It all depends on where you are when you reading this. If you're in the northeast, you seem to have enough masks and pork. If you're in the south, southwest or west, good on the pork, not so much on the masks. Elsewhere different items are either plentiful or verging on scarcity. New York needed ventilators a few months ago, now has an abundance, while currently Texas is in exactly the opposite predicament. And regardless of where you were, back in April the only thing scarcer than a vaccine was a webcam, and now one of those two items can be at your house by the weekend. Understandably, you'd really prefer the other.
Because of the move to stay at home, so much of the usual supply chain has gotten completely upended. In some cases it was true scarcity, as demand far outstripped the available resources. It's not really surprising: the pipelines for hand sanitizer, cleaning solutions of all kind and PPE were never meant to handle a katrillion percent increase overnight. As such, on an ounce for ounce basis, Purell became liquid gold, worth more than the real stuff. You try and disinfect your hands with a bar of bullion.
In other cases the scarcity was created because of the change in how we lived. As we hunkered down at home our cars sat in the garage. That meant less gas and its additives being used, including ethanol. As such, ethanol plants cut production, but that also meant a severely curtailed supply of one their other products, carbon dioxide or CO2. The gas is used in the manufacturer of sodas and beer, as well as the production and preservation of other foodstuffs. That drove the price of fizz up 25%, with the result that while your Mountain Dew hasn't yet gotten scarcer, it's gotten more expensive.
And in still other situations it was not so much true scarcity as a different form and distribution model. We were really never in danger of running out of toilet paper: by and large the virus wasn't confining us to our bathrooms. Rather, we were all at home versus at the office, school and the mall. And so all the supplies that were manufactured in different forms and packaging to be used in those places had not evaporated, but were simply inaccessible through home-oriented channels. It took a little while for the manufacturers to retool their delivery systems, and redirect the goods to your local Stop and Shop, as well as cut down those tire size rolls to ones that fit in your powder room.
The list of products affected under any of those scenarios is broad. Yeast has become a hot commodity as everyone is baking bread. Office chairs are tight, as lots of folks are setting up a home working space. With gyms closed, free weights are in demand for home fitness programs. Even leaving aside controversial possible treatments like hydroxychloroquine off the list, the usual drugs hospitals need to treat seriously ill patients are running low with the huge influx of those infected with the virus. And there is a garlic shortage because most of the US supply comes from China, and well, let's just say we're not seeing eye to eye with them right now.
What this is also leading to is a contraction of the breath of items in a given category. In the beginning of the year you could have walked into your local grocery store and selected from dozens of brands and variations of frozen meals or peanut butter or potato chips. But with plants and stores streamlining operations for safety, it was prudent to limit the number of variations in favor of bulking up on core items. That means Frito-Lay is trimming its portfolio of products by 3%-5%, IGA grocery stores cut back their 40 varieties of toilet paper to 4, and even McDonald's is looking into scaling back their breakfast offerings, as fewer people are out that early since they're not going to work.
Things might eventually return to the way they were before, or it may be that consumers find they are just fine living without Extra-Dark Low-Salt Whole-Wheat Sourdough Pretzels, and are OK with plain. Or maybe there will be an uprising if Skippy eliminates chunky to concentrate on smooth. Simple economics or a sign of the apocalypse: you decide.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford usually buys what's on sale. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
Because of the move to stay at home, so much of the usual supply chain has gotten completely upended. In some cases it was true scarcity, as demand far outstripped the available resources. It's not really surprising: the pipelines for hand sanitizer, cleaning solutions of all kind and PPE were never meant to handle a katrillion percent increase overnight. As such, on an ounce for ounce basis, Purell became liquid gold, worth more than the real stuff. You try and disinfect your hands with a bar of bullion.
In other cases the scarcity was created because of the change in how we lived. As we hunkered down at home our cars sat in the garage. That meant less gas and its additives being used, including ethanol. As such, ethanol plants cut production, but that also meant a severely curtailed supply of one their other products, carbon dioxide or CO2. The gas is used in the manufacturer of sodas and beer, as well as the production and preservation of other foodstuffs. That drove the price of fizz up 25%, with the result that while your Mountain Dew hasn't yet gotten scarcer, it's gotten more expensive.
And in still other situations it was not so much true scarcity as a different form and distribution model. We were really never in danger of running out of toilet paper: by and large the virus wasn't confining us to our bathrooms. Rather, we were all at home versus at the office, school and the mall. And so all the supplies that were manufactured in different forms and packaging to be used in those places had not evaporated, but were simply inaccessible through home-oriented channels. It took a little while for the manufacturers to retool their delivery systems, and redirect the goods to your local Stop and Shop, as well as cut down those tire size rolls to ones that fit in your powder room.
The list of products affected under any of those scenarios is broad. Yeast has become a hot commodity as everyone is baking bread. Office chairs are tight, as lots of folks are setting up a home working space. With gyms closed, free weights are in demand for home fitness programs. Even leaving aside controversial possible treatments like hydroxychloroquine off the list, the usual drugs hospitals need to treat seriously ill patients are running low with the huge influx of those infected with the virus. And there is a garlic shortage because most of the US supply comes from China, and well, let's just say we're not seeing eye to eye with them right now.
What this is also leading to is a contraction of the breath of items in a given category. In the beginning of the year you could have walked into your local grocery store and selected from dozens of brands and variations of frozen meals or peanut butter or potato chips. But with plants and stores streamlining operations for safety, it was prudent to limit the number of variations in favor of bulking up on core items. That means Frito-Lay is trimming its portfolio of products by 3%-5%, IGA grocery stores cut back their 40 varieties of toilet paper to 4, and even McDonald's is looking into scaling back their breakfast offerings, as fewer people are out that early since they're not going to work.
Things might eventually return to the way they were before, or it may be that consumers find they are just fine living without Extra-Dark Low-Salt Whole-Wheat Sourdough Pretzels, and are OK with plain. Or maybe there will be an uprising if Skippy eliminates chunky to concentrate on smooth. Simple economics or a sign of the apocalypse: you decide.
-END-
Marc Wollin of Bedford usually buys what's on sale. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.
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