Im a cheap bastard..I have to be. Today, I’m going through my grocery list and comparing prices at Albertson’s, CostCo, and WalMart. (Yeah, I’m a math nerd when it comes to money.) On my list? Canned tomatoes. Didn’t see them on the CostCo website and on the Walmart website all the ‘store brand’ canned tomatoes (and a surprising amount of other vegetables) are out of stock.
Hmmmmm……….
We have seen the same issue at our Walmart over the past week with some shelving being bare. We assumed it had to do with product not being shipped from China. Have not noticed on the food side of Walmart yet, just the cheap imported China crap missing. I did hear on the Glenn Beck show last week them saying that 97% of all our antibiotic are produced in China. Another news report today on the radio said the FDA was monitoring the supplies of drugs coming out of China amid concerns of supply interruptions. I linked below to the FDA press release:
https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fdas-actions-response-2019-novel-coronavirus-home-and-abroad
Oddly enough, I was in our local Costco in NC midday Monday 2/24 and the levels of canned veggies in flats on pallets was normal…gallon or larger cans of tomatoes, 8-12 can flats of tomato paste or diced tomatoes, varied brands…..other veggies all normal levels all on pallets…..things seemed normal at Costco and no large crowds at this point on a Monday midday. rgds, Redclay7
Presumably your local grocery store still has shelves upon shelves of tomatoes–sliced, diced, whole, stewed, crushed, and every other way?
I wouldn’t read too much into it.
Heres fun site to peruse when your feeling a bit paranoid:
https://www.ashp.org/Drug-Shortages
I needed that link, thanks!
This is on my to-do list. Just some basics. Likely to be acquired over the weekend but your note of the Walmart online option being constrained is surprising. Local supply chains, maybe…but their main units online? Interesting.
I have been noticing that Wal-mart has been cutting back on inventory for a year or more. I think it has more to do with higher wages and less money coming in to meet higher expenses, and cutting expenses in anticipation of a retail slowdown, rather than anything to do with any viruses from China. Not to mention the fact that Wal-mart is a cheap-ass outfit run by cheap-ass executives always looking to increase profits by a nickel or a tenth of a penny.
Now is the time to get to your local COSTCO and top off your food preps. It may be a while before you can do anything like that again. Get it done before the panic sets in the general populace.
Wal-Mart hasn’t been the same since 2009 or so, after their Uber Growth strategy stalled. Do any of them even stay open 24 hours anymore? More than several years there were always rolling outages on food. For six months, the cheap coffee was never in stock. They would get that handled, then it moved on to another product. Their generic Spam and evaporated milk had quality issues. Then, all their prices went sky high to the point Kroger was beating them in price. Then they lowered the prices TOO much, even though the sales had to be low on those certain commodities because I never noticed outages ( I think they were hemorrhaging customers, but I’m not sure ). Now they seem to be back to a more level “low price leader” ( meaning, you can cherry pick loss leaders at other stores, but Wally is your best bet day to day ). A lot more people too. The local K-Mart closing didn’t seem to add many customers-but I never noticed many people in K-Mart for years prior to closing. 50% increase in prices for the same lower quality crap, with hardly any in stock. Anyway, my only point is that Wally has its own issues most of the time and I don’t think they are a good system wide indicator of much of anything.
Most Walmarts in Minnesota (definitely in southern MN) shifted to 24 hours at least several years ago. Recently some are shifting back along with some previously all night chain grocery stores.
We haven’t seen any notable shortages in the last few years.
Steelheart
I expect that the average reader of this blog is way, way ahead of Joe Average with regard to food storage.
Nevertheless, if your wallet allows, given the threat of the coronavirus whose exact impact can’t be predicted, I suggest that it would behoove every reader to head to their favorite supermarket now and to load up even more on non-perishables.
Frankly, even loading up on perishables for the freezer is not a bad idea. Unlike with many disaster scenarios, I expect that power will continue to be delivered even if the coronavirus causes a “barn burner” pandemic.
Any food stored now will lessen the need to go out in public if the pandemic becomes intense, and who really knows how empty the store shelves might be at that time? What happened in Milan’s supermarkets last weekend should provide a sobering example to those who are actually paying attention.