Across the country, consumers are complaining of product shortages including sanitizer, bleach, wipes, toilet paper, paper towels, tissues and more.
Even in Moscow, these purchasing habits happening in response to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic have spiraled into complete outages of certain items in nearly every grocery store in town.
“We’ve had to put a limit of three on the amount of cleaners and paper products people can buy,” Kayla M, Rosauers Service Manager, said. “We’re currently ordering the maximum we’re allowed to order on every single truck.”
Other stores in Moscow reported seeing similar shortages.
Angela Palermo | Argonaut
“This morning we received four pallets of toilet paper, which is roughly 400 to 500 individual boxes — and we’re already out,” Isaac Fuchs, a manager at Safeway, said.
The Moscow Food Co-op, said they’ve seen large shortages of non-perishable items like oats, rice, dried beans, flour and sugar.
ICYM: Washington Governor announces closure of restaurants and bars
“People are asking when certain items will be available again, but we just don’t know,” Kerry Morsek, Co-op Store Manager said. “We’re in uncharted territory at the moment.”
WinCo Food has shortened its hours to recover.
WinCo will be closed from 12 a.m. to 7 a.m. indefinitely to give workers time to replenish the empty shelves. One employee, who asked not to be named, said crowds of people are coming in the evenings when they only have one check-stand open and not enough staff to get everything restocked.
The management staff at WinCo declined to comment on
the shortages.
Angela Palermo |Argonaut
The Walmart management staff also declined to give a statement but said they don’t expect to get hit as hard as WinCo because they have a larger range of products.
Fuchs said customers at Safeway are buying remarkably large quantities of fresh produce among other items he didn’t expect.
“Weirdy, Jello has been flying off the shelves,” Fuchs said.
The Co-op has experienced a similar phenomenon.
“It’s unusual the things we are out of actually,” Morsek said. “I’m learning people really like canned tomatoes in a crisis.”
Angela Palermo can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @apalermooo