How are your supermarket shelves?

[Melissa in Australia]

Title says it all

mass food shortages expected and already happening in places over here.  It isn’t because of panic buying, but rather so many sick that the food isn’t even making it to the shops
 I went shopping yesterday and got most things, but my son went the day before and said shelves were empty. I have heard from one of my neighbours who is in Melbourne that they went food shopping and there was nothing at all there to  news is saying it is particularly bad in NSW but I don’t have any confirmation of that.

[Rosie_0801]

Last time I was down at our local (IGA) there were all of two packages of loo paper left and quite a few gaps on the veggie shelves, though still plenty to choose from. Otherwise, I think people could have found pretty much anything else they would expect to find, though perhaps not their usual brand. The cannery in Shepp was as it always is, when I was over there the other day, as was the Chinese grocer. 

[Shoeless]

I haven't been in the store lately, but today was the first time got a message saying there were limited curbside pickup times available due to staffing issues. I put in a big order split over 2 stores and am prepared to hunker down like it's 2020. *Sigh*

The local UPS store had to close early because not enough staff to cover the hours. Too many out with Covid. 😕

MY vet also rescheduled my dogs appt because she's out "sick". The receptionist seemed uncomfortable about that fact, so I am taking it to mean covid.

ETA: DS13s out school instructor is out with Covid. Another teacher was sick with "something" 2 weeks ago, which resulted in serious side eye from me. Glad all his classes are via zoom.

The line for drive up testing was around the building at CVS yesterday. The Urgent Care seemed to be doing a booming business when I drove by, too. Not good. And yet every single person at the post office was unmasked yesterday. It almost makes me want to laugh. Almost. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by MissLemon

[chocolate-chip chooky]

I've been buying groceries online from Woolies since the pandemic started.

There have definitely been more things unavailable recently, but the substitutions are generally pretty generous, and we certainly haven't had anything vital missing.

I've got an order coming tomorrow morning, so I'll see then how much is missing this week.

I haven't been inside a store to know what the shelves actually look like.

Edited January 12, 2022 by chocolate-chip chooky

[Melissa in Australia]

I traveled 100 km to big town shopping centre yesterday. Aldi had no meat, UHT milk or cheese. Safeway had no cheese. Nowhere had toilet paper . But everything else was fine. I buy meat form a butcher shop and as my local town has one of the very few abattoirs I think locally will still be able to access meat.

 There was however hardly anyone shopping at all. I am guessing they are mostly in isolation. A huge amount of local cases and hardly any ability to get tested

one of my sons told me I must have gone just after supply trucks arrived as he was there the day before and there wasn’t much of anything.

 My parents just both came down with Covid. They have got tested but won’t have the results for 7 days

[Melissa in Australia]

We are planning on not leaving the property for the next few weeks. People are saying the local town has over half the people ill, some confirmed cases the rest cannot access tests

[Melissa in Australia]

I don’t have the option of online shopping because of my location

[Ausmumof3]

I did an order online and the only thing I didn’t get was chicken thighs and breast so probably due to the abattoir.  Apparently the butcher and independent grocer have chicken though. I did get some stuff that was weirdly packed like five tomatoes all in individual bags so I suspect they have some new staff in.

[prairiewindmomma]

I only order online…but I would describe my orders as struggling, tending worse. This week the grocer did not have (from my list):

chicken thighs—fresh or frozen

chicken breasts—frozen

lactose free 1% milk

salad (at all, any kind, and they usually store 20+ bagged varieties plus loose leaf—I think this is due to a large recall though due to listeria)

sweet potatoes

zucchini

grapes

pears

green beans (fresh or frozen)

frozen broccoli

Low sodium saltines

low sodium wheat crackers

low sodium tortilla chips

low sodium chicken broth

low sodium pasta sauce 

low sodium lunch meat 

cereal bars (any brand, any variety) 

most granola bars

most yogurts

Soft foam earplugs

covid tests 

It’s not spring of 2020 bad, and I do think flooding and blizzards (we had both this past week) influenced what could be sent in on trucks, but it’s frustrating. 

[Bootsie]

Where I am in Texas, random holes appear on shelves from time-to-time.  One week there is no half-and-half; the next week it might be no canned green beans.  Topo Chico and some other beverage products have been hard to find.  I mentioned that we couldn't get Fritos here before Christmas, but now we can find them.  

But, I had a friend who lives in Virginia tell me yesterday that there was one 10 pound bag of granulated sugar, no brown sugar, and no powdered sugar in her local Krogers.  And the shelves for rice and beans were empty there also.  She said she went home and did a large Amazon order.

[athena1277]

I usually make 2 trips to the grocery each week.  A bigger stock up trip and a smaller one for other things I end up needed.  My local Kroger hasn’t been out of entire categories of foods like a news report showed somewhere today.  However, there are things they are out of that are taking a long time to get in.  They have been out of the gf crackers my dd likes for a month, but that seems to be on the extreme end.  Most things they get in after a week or 2.  Still it’s frustrating.  With picky eaters and special diets, I can’t always just buy another brand. I’m trying to be thankful that there is plenty to buy, even if it’s not the things we wanted at the time.

[Melissa Louise]

[Sunshine State Sue]

I just zoomed with a friend who lives an hour south of Sydney. They are now doing online grocery delivery.  She said the only meat they could get was bacon.  She has heard some grocery stores have NO produce.

I am visiting my son in the Denver area. Went to the pharmacy for some clear iodine.  They had none and the store shelves were half empty.  The cashier mumbled about supply chain.  I went to the (health food) grocery store late Sunday night.  The produce was half gone.  Remaining cucumbers were squishy.  I wasn't sure if it was the late time or what.

[popmom]

We are having issues where I am. It’s really difficult for people who have food allergies. I’m actually making bread for someone right now. Her ASD son is allergic to eggs and dairy. There are precious few breads available commercially that are truly dairy free, so her son has been going without. Their go to brand hasn’t been available in awhile.

Edited January 12, 2022 by popmom

[Arcadia]

Meat is random as in different supermarkets run out of different types of meat. Within the last few days we went to Costco, Safeway, Grocery Outlet, Trader Joe’s, 3 different Korean supermarkets and a Vietnamese supermarket. Other than Covid test kits, everything else in @prairiewindmomma list is in stock, just not in one store.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Arcadia
Typo

[Melissa Louise]

1 hour ago, popmom said:

We are having issues where I am. It’s really difficult for people who have food allergies. I’m actually making bread for someone right now. Her ASD son is allergic to eggs and dairy. There are precious few breads available commercially that are truly dairy free, so her son has been going without. Their go to brand hasn’t been available in awhile.

This. 

Coeliac disease means we rely a lot on things like rice, chicken, fish, veggies + g/f products. 

At our local supermarket it's been hard to get rice, chicken, g/f pasta, many veggies. 

It's often hard to get alternatives to other food too - for example, dried beans have a 'may contain' statement, so I can't use them to replace the brand of tinned beans that's 'safe', currently out of stock. 

It's not a huge drama - except the rice! - but it's annoying and extra work. 

 

[Laura Corin]

The shop looked okay yesterday.  A few gaps, but nothing major.  Scotland.  We use a local butcher for meat who owns a venison/beef/pork farm.

Edited January 12, 2022 by Laura Corin

[Hannah]

No issues with groceries in South Africa at the moment - the curve for this wave has turned here already.  There are problems with imported items though due to global shipping delays and these affect industry, including electricity production. 

We were unfortunate that the transformer in the local substation was damaged in heavy storms and repairs are lagging due to availability of spares in the country.  For a week now we have had electricity on an 8 hours on, 8 hours off schedule - 8am to 4pm, 4pm to midnight and midnight to 8am.  The voltage is also lower than it should be.  There is only one state-owned electricity company in the country.

[Pawz4me]

Problems in my area seem, for the most part, more of the first world variety than true problems. What I'm noticing myself and hearing about on our local FB page are mostly about issues finding preferred processed snacks--particular flavors/brands of chips and crackers, frozen pizza type things, etc. I haven't been able to find 5 ounce Dixie cups in a long time, or strawberry banana V8 Fusion. Canned dog food and (particularly) canned cat food has been in short supply, and I think that's close to becoming a real problem, especially for people with picky kitties. I've noted that the shelves of bacon, sausage and other processed meats tend to be sparse at times. At our local Walmart for the past couple of weeks it looks like a lot of the pain relievers and cough/cold/flu type medicines have been totally wiped out (which I don't think is particularly unusual during January of previous years). There is, of course, a huge shortage of bagged salad greens due to the recent recalls, but otherwise produce departments seem to be okay for this time of the year.

[Guest]

I was just, moments Ago, reading a local news article about bare shelves here. I have been ordering groceries and haven’t beeen inside a store recently. However, I have been missing stock from my orders and the week before last, I missed ten items. This was when we had snow, though, and that was the “reason” given. I’m sure Covid is a factor. 

[HomeAgain]

I stopped in last night very quickly for milk.  That was all.  I made my way back to the dairy case and was greeted with nearly empty shelves.  There were no gallons, only 3 half gallons of whole milk and some pints of cream.  I wasn't going to look around the store, but it made me glad to know we are well stocked at home right now with most other things.

[itsheresomewhere]

It is random stuff here.  Last week, hardly any bread in the local grocery store close to me. Along with a lack of the good ice cream, no cream cheese, milk was down to the half gallons ( we did get some snow so it could have been the bread and milk people) and no fresh pineapple. 

[Faith-manor]

We are well stocked and since temps have been in the single digits and teens with wind chills below zero plus very high winds, I have been in no mood to venture out. The whole county is in a full covid meltdown. The two large hospitals our county there patients to because what we have for a hospital is a stitch and ditch band aid station are both so overwhelmed they had to close their ER's until more federal help arrives. It doesn't leave me with any confidence about going anywhere or being around anyone. So I have no idea what the grocery stores are experiencing. We have no curbside pick up, delivery, or instacart options here.

But, I am going to grab a KN95 - I bought 30 of them back before the omicron surge began - and am going today during the 2-3pm lull at the least populated, least popular supermarket so it should be just me, a couple of other customers, a manager, a cashier, and someone at the deli in a huge building. I will use the self checkout and then be nervous for ten days waiting to see if I get the damn disease.

I will report back on what the stock conditions are.

[Clemsondana]

We had 2 snow/ice events last week and that always causes some odd shortages, but when I went to the store yesterday they seemed fine. There were gaps on the OJ section, but there was juice and it was likely just not restocked yet.  I haven't seen true shortages of food in a long time, although there might be missing stock of particular items.  We are in an area where some of the food production happens - a major regional dairy is only an 45 minutes from here, for instance, and some of the eggs are produced in a neighboring state.  I'm sure that helps.  

[Eos]

17 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

in a huge building.

I've been thinking about this - I am doing big shopping trips but occasionally will go into my small health food store for a quick few items.  Because it's "health food" I think of the store itself as a healthier space, which is silly since it is much smaller with lower ceilings.  I wear a KN95 in either this little store or the large Hannaford, but I'm rethinking.

[Idalou]

No issues here, aside from canned cat food. I shop at a very large Wegman and haven't noticed much of anything being scant since the days of toilet paper hoarding.

[Farrar]

Bare shelves for the first time here (Washington DC) since early pandemic. But not everywhere and not most things. Safeway was out of all sorts of stuff apparently, but my Giant was fine. The pandemic and shipping issues were clearly a part of it, but mostly it was the snowstorm and especially how it screwed up and closed I-95 for a full day. That's still boggling my mind.

We have borne the pandemic shortages a bit better than most places, I think. It's been a bit of a reversal. When my mom and my suburban friends were complaining that stores were out of everything, we usually had relatively full shelves. When you're at a store that has always had extremely high turnover like all the box stores and grocery stores in my neighborhood, some of which were the highest sales volume stores of their type at various points, then you get more shipments in the first place, which means fewer shortages even when there's a bit less to go around.

[Bambam]

I'm in TX too - and mostly things see to be hit-or-miss. 
Saltine crackers have been hard to find since before Christmas.
Milk products are plentiful *except* heavy cream.
Produce still seems normal.
Other aisles - there are empty spots but those are filled next time and other spots are empty.
Canned cat food has a lot of empty shelves and has since well before Christmas. Plenty of the higher priced cans though.

ETA: Frozen breaded fish fillets. One family member loves these. They have been hard to find, but I found some at Walmart (not a place I usually shop) yesterday. I bought three bags. 

Edited January 12, 2022 by Bambam

[ScoutTN]

Fine, except for last week when it snowed! 

[plaidpants]

38 minutes ago, ScoutTN said:

Fine, except for last week when it snowed! 

French toast and potty breaks!😂 (Milk, bread, toilet paper)

 

We always have random gaps, especially depending on which store you go to. Lately most have been out of orange juice and now cough syrup.

[HS Mom in NC]

Midsized city (state capitol)  in SE US here.
I grocery shopped at Aldi and Walmart yesterday. Aldi only had chicken wings, no other chicken options. Walmart had chicken. Both hadn't had greens for 2-3ish weeks before now, but they're back in stock. Everything else seemed fairly normal. If say, my favorite crackers weren't in stock, there was another option that was similar.
 

[MEmama]

DH was in the “Big City” yesterday for a medical appointment and stopped in Trader Joe’s to restock on a few items. He reports that the frozen aisle was nearly empty and that there were huge gaps in the remainder of the store, and that there were random items like potato chips in multiple areas, to fill space I guess.  
 

I haven’t been in our local grocery this week but haven’t noticed big holes recently. I did notice when I ordered delivery from Whole Foods that they were out of a lot of items, nothing I needed or couldn’t be easily substituted, but a lot more items were flagged than usual. 
 

Produce has become shockingly expensive— like $2-3 for a single red bell pepper. I use a lot of peppers so when I find a halfway decent price I buy several and freeze them. Prepackaged bags have been least expensive per pound— normally I wouldn’t buy them but I’ve been giving in recently. 

[Kalmia]

Our regular chain grocery store has been out of carrots of all types frequently. Luckily our local food co-op, which is open to all, still has carrots from a local farm--but if I remember correctly they run out of the winter-storage carrots sometime in February (probably earlier this year since the big grocery store in town has had none). Chicken is also in variable/low supply. Conventional chicken being the most rare. There have been some organic packs available. There have been no uncooked whole chickens, conventional or organic, for periods of time. Canned cat food is absent except for one or two minor brands. I have been ordering mine from Petco and Chewy for months and worry they will run out too. Cat litter is scarce. Some areas of the frozen prepared foods have been empty, but I don't eat those. 

[mlktwins]

We’ve got a possible big snowstorm coming Sunday/Monday.  I am going today/tomorrow to try and get milk, cheese, and a few other things for specific meals.  We had a big snowstorm last week too so not sure the store have fully recovered from that.  We will see. I am in No. VA.

We’ve kept up with our staple food stash since all of this started so good with all of that.  No milk will be huge as one son drinks 3/4 of a gallon a day 😩.

[TravelingChris]

I was in the store yesterday.  Yes, shortages all around.  But definitely not as serious as some of the areas seem to be.  Produce was fine-- got some tasty strawberries.  Noticed that the entire shelf where cream cheese and neufchatel cheese is normally was empty- but I wasn't planning on buying that anyway.  ALso cat food,   also maybe Gatorade?  SOme crackers though we passed the person refilling the saltines area and she had a very big box that she was refilling from.   I haven't been to stores much recently. 

[QueenCat]

The only one I noticed yesterday was Cheez-its (all of the different types, so a a good section of the shelving in snacks was empty).

[Zoo Keeper]

Saltines (and many other crackers/chips/snacky things) have been MIA for a while

Chocolate chips are hit or miss

chicken (or other meats) are who knows what will be there

 

[chiguirre]

I've been lucky. I shop at 9 am in a suburban Houston HEB and, so far, I haven't noticed anything that was completely out. There didn't seem to be any Philadelphia cream cheese, but they had lots of their own brand, for example. Produce is good, even bagged lettuce. This might be a regional sourcing issue, our produce tend to come from Mexico and it's relatively close. Prices for beef have skyrocketed like everywhere but the shelves are full.

I have noticed the few times I've had to shop at night that many shelves are half full. It's clear that the stockers can't keep up or that the shipments are put out overnight and sell out by later in the day. This might be a tactic to try if your store has random shortages.

[rebcoola]

The freezer section was almost empty at the Safeway earlier this week.  Seems like their is always a section that is low or empty these days.

[Arcadia]

3 hours ago, MEmama said:

DH was in the “Big City” yesterday for a medical appointment and stopped in Trader Joe’s to restock on a few items. He reports that the frozen aisle was nearly empty and that there were huge gaps in the remainder of the store, and that there were random items like potato chips in multiple areas, to fill space I guess.  

My nearby Trader Joe’s tend to stock just before noon. When we went early, we usually end up seeing empty shelves at the frozen aisle though we could ask the staff to take from the backroom. The non-frozen goods get restock depending on when their delivery truck arrives, which tend to be around 11am. 

[rutheart]

I'm doing Kroger curbside pickup in eastern TN, as well as Kroger shipping orders (for rice, cereal, and other shelf stable goods). They have been out of organic chicken for a month. There's no whole chickens, rotisserie, or frozen chicken either. I've run through my back supply of frozen chicken. I am now buying most of my meat from Market Wagon. There's a local farmer on there that processes chickens on their farm, but it's 50% more than Kroger's usual price. If my husband didn't need a high protein diet (health issue, not just preference), this would be the time to switch back to being a vegetarian. 

Produce has been a gamble for several months, which is why I started using Market Wagon in the first place. There's not a lot of variety over the winter months, but at least if it's listed on the Market Wagon website, I definitely receive it that week.

I haven't seen a tub of yogurt in over 6 months. I can't even order egg-free chocolate ice cream. In the last couple weeks, I haven't been able to get almond butter or refried beans. That may be related to NY resolution diets? The list of out of stock items seems to get longer each week, but for most items if I order it again the next week, it will be back in stock.

It has been key to diversify where I spend my grocery money in order to keep us all fed. Food allergies make it harder. I've been spending a lot more hours in the kitchen to make up for the things I haven't been able to get. If more Covid variants pop up before the end of the school year, I think I'll start canning this summer, so we have more food options for next winter.

[Carrie12345]

I haven’t been inside any grocery stores in a couple of weeks, so I can’t really say.  I wasn’t able to get any heavy cream, any size or brand, with my last pick up order, but received everything else. As I went through the website to make my order, there were definitely a lot of things that weren’t available in a specific size or brand, but I could get everything I needed (except heavy cream, apparently) one way or another.

Just before Christmas, I did quick run throughs of Michael’s craft store, Bed Bath and Beyond, Dollar General… I think that’s it.  What stood out to me is that they all still had some Fall/Halloween items out. Typically, that stuff gets grab-bagged, trashed, sent back, and whatever else days before we even get to Thanksgiving.  I assume it was all kept to fill space, because all three stores had TONS of space. Nothing jumped out at me as “missing”, but it seemed there wasn’t much in the usual quantities.

[sassenach]

Out of weird things at the store, but nothing close to how it looked in 2020. The only ketchup left at the store last week was sriracha flavored 😂.

[kbutton]

We have things that are hit and miss, but you can usually get another brand. Sale items tend to be gone faster, but if it's a sale that spans more than one week, you can get the stuff on week 2. 

We've tried to stay close enough to stocked up that if we get sick, we aren't in dire straits, so that helps. We can't do that for fresh stuff very easily, but we'd be okay.

I have gone back to alternating online pickup trips to Kroger and Aldi rather than getting them the same day so that if something isn't available at one store, it might be available at the other. It worked very well earlier in the pandemic. 

I think we live in one of those areas where we have high volume ordering, and it tends to work itself out. 

Uncured ham has been hit and miss the entire pandemic, but I can usually get one brand or another, just not necessarily the one on sale or the preferred one. Uncured bacon bits are also hit and miss. 

[Clemsondana]

24 minutes ago, rutheart said:

I'm doing Kroger curbside pickup in eastern TN, as well as Kroger shipping orders (for rice, cereal, and other shelf stable goods). They have been out of organic chicken for a month. There's no whole chickens, rotisserie, or frozen chicken either. I've run through my back supply of frozen chicken. I am now buying most of my meat from Market Wagon. There's a local farmer on there that processes chickens on their farm, but it's 50% more than Kroger's usual price. If my husband didn't need a high protein diet (health issue, not just preference), this would be the time to switch back to being a vegetarian. 

Produce has been a gamble for several months, which is why I started using Market Wagon in the first place. There's not a lot of variety over the winter months, but at least if it's listed on the Market Wagon website, I definitely receive it that week.

I haven't seen a tub of yogurt in over 6 months. I can't even order egg-free chocolate ice cream. In the last couple weeks, I haven't been able to get almond butter or refried beans. That may be related to NY resolution diets? The list of out of stock items seems to get longer each week, but for most items if I order it again the next week, it will be back in stock.

It has been key to diversify where I spend my grocery money in order to keep us all fed. Food allergies make it harder. I've been spending a lot more hours in the kitchen to make up for the things I haven't been able to get. If more Covid variants pop up before the end of the school year, I think I'll start canning this summer, so we have more food options for next winter.

I'm also in eastern TN, and early on it seemed that Kroger had a lot more supply issues than smaller chains like Ingles and Food City.  I don't know if it's because they use different suppliers - I know that different stores carry different brands and have some regional suppliers.  2 years ago we stayed home and tried to minimize our store use because we had a well-stocked freezer and wanted food to be available to people who didn't, but at my closest store (Ingles) I've never seen the completely empty shelves that other people talk about ever since we started back in summer of 2020. Even the night before one of our anticipated snow/ice events at the end of last week, my husband went to the store and said it looked fine other than being a little short on bread.  There have definitely been gaps - you might want broccoli but end up having to get spinach or green beans instead, but there has always been plenty of food and usually most of what we want, although there was a stretch where I couldn't find a perferred type of potato chip or that sort of thing.  

[mommyoffive]

Grocery stores still have empty shelves amid supply chain disruptions, omicron and winter storms (msn.com)

[Faith-manor]

Okay, so I ended up going between 10 am and 11 am. To tell you how much I don't want to run into people, I called the store first to ask how busy it was. The response was "hardly anyone here" so that was my cue.

There were a few gallons of 1% mil left and some lactose free half gallons. That was it for milk. But they had half n half which is what I use for coffee, and we didn't need milk for anything else, so I was to score those. They had sour cream and cream cheese. The produce was, as usual, not great except their portabella mushrooms were fine. I scored one grapefruit for dh, and thankfully really didn't need anything else except carrots. They had a bag of baby carrots that looked okay. I need to ration those out for eating on salads, so I picked up two bags of diced, frozen carrots for my soups. They had no brussel sprouts so I grabbed a bag of frozen and hope they will roast okay. If they are soggy, Mark and so will not be happy!  Thankfully, I have a nice supply of dehydrated celery and red peppers from this past summer. I would have liked a bunch of green onions, however, it is fine that I couldn't get any. Salad greens were gone, and I got the last bag of Yukon gold potatoes in the place. They had only one bag of russets as well which I didn't take. I still have frozen broccoli, green beans, and cauliflower from harvest season.

Cheese supply was fine, and beef and pork products were fine. Chicken was getting mighty low. I took two packs of chicken thighs and two of chicken breast. I have a turkey breast in the freezer so for fowl, we will be okay for a bit. I didn't need beef since we bought a side this past September. I also do very little with pork, however we do like bacon occasionally so I grabbed a package.

I needed sesame seeds, but they didn't have any. I doubt that is a distribution problem though. This particular store is pretty sad when it comes to herbs, spices, and seeds.

Bread was low. T.P. was fine. But in the canned products, they only had two cans of black beans and no bags of dried black beans. I took those since my family loves black beans with our tacos. They only had three cans of pintos, and no refried beans. I have dehydrated pintos so I left those cans on the shelf. Dark red kidney beans were in abundance so I picked some up. If one was into going to masker homemade taco sauce, then that was a world of hurting. Almost nothing left of any brand.

Junk food, which I wasn't shopping for, was fine except I did want a half gallon of decent vanilla ice cream for floats for funsies, and ha ha ha ha, they did not have a single brand of vanilla.

They had some shrimp, but seafood fillets were pretty well gone. I scored a bag of salmon. We are fish eaters so I am going to have to venture 45 minutes away to the seafood market to pick up perch and cod. I am trying not to think about that, and am in no mood to do it today. 

Gluten free products were drained. I grabbed one box of penne for me to use for my yummy pasta salad.

To be honest, with produce, milk, bread, and some canned products in such low supply, I am a little worried about some folks who really can't afford to stock up and are dependent on regular trips to the supermarket. It makes me very thankful to have had our small garden, the ability not put up the harvest and have farmer's markets all summer and fall within minutes of my house, and the cash to put away a half locally grown beef during the season. It is a blessing. We also have whole roasting chickens - 5 yet - int he freezer again from a local farmer. We can eat well throughout shortages, and that is a big privilege that I am well aware of. I may need to share with our son in Kalamazoo if things get tight there. But if I have gas for the car, that won't be problematic. We have an RTIC cooler for camping, and the thing is huge. I can take him a ton of frozen stuff.

[rutheart]

5 minutes ago, Clemsondana said:

I'm also in eastern TN, and early on it seemed that Kroger had a lot more supply issues than smaller chains like Ingles and Food City.  I don't know if it's because they use different suppliers - I know that different stores carry different brands and have some regional suppliers.  2 years ago we stayed home and tried to minimize our store use because we had a well-stocked freezer and wanted food to be available to people who didn't, but at my closest store (Ingles) I've never seen the completely empty shelves that other people talk about ever since we started back in summer of 2020. Even the night before one of our anticipated snow/ice events at the end of last week, my husband went to the store and said it looked fine other than being a little short on bread.  There have definitely been gaps - you might want broccoli but end up having to get spinach or green beans instead, but there has always been plenty of food and usually most of what we want, although there was a stretch where I couldn't find a perferred type of potato chip or that sort of thing.  

My family is still in full lockdown, and Kroger has been the only store within an hour's drive that offers curbside pickup (except for Food City, but they didn't carry enough of the foods we eat, even before the pandemic). I know Ingles had been trialing curbside pickup in a few stores somewhere, but I 'd been checking every few months and they don't offer it at my store yet. I just checked their website and it looks like the second closest Ingles does have curbside pickup finally! Thanks for prompting me to recheck!

[cjzimmer1]

Pre Covid my normal routine was hit the local chain grocery store, then Costco and then Aldi.  I did a ton of stock up last year especially on some of the odder things that I use so my new "normal" shopping means that I can skip the local chain most weeks and even Costco some weeks.  So Aldi has been my primary store for the last couple of months.  I haven't seen sandwich meat at my Aldi for at least 6 weeks (really glad DS decided to switch from taking sandwiches every day to work to taking hot food).  I did see some at both of the other two Aldi I have been in during the last month but ours never seems to have any.  Bread is lower but there is always something.  Produce was really stretched this week so thankful we didn't need much.  Meat looked emptier but since 80% of my meat comes from a local farmer, I didn't look very closely. The heads of lettuce were abnormally large this week though and I was just fine with that since I typically by 2-4 a week anyways.  Also our Aldi either can't get or stopped carrying skim and 1% milk in gallon jugs.  The milk section is always fully stocked when I go but instead of having all 4 kinds in gallons as well as a couple of choices in 1/2 gallon they now only have 2 kinds in 1/2 gallon and 2 kinds in gallon.  So we just buy a milk elsewhere as my kids like 1% and it's too expensive to buy in 1/2 gallons. I have also noticed that frozen veggies are hit or miss so when I see them I buy extra (I'm sure I get looks but "normal" for me is 15-20 bags a week so I'm sure extra looks crazy to most people)

I haven't really noticed much difference at Costco other than the escalating prices.  TP was 15.99 in October, 16.99 in December and yesterday was now 17.99.  Costco is mostly about shopping the sale book and "fun stuff" but the sales haven't been great and I'm watching the fun stuff so we are definitely spending less there than times past.

I haven't been in the chain grocery store in about a month so I don't know what's been going on there.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Occasional outages until the supply chain catches up.  I have never had to go without essentials.  And there are always other choices available at least so far.  But I think that this must be so dependent on location and conditions in that location (both weather as well as Covid).