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New York (Trends Wide Business) — Supermarket shelves across the United States are empty, and will remain so, as stores scramble to quickly replenish staples like milk, bread, meat, canned soups and cleaning products.
Disgruntled shoppers have vented their frustration on social media in recent days, posting photos on Twitter of empty shelves at Trader Joe’s, Giant Foods and Publix stores, among many others.
After dealing with two years of pandemic and supply chain issues, supermarkets still haven’t gotten the respite they hoped for. Rather, they now face a series of other setbacks.
Omicron’s Devastating Blow
As the highly contagious omicron variant of the coronavirus continues to sicken workers, it is creating staffing shortages for critical functions like transportation and logistics, which in turn is affecting product deliveries and restocking store shelves. in all the country.
Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran acknowledged product supply is tight during the company’s earnings call with analysts on Tuesday.
“I think as a company, we’ve all learned how to manage it. We’ve all learned how to make sure stores remain very presentable, and give consumers as many choices as we can,” Sankaran said during the call.
Still, he added, ómicron has made “a little bit of a dent” in efforts to improve supply chain deficiencies. “We expect there will be more supply problems in the next four to six weeks,” Sankaran said.
Supermarkets are operating with fewer employees than normal, according to the National Association of Grocers, with many of its members having less than 50% of their normal workforce.
“Although there is plenty of food in the supply chain, we anticipate that consumers will continue to experience sporadic disruptions in certain product categories, as we have seen over the last year and a half, due to ongoing supply and staffing issues,” said Greg Ferrara. , president and CEO of the group.
In fact, staff shortages continue to press on all walks of the food industry, according to Phil Lempert, industry analyst and editor of SuperMarketGuru.com.
“From farms to food manufacturers to grocery stores, it’s widespread,” Lempert said. “During the pandemic, these operations have had to implement distancing protocols and they are not designed for that and it has impacted production.”
And as the pandemic continues, many food industry workers are choosing not to return to their low-wage jobs.
Transportation problems
The ongoing shortage of truckers continues to hamper the supply chain and the ability of supermarkets to quickly restock their shelves.
“The trucking industry has an aging workforce, along with a shortage,” Lempert said. “It’s really been a problem for the last couple of years.”
Added to the widespread problems of national transport is the record level of congestion in the country’s ports. “Both problems combine to create shortages,” he said.
weather problems
At Trader Joe’s stores, shoppers saw messages taped to empty shelves over the weekend blaming weather emergencies for delivery delays.
Much of the Midwest and Northeast have recently suffered from inclement weather and dangerous road conditions. Not only are people stocking up on more food, but that high level of demand, coupled with transportation problems, is making it difficult to transport goods in bad weather, leading to more shortages, Lempert said.
Not to mention climate change, which is a serious and long-term threat to the food supply. “Fires and droughts are damaging crops like wheat, corn and soybeans in the United States and coffee crops in Brazil,” he said. “We can’t ignore it.”
The pandemic changed our eating habits
More and more of us are cooking and eating at home because of the pandemic, which is also contributing to food shortages, Lempert said.
“We don’t want to keep eating the same thing and we are trying to vary home cooking. By doing so, we are buying even more products,” he said. The scarcity has also made buying food increasingly expensive heading into 2022.
Supermarkets are certainly aware of empty shelves, Lempert said, and are trying to mitigate panic buying, which only makes the situation worse.
One strategy: distribute the products. They do this by putting both varieties and limited quantities of each product on sale, in an attempt to prevent hoarding and stretch their supplies between deliveries.
“Before the pandemic you would see five different varieties of milk in the front row and 10 cartons deep. Now there will be five in the entire row and maybe two rows deep,” Lempert said.
— Trends Wide’s Nathaniel Meyersohn and Danielle Wiener-Bronner contributed to this report.
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