicarbonate of soda are nowhere to be seen and vegan staples like tofu or frozen meat substitutes are very low in variety and stock.
Every week gets better which makes us feel more and more hopeful but we usually get the last 2 packs of tofu on the shelf and we eat about 1/2 a block per day so it’s a bit sad in that sense. Never in my life I thought I would be having to RATION TOFU, and yet here we are. Hehe. Pasta is getting better, there’s more options in brands and variety but still not a full shelf. I cannot find buckwheat pasta anywhere though, I feel like they’ve streamlined all products so they’re only making the best sellers in order to have more efficient production lines which is why there’s little variety of things like bread, soup, etc. I
‘ve been able to find flour in our smaller corner shops (mom and pop shops in the US, I think they’re called) but we had to buy a 16kg bag. The shop owner told us the issue is not a shortage of flour per se, but a shortage in the actual packaging for small retail bags and a limit in the capacity of the production lines. So if you really want flour, you could potentially get it from a bakery or a distributor that sells ingredients to restaurants or directly from a mill in the US?
I’m in the UK and I’m interested in this sort of thing. Early on, before lockdown, the supermarkets were very bare – no toilet paper, paracetamol/ibuprofen, soap of any kind, pasta, rice and so on. Things are much more settled now but still not back to normal. In the past I could almost always get the things I wanted and if they didn’t have my preferred brand there were plenty of others to choose from. Now, I can almost always get the things I want, but frequently have to opt for a brand/size/variety that we don’t normally have. It is still very hard to buy flour, yeast, tinned tomatoes and hand sanitiser gel with the shelves for those things empty every time I go for a weekly shop. Other things seem to randomly disappear, but by my next visit they are back in stock. For example tortillas were hard to get for two weeks, but now they’re plentiful. Eggs were the same. Ibuprofen is still out of stock at my main supermarket but if I wanted it desperately I could get some from the chemist.
Also, it might be heartening to hear this, I found supermarket shopping incredibly stressful the first two-three times I went once lockdown started. The queueing, attempting to social distance at all times, the unpredictability of stock, the strangeness of barriers etc being put up, trying to shop for what we needed without taking too much, but also not wanting to leave ourselves without adequate food especially if one of us got poorly and we COULDN’T shop for two weeks. I felt physically exhausted by each trip. Now, almost two months on, shopping is almost returning to being a pleasure. Yes, there are still queues, barriers and social distancing, but there is obviously more than enough food to go around so I don’t feel uncomfortable taking what we need and perhaps an extra of some things that I really don’t want to run out of (coffee!). The strangeness is wearing off and instead I remind myself that one day we’ll talk about this time and it will be an interesting time to think about. All this to say, it will get better – not necessarily normal – but better.
I went to our big grocery store a week ago and they had a lot of eggs and no rationing on them, which was a change from before. Three of the four of us are vegetarian so I didn’t check the meat section, but they did have plenty of lunch meat and frozen chicken tenders. I have found throughout all this that plant-based “meats” are consistently in short supply; I just buy whatever I can when I can find it. Flour and sugar were both out as was yeast, but they did have plenty of Bisquick. The thing I’ve had the hardest time finding is frozen spinach, oddly enough! No one seems to have it in stock.
At Target on Sunday I found paper towels for the first time, but they had very little toilet paper. No disinfectants anywhere, and the only hand soap was the more expensive kind.
Does anyone else find grocery shopping to be even more exhausting than usual? I’m on high alert to stay away from others, struggling to breathe through my mask, doing constant calculations of “well they’re out of this thing I needed for this meal so what should I get instead,” trying to get enough for two weeks in one trip without forgetting necessary items, and by the time I get home I am wiped out. :(
I had a dream last night, I was in the grocery store, I wasn’t wearing a mask-and I was reaching past someone to get to something on the shelf. I realized what I was doing and was horrified! I’m a very vivid dreamer, and I can honestly say, that is my first grocery store nightmare! You aren’t alone in feeling like this is hard!
We shop almost exclusively curbside from a small market, so I don’t have a lot to report; however, it does seem that maybe WHEN you shop is key. For example, last week I finally decided I had to go to the supermarket and they were completely out of paper products. No frozen vegetables or fruit; no salad mixes (chopped up lettuce and such in a bag); very low on meat. This was at 6:00 am. Later in the day, we had to go to another (bigger) town for something else and I decided to pop into another supermarket… they had everything. Paper products, TP, toilet paper, full display of salads, you name it. Don’t know if it was the timing or the fact that it was a bigger town.
Anyway, on the yeast/flour shortage. Our local small market posted on their Facebook page that they had a SINGLE 5 POUND container of yeast; they suggested that someone might want to buy it and share. Later, they announced that they had purchased a 50-lb. bag of flour and broke it up into 5-lb. plastic bags to sell in the store.
It is so fascinating to hear what is/isn’t in stock! Fascinating and a little panic-inducing.
I am going to Costco (gulp) today, for the first time since February. And then to the grocery store tomorrow for the first time in two weeks. I am anxious, for so many reasons.
I went to Costco yesterday (in TX) and I can report. Masks are required, two people allowed in per membership, limits on most meats to one package of each type per membership, no raw chicken at all. Other than the meat issues they seemed well stocked. There were LOTS of signs about social distancing, lots of tape on the floor, and extensive sneeze guards at checkout and customer service. Good luck, be safe!
Thanks! That doesn’t sound too bad! (I am hoping that the toilet paper gods will smile upon me this day.)
I’m in Canada, but I find your posts on this interesting, so I’m assuming you think the same! We’re in a smaller urban centre and haven’t seen much in the way of shortages.
– Meat is generally depleted, but still available.
– No flour, and I haven’t looked for yeast.
– Less Kraft Dinner and canned soups/pastas/etc. but they’re still available.
– Not much oatmeal on the shelves.
– TP is fine, available in the big club packs. There was a run on it at the beginning of our lockdown (8 weeks ago) but the supply seems okay now.
– No hand sanitizer, bleach based cleaning products, masks, or rubbing alcohol.
– Frozen fruit has become very popular. There was none 2 weeks ago, when I went grocery shopping and it was on sale, but my husband didn’t have any trouble last week.
Overall I’m grateful we’re doing okay and that our generally obnoxious Provincial government has stepped up to deal with this relatively well.
I have struggled to get Motts applesauce and I dislike the off-brand, but recently they had the tiny jars of Motts. I stocked up. The next time I went back they had huge jars of Motts, and I stocked up again. We go through almost one huge jar of applesauce at each dinner. There was no flour last time I was there, but I bought several bags of a weird brand early on when I saw some. We can buy plenty of eggs and milk, but I am seeing them limit the meat. My issue with the meat limits is one package or even 2 packages of meat does not feed my family. I went to the store last week when I was starting to get nervous about meat limits and I bought over $300 in just meat, so we are in good shape for a few weeks. Oh, and they are not limiting butter. I was able to buy Costco brand toilet paper in a huge pack recently.
We are having a hard time buying certain flavors of greek yogurt. Vanilla of all things and I have several kids that love the light and fit greek vanilla yogurt. After every trip to the store they are like ‘Vanilla?’ I bought creme brule and strawberry shortcake as those sound amazing. The verdict is still out.
My husband eats 2 light and fit greek yogurts a day, so I sympathize!! He has 3 flavors he likes, so me procuring the right types of yogurt has been a stressor!!
Oh! And this is the weirdest thing. No sauerkraut. I don’t like it but my husband does and the shelves have been cleaned out of it for weeks. WHO IS EATING ALL THIS SAUERKRAUT
How funny, and so random!
My roommate was really in the mood for Reuben sandwiches last night. I had to pick up a prescription, so I thought I would bring home the ingredients as a surprise treat. They had sauerkraut in stock at my little grocery store…cans and jars and bags of it! They did not have a single bit of corned beef, either prepackaged or fresh in the deli and zero loaves of rye or pumpernickel bread.
I’m in England, and ironically enough lockdown has nudged us into eating the way we’ve talked about for years but been a bit too impoverished/lazy to implement. I’ve been cultivating my sourdough starter – the ultimate lockdown cliche! And I make a couple of loaves a week. We buy all our meat from the tiny local butcher (as in his shopfront is the size of our cottage’s living room and he’s about a 90 second walk away) and he sources it all from local farms. We have a weekly fruit and veg delivery box from a wholesaler who’s had to alter their business model. Our milk, yoghurt and eggs already came from a milkman who delivers twice a week. I walk to the village store and deli for berries and bread flour (and sometimes treats like fancy Spanish ham and cheese) mid-week. And then we manage to get a supermarket delivery slot about once a fortnight for cereal, pulses, cooking oil etc etc. Our wine comes from a wine shop a few doors past the butcher. It’s not as cheap as the supermarket but we’re supporting a local business and it’s great wine.
As far as I can tell, some people are still struggling to get flour (particularly self raising) and eggs here, and yeast is totally absent. But luckily my sourdough culture eliminates the need for yeast, and I found an online deli and had a box of different kinds of bread flour delivered this week so I should be good for a month or two now.
Oh! And I meant to add that when we *do* get an online shop, the supermarket we shop from has an 80 item limit. Which is fine, stops panic hoarding. BUT! Each loose banana or lemon or tomato is one item. So if you generally otter to buy loose fruit and veg for plastic reduction reasons (or if that’s all they have in stock) you’re a bit screwed.
I’m in NZ. In my experience the day and time of shopping makes a big difference. I made the mistake of going on a Friday afternoon, the line was long and i felt claustrophobic in the supermarket. The whole bread aisle was completely empty and many other sections were running low on things and many things had limits on them. Payday is usually on a Thursday, so maybe that’s why the supermarket was so depleted.
After that I changed my shopping day to tuesday, 6.30am (the store officially opens at 7, but they let people in as early as 6.20, maybe even earlier, I’ve not tested it). And it is such a pleasure, the store is not empty but definitely emptier. Everything is well stocked. In the first few weeks there was no flour or yeast. Then they started selling 20kg bags of flour. Now there are 5kg bags. Yeast comes and goes. Handwash was out of stock for weeks but is back to normal now. Started seeing hand sanitiser 4 weeks ago, but it is low in stock most weeks.
What are “pulses”? My dad is from Scotland and I thought I knew British terms fairly well, but that one’s new to me.
Pulses are what I as an American generally call beans, but it includes more than just beans – like lentils, chickpeas, etc.
Oh interesting! My husband is American And I used to live in California for a couple of years in my 20s so usually I’m quite good at translating back to American English but sometimes things fall through the cracks ;)
Pulses is just a catch-all word for dried/tinned beans, chickpeas (garbanzo beans), lentils, legumes, anything of that ilk.
Thanks! I think the closest term I’ve heard that encompasses all those things is legumes.
One of the things I’ve found comforting during this time is shopping at Costco. Not only are they making masks mandatory, but they also shift their products around so there are no empty shelves. I went a few weeks ago and one of the meat cases was filled with kimchi and sauerkraut, which kind of made me laugh at first but then I realized that not seeing all the empty space helped me not feel panicky and anxious while I was shopping.
At my non-Costco store, I’m pretty regularly seeing toilet paper these days and pasta seems to be back. No issues finding milk, butter, or eggs the last time I went. Still no yeast or Clorox wipes, and ground meat seemed low. I stocked up on some ground turkey the last time I went to Costco, so that makes me happy when I open my deep freezer.
I haven’t been to a store in 5 weeks, I’ve been using Shipt and they do doorstop drop-off. At first, it was hard to secure a delivery time and stock was limited. Sometimes I’d get odd replacement items, but nothing we couldn’t use. I guess they’ve hired more shoppers, because now delivery slots are plentiful. Stock seems to be fine now, too. The only thing I can’t get is clorox wipes. There don’t seem to be limits on too many things. The other day they had dried spaghetti limited to 3 packs. I’ve struggled with asking others to shop for me. At the end of the day I decided that as long as I can tip very well, it keeps those of us who are able to use the service out of the store (a lot fewer bodies in the store), and the folks who are shopping are earning money, when otherwise they might not have been able to do so. It’s all so fraught.
In my earlier comment I forgot to mention, I’m doing all my shopping myself but my mom is relying on online/pickup orders (my nephew picks up her stuff and delivers it), and she is having a harder time getting things like milk and eggs than I am. The online store won’t let her order those things, or paper towels, or other stuff that’s in short supply, but my nephew will go into the store with her list and find them on the shelves. She’s lucky to have him to shop in person for her, but it makes me worry about those who rely solely on online/pickup orders.
I’m in a densely populated area in NYC. Our stores are cramped/disorganized to begin with. I usually do most of my shopping @ TJ’s but there is not one I can access w/o getting on the subway as I am car-less.
Also being w/o a car means I can only buy what I can carry – which makes shopping for more than a couple of days quite a challenge. Anyway, I had to do two trips this week. First store was well stocked with dairy, baking supplies (and individual rolls of TP!) but lacking in fruit, bread, veggies and mayo. This morning I went to BJ’s. Judging by everyone elses cart they had plenty of TP; I went for rotisserie chicken, cut up fruit and bagged broccoli Signs up limiting meat to two packages (but not on seafood). Lastly went to my local S+S which had pasta on sale but no pasta – was it the sale that wiped out the supply? There was not a lot of not on-sale brand either. Mayo supply was low; well stocked on bread, dairy, etc.
I absolutely agree that timing is a big part of it; for myself I prefer to go early and get it out of the way – I feel like I need the whole day to recover. Meanwhile, my sister, who lives in a busy but definitely less densley populated area here, never has any problems getting stuff, waiting in line, etc. etc. I scored a highly covered grocery delivery slot for next week so hopefully do not need to do thing again for a little while.
Please bear with me while I rant for a minute (thank you!)
I would also like to say wearing a mask on your chin (or holding in your hand) is NOT an effective germ barrier. And FTLOG, please stop dawdling/talking on phone while shopping. This is not the time for lollygagging!
I’m trying to keep my trips at every 10 days. Yesterday I found still almost no frozen pizzas. We’ve been trying other brands with mixed results. Eggs are now no more than 12 per customer, which makes me nervous. Plenty of milk and no limits, thankfully. They finally had hand sanitizer. It’s clearly cheaply and quickly produced, but that’s ok since my “essential” husband is running low and alcohol isn’t available. There were a dozen 12-packs of good tp. I grabbed one even though my calculations indicate our 4 remaining rolls should last until the next trip.
Junk food is plentiful, unfortunately. Every trip now includes snacks and booze. I haven’t drunk so regularly since college.
I haven’t drunk so regularly since college……..hahahaha- Same!
Same! I haven’t drunk this much – ever! I didn’t even like beer in my 20s and early 30s. Prepandemic, I’d have a drink or two every month. Now, I have several a week–usually to share a beer with my husband, or a little wine. And then we had restaurant curbside margaritas for Cinco de Mayo. I hope I go back to barely drinking after this is all over, alcohol is expensive.
I also want to add that I am in rural midwest. A few weeks ago we had less than 40 cases. It’s since almost doubled, though mostly contained to senior centers. My grocery trip a few weeks ago was the first time I saw the one-way aisles. Then and yesterday it was very clear that many either did not even notice or didn’t care. It made the trip that much more stressful. I am seeing more masks though.
I live in northern California, and our local Costco, which opened 2 years ago and has NEVER had yeast, suddenly yesterday had a full shelf of the big block of dry yeast! You better believe I snatched up a package and scurried home gleefully. Well, maybe not full of glee exactly, but I was and am still thrilled.
LIMES! All of the grocery stores near me have been consistently out of limes since this all started. Yeast as well, although I did just buy a 1 lb bag of instant yeast from the artisanal cheese shop next door. Meat products are limited to 2 packs per customer and also seem to be being packaged in larger than normal sizes- 3 lbs of ground beef, 5 lbs of chicken pieces, etc. Paper goods have been gone for weeks but they did have an end cap of store brand paper towels the last time I went, limit of 1 per customer. I haven’t noticed any milk, butter, cheese, or yoghurt shortages. Frozen fruit is gone, gone, gone, as are most frozen veggies.
Ground beef was totally out, but chicken and pork was plentiful. Cooking oil was finally back in stock. No flour or yeast, but lots of sugar. Produce seems to have normalized with everything fully stocked, including potatoes, which were short for quite a few weeks.
It looks like you are having a lot more shortages we are. TP was an issue but I’ve seen it off and on. Flour and yeast – particularly yeast – are hard to come by, but other than that I’ve seen only things out during the odd shopping trip and back the next, like our preferred brand of lactose-free 1% milk. Other shortages I’ve seen people commonly mention are more like mine – a very specific item is hard to find, like halal meat, but if alternatives are acceptable to you they are available. Not sure about eggs as we’re an egg-free house due to an allergy.
I’ve seen a lot of angst about not being able to find wipes or hand sanitizer, but we’ve had enough for our needs so far as we don’t leave the house often and don’t go crazy with the sanitizing when we return.
Here in the Dallas area, toilet paper seems to be back, but not paper towels or tissues. Haven’t seen Clorox wipes or hand sanitizer in probably 6 weeks. The brand of frozen pizza we like hasn’t been in stock in several weeks, either. And, THIS IS PETTY, but we like the Roasted Garlic Triscuits and I haven’t been able to find those in AGES (they have other, random kinds like Avocado). We also were regular SPAM eaters before this, and I haven’t seen any SPAM in several weeks.
Costco shopping isn’t always ideal for us (small family of 2.5), but I am leaning towards trying to get most if not all of my in-person shopping done there, since they require masks. Mask wearing at the grocery store/Target has DRAMATICALLY decreased here since we “opened up.” Infuriating and just plain weird considering the numbers here.
Target seemed well-stocked with meat when we were there earlier in the week, and they were not limiting it. I’ve heard that the meat shortages are very regional in nature. This morning I stopped by a small outdoor farmers market, and there were 3 restaurants with booths set up selling meat, eggs, bread, etc. in larger quantities.
If you are taking suggestions for posts (YOU ARE NOT), I’d like to hear more about masks. We have a small supply of the disposable surgical ones, which we reuse after sanitizing them in our PhoneSoap unit (I got it for Nacho when he started working in the ER and he uses it for his phone after each shift, but other small things fit in it as well). I ordered some handmade masks from Etsy and some filter inserts from Amazon; I am eagerly awaiting their arrival.
What kind do you wear, and which do you prefer?
I went to our local grocery store for the first time Sunday (my husband has been doing all the shopping). I was extremely nervous. Thankfully it was very quiet as it was the morning. Even then people were clearly not paying attention to the one way arrows in the aisles and I’d say only half the customers were wearing masks. The only flour available came in really big bags. There was one bag of dark rye that came in small. On a positive note picking up at the grocery stores (if you’ve ordered online ahead) has decreased in wait times. At the start orders were 2 weeks out, now they’re a out 2 days.
Sacramento, CA reporting in here. I have seen TP on the shelves exactly once since this started. I bought it but we have relied on neighbors as well. We started this pandemic well stocked on TP (or so I thought)
As for food, it seems hit or miss. Daughter seems to be eating 95% smoothies and I have noticed less frozen fruit but there is always something. Maybe she’ll break down and use the home grown peaches I froze last season??!! Plenty of milk. Eggs are present but expensive. Meat seems fine/available as does Top Ramen but pasta is frequently gone/low in stock.
I have the big costco yeast from pre-pandemic days so have been able to share since i ran out of flour and it’s hard to find. My MIL got the 50 pound bag and gave me some so we’re back in baking business.
We have a garden and I’ve never been more grateful for the ragged patch of lettuce and peas! Fresh greens are mostly available in the store but getting them in the yard is very comforting.
Laughing at the above comments where one place is out of sauerkraut and one costco filled the meat container with it. Everything seems to be here, just unevenly distributed. We have all the limes here in CA if you need any.
Niall usually does the shopping in our household. He is much better at doing a precision strike of the grocery store, whereas I will walk in and become immediately overwhelmed and distracted. I made a brief visit to a grocery store the other day and here are some things I noticed:
– no flour at all
– no toilet paper
– some paper towels, just one weird brand and limit 1 package per customer
– plenty of sugar, limit 1 bag per customer
– no clorox bleach but plenty of the off-brand bleach on the next shelf over. I grabbed one.
– An entire endcap of hand sanitizer! AND, when I rounded the corner, an entire mid-aisle display of hand sanitizer! Limit 2 per customer. You better believe I bought 2.
Things I haven’t been able to find in weeks, and thankfully can live without:: saltine crackers. Whole wheat flour (at first there was no flour at all, then there was some unbleached all-purpose, then they added bread flour. But absolutely no whole wheat flour.) Zucchini. Tortillas (why?)
Things they were limiting, then stopped limiting: milk, eggs, pasta, beans
Things they weren’t limiting and are now limiting: meat (but not lunch meat or bacon)
Things they were limiting and are still limiting: cleaning and disinfecting products, sugar, flour, yeast (when available at all), TP and other paper products, rice
We were able to find some flour at a small market, where they had obviously taken their baking flour from the cookies and pastries they make and broken it up into 3-4 lb bags. I was glad for the flour and glad to buy it from them, specifically.
99% Fat-Free Cream of Onion, what would Francie Nolan say?
Probably even Francie would turn up her nose at that!
Stay Well, keep us updated on the Grocery Saga!
Central Kansas: I don’t know much about what is happening inside the stores, but online ordering with pick up service is still hit and miss. The available pickup slots are not nearly as far out. On a whim today I ordered at 5:45 am, and got a 9 am pick up time. I did go into a dollar store for a frozen convenience food that my regular store doesn’t carry. Saw two employees, neither wearing masks and two customers, one masked, one not. They had a cart with tp, and some paper towels. Not the top brands, but not the bottom of the barrel either. Not very many pkgs. I did wonder if that was the entire inventory, or if that was a less confrontational method of limits.
I went through the pharmacy drive through and the employee there was wearing a mask, AND fiddling with it the whole time.
I filled my vehicles gas tank and came home. So full of angst.
BUT, I did get chicken today after two previous trips that yielded none, so I figure I ended up driving 120 miles for chicken. Last week I ended up buying beef direct from a farmer. And a friend had found yeast for me in her larger town’s store and mailed it to me. So much rejoicing, so much gratitude.
I did think of this Swistle community and all that so many of you go through so much more often than I. My hat is off to you!
And also? My nose itched nearly the whole time I had my mask on.
Central IL small city, I only go to one grocery store. Still no toilet paper or paper towels. Beef is limit 2 packages, no limits on other meat. Cases that usually have fresh meat in them were stocked with bacon. Bacon bacon bacon. So much bacon stocked. Pre-sliced lunch meat was nearly empty this week. Jello too. Eggs are limit 2 containers, but they have 30 and 18 packs. Baking aisle seemed half stocked. I got a 3 lb sugar this week. Pop is EXPENSIVE right now. Distilled water is back in stock after having been out for 5 weeks.
Husband went to Sams Club yesterday, no fresh meat of any kind. We have a local farmer we buy beef from and she said she’s got steers almost ready. I hope nothing goes wrong with this plan.
My husband was able to find everything on my list last week except egg roll wrappers. We use them for breakfast egg rolls once a week and thEre are always plenty so it was weird that they were out of that item but had other very specific things (bow tie pasta) I asked for
I just got back from Costco. The meat was very depleted – steak, ribs, and sausage, plus salmon and swordfish, were all in good supply. But no ground beef, no chicken (of any kind – not even any rotisserie chickens), no pork tenderloin or pork chops. The meat section was papered with cranky-sounding signs about how due to supply issues, there is a shortage of meat; what you see is what they have.
No toilet paper, but there were paper towels. No sanitizing wipes. There was lots of Pioneer brand flour and sugar. Plenty of butter and eggs. Plenty of ibuprofen but very little acetaminophen. Plenty of beans. I did not notice the rice situation, but there were big packages of elbow pasta. Lots of macaroni and cheese available. Limes were plentiful — based on other commenters’ comments, I was very tempted to grab a bag, but they were HUGE bags and there is no way even I, an avid lime user, could get through them before they rot.
The most distressing (to me) items missing were paprika and garlic powder. But I did load up on cumin, salt, pepper, and oregano. You win some, you lose some. Regular grocery store tomorrow. I am very nervous about the meat situation.
This makes me want to go around to compare a bunch of stores in my area but of course that’s the worst thing I could do! In the Seattle area we have no yeast but plenty of hipsters willing to share sourdough starter. The shelves have consistently had plenty of tomato products here, but my parents in the SF bay area went without canned tomotoes/sauce until just recently.
The shortages that have impacted my household the most are the ones I cause buy underbuying snacks. With all of us here during the day we go through a lot more pretzels, chips and popcorn than I would typically buy for two weeks. My daughter has started filling in with apples and my son has been eating veggies with ranch dressing, so it’s a lovely accidental parenting win!
I’m in a very big city in the middle of the US. There is still no meat on the shelves, although the freezer section is almost back to normal. Baking supplies are hit or miss but produce is back to close to normal.
I’m just outside of Seattle and did grocery pickup a couple days ago. I was able to snag a bag of AP flour for the first time in weeks. Paper products have been returning for the last few weeks; I was able to get a 6pack of my preferred paper towels last week. No limits on meat although I worry that may change.. Rice is still weirdly hard to find but pasta seems to be coming back. For some reason they were entirely out of Cheezits. Disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer remain mythical but you can sometimes get bleach. Overall I feel like here things are normalizing grocerywise with a few exceptions. I’m also noticing that thing vary considerably from store to store, even between stores owned by the same company.
We eat low sodium Lay potato chips, and surprisingly (like the Cheezits) they had been sold out for weeks. My husband was at the store a couple days ago, and there were 2 bags on the shelf, he grabbed them both. Chips are my go to snack, so happy Mother’s Day to me!
I’m in Maryland with chronic health problems. I haven’t been in a grocery store since…uh…mid March? I’ve been learning all about shopping from home with the pandemic. I bought a huge thing of TP, some hand sanitizer and store brand wipes recently from the online store boxed.com. I bought a large thing of yeast (I’m set for the year) from modernistpantry.com. Otherwise I’ve used instacart every 2 to 3 weeks. (Family of 4 plus we do orders for our neighbor with macular degeneration, so 5).
Thank you for the suggestion of Modernist Pantry. I just ordered yeast from them. I looked into a sourdough starter but I don’t have rye or wheat flour and I’m trying to limit my grocery trips as much as possible. I’m excited for pizza dough and focaccia.
I went to our local grocery store today. It was fairly well stocked – ground beef and chicken, no limit. Toilet paper, one per customer. Flour and sugar were in attendance, though flour still looked a little grim. The beans aisle was pretty picked through, but still had options. Same with pasta and rice. Milk and yogurt and cheese were all in stock. Lots and lots of fresh fruit and veggies, although the onion situation was pretty slim. Almost nothing is on sale anymore. Best of all for me (for my daughter), there were boxes of frozen pancakes back in stock!
Most people wore masks, and while I was there, an announcement went out over the PA reminding people to practice good social distancing. One elderly woman in the checkout line was NOT wearing a mask, and a woman in line behind me scolded her; it seemed that they knew each other, but it was still a little startling to witness a public mask shaming.
My mother has a friend who is a retired nurse and does not hold back on the public scolding/shaming wherever she goes! I agree it can be a little startling, especially when it’s a pair of adults walking together outside who may live in the same household (I don’t think the possibility of roommates or same-sex couples occurs to her automatically).
I bought yeast from my local pizza place! They started a grocery service. I buy flour (a GIANT bag!), yeast, cheese, eggs (5 dozen for $20!), pasta…it really helps! Anyway, the yeast is actually live yeast (not dry) and I had to google what to do with it. I was able to cut it up into approximately the same size as a packet of active dry yeast, wrap in plastic wrap, and flash freeze. It made the equivalent of 20 packets so now I am good on yeast! And it was only $5. It works VERY well, the bread, pizza dough, rolls, etc I have made all turned out great.
My market this week was out of shredded coconut (weird). Overall milk seems ok but my mother in law buys lactose-free milk and has a terrible time finding any. My mom was in the store recently and said it looked like they were selling the commercial-style toilet paper (where each roll is wrapped in paper) for $1/roll, people limited to A SINGLE ROLL. Sugar used to be hard to get but this week I got a 4 pound bag no problem.
Oh and also, I haven’t seen any hand sanitizer in close to 2 months. But a number of local micro-breweries are making and selling hand sanitizer…I haven’t tried them yet because I go out so seldom, but at some point when there is somewhere to go I will probably try that route.
I posted before I read the thread-and now I see I wasn’t the first to mention the hand sanitizer being sold by those excellent people who usually make our alcoholic beverages ;)
Hand sanitizer update:
Target had some in stock for delivery – I looked up the brand to see if any good and looks like the company is selling it directly (and in larger quantities):
https://artnaturals.com/bath-body/hands/?remoteLinkId=423890877008&remoteCampaignId=9577035784&gclid=Cj0KCQjwhtT1BRCiARIsAGlY51IuHtlDvqACebqF1WJyZnLxyOmIPlrQf-tv3s3tOl2pAGdNJeHA1u4aAlxsEALw_wcB
Pretty close to normal here, although there are revolving shortages of weird things and I still can’t find Lysol wipes, which I just like to have in the car for after being out and touching stuff. This week I found it hard to find big refill pouches of liquid soap, which was never an issue until then. Totally empty shelf. Toilet paper, flour, pasta, all mostly available again. I have yeast but apparently some people are still having trouble finding it.
Haven’t been to the store in 10 days, but when I did go, I was at Costco and Target. Milk and eggs were fully stocked with no limits in both places. Costco was already seeing increased meat buying – the chicken case had clearly been recently restocked, since all the meat there was still half-frozen, and people were waiting around for the butchers to package more hamburger. Not sure whether there was any restrictions on amounts, but I’m sure there are by now. At Target (ours has a fresh grocery section), there seemed to be plenty of pasta/sauce in various brands, but there was no flour and very little of other baking goods. Also, much to my dismay, they were out of Farmer John’s sausage. What really threw me, though, was that about 1/3 of the cereal aisle was empty. I bought some different cereal than what I was planning, and when I got home, realized that the cereal that had been out of stock was almost all General Mills. So it was clearly an issue from the supplier rather than an issue with people buying up all the Cheerios and leaving all the Fruit Loops. Still so strange.
I have been able to get the Big Three (toilet paper, disinfectant wipes, and hand sanitizer) by going early in the morning. I have plenty of all three right now. However I still have Shelf Anxiety – when I do run out, will these be available again, or not? Having a hard time not buying in doomsday-prepper quantities to alleviate the feeling.
Same goes for food – most items have been available to date, but still running into scenarios like “they have cereal, but not the brand/kind I wanted, so I guess I’ll go with this other brand/kind since there’s no guarantee that ANY cereal will be available next time I go out.” Or the opposite scenario of “hooray they have MY brand/kind of cereal this time, I will buy as many boxes as they let me!”
In my part of the UK it’s yeast and lemons that are the must have item and are impossible to get hold of… But flour is back in 16kg bags!
And bread both fresh and sliced is around, weirdly we too had to switch brands as ours is the supermarket own brand and it’s no longer ever in stock…
This week eggs where gone but they are hit and miss and not as likely to be gone as the yeast.
Oat milk has always been in stock and some sort of gluten free something but my meals are getting wackier….
But we have all the things to make a crumble so that’s great!
I got deliveries from a big grocery and also from Whole Foods today.
Neither had any chicken, pork or ground beef of any kind or shape. I got salmon though. Neither had lasgana noodles of any brand, not even the fancy, fresh Whole Foods kind. That seems weird. Each had other shapes, like ziti and whole wheat rotini.
And a surprise container of Lysol Wipes arrived. It is all fine and I have plenty but I am generally not too flexible because I am An Exact Recipe Follower.
I got a lovely 5 pack of little hand sanitizers from Bath & Body Works online. That has been available to order I looked this week. Since I have been home, I just wash my hands so I did not really need it. I will definitely be using it when I resume my commute on public transit- which is a hideous cesspool on a good day.
Oh and I got an emergency bag of mini twix, miky way and snickers- I eat one every time I pass the kitchen.
Suburb of Minneapolis here. Target finally had toilet paper for the first time since March (limit 1), eggs were back (although my husband complained we didn’t need any even though he hard-boils eggs every Sunday and that would’ve left us with 2 eggs), meat was very hit or miss, frozen pizza was also hard to come by, Lysol wipes were back as well as paper towels, but no hand sanitizer.
I wore a cloth mask my MIL made me, but maybe 60% of people were not wearing them, which made me mad. Ugh. The employees wore them, though.
OK Swistle, gonna need your mother’s day update.
Yes! I really NEED to know about your mother’s day experience this year!
I thought about it so many times yesterday! I had to buy my own flowers but as we know that’s better than nothing.
Our two places to shop are Costco and Kroger. Kroger I’ve been doing as curbside pickup out of the feeling that it’s the socially good choice plus my husband has been stressing out about being one-on-one with our daughter to the point at which he starts texting to ask when I’ll be back about 30 min after I’ve left the property for any purpose. Costco, I have to go in because they don’t do curbside pickup and because there are prescriptions I have to pick up in person anyway.
Kroger: curbside pickup shopping isn’t easy for me. Assembling the order feels like prepping for an exam and generally takes more than an hour and a half. About 1/3 of what I put in a given cart that says is in stock turns out to be unavailable, and most of the unavailable things are fully unavailable– I’m not asked if I’d accept X as a substitution. No acetaminophen branded or unbranded, no instant decaf coffee in any form, no onions. I’m not sure if it’s because there are genuinely none of 1/3 of my order to be had or if it’s because the store pickers are working fast and are being extremely literal. (Like not picking up white onions instead if there are no yellow onions.) Assembling the cart, pickup, and then figuring out how to make dinner around the random shortfalls is both depressing and hugely time-consuming.
Costco: I just went to Costco today, which is Day 1 of their mask rule. It was really empty in Costco terms. Everyone wore masks, but there wasn’t a lot of care towards social distancing when going through the aisles. They were out of some things, but I’m not sure what percentage of the outage was due to Costco doing its usual weird Costco stocking thing and what percentage was due to actual outages. For example, they didn’t have any unflavored yogurt, only flavored kinds. And they did have lots of things like rice and flour, but not kinds we would buy and definitely not quantities we would buy. (Too gargantuan.) There were no glaring holes on the shelves, but there were limits on a number of categories. They did have acetaminophen, at least, and plenty of it. And onions, but I didn’t buy them because we can’t use 10 lbs of onions in our house before they go bad. If I have to deal with pandemic shopping for things like that at Costco, I need more friends in the area. So that I can go in with a plan for dividing this stuff up among households.
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this before-but our local breweries and distilleries are making and selling hand sanitizers. Our tenant bought some to bring to her office. Just a thought if you need it and can’t find it in your grocery stores.
…in related news, Target’s hair stuff (bobbypins, elastics, brushes) was very much depleted. I did buy some cool headbands, elastics, and bobbypins but the choices were limited.