Went to Market Basket (Massachusetts) first thing this morning. Things are getting desperate in some areas of the store. They are trying to make it look like there is plenty of stock by filling the shelves with something, but it is easy to tell what they are doing. Today, there was absolutely no cooking oil. No vegetable oil, no canola oil, no other brands of oil. At least six feet of shelf from top to bottom were missing their various oils, so what did the store do? They brought in large, gallon cans of some kind of no-name olive oil and just lined the shelves with that. When you are used to seeing a variety of bottle brands and packaging, but then are met with a display that basically wallpapers an entire section with the same identical item, things start to look off. Same thing with canned tomatoes. We have a number of brands you can usually get (Hunt's, etc.), but today, they had a big stack of Pine Cone brand canned tomatoes that were in white cans with red letters reading, "Pine Cone Tomatoes" and not much else.
The other thing that we are short on in the stores again is pasta. At the beginning of the pandemic, they dialed back the pasta shapes they were making and stuck to about five basic cuts, lasagna, spaghetti, macaroni, penne, and one other one that I forget now. We just started getting a variety of pasta shapes in recently, then all of a sudden, we are back to the same five shapes again.
I didn't go up and down every aisle, but there were sections in the spice aisle where things were missing. I was able to grab the last bottle of Greek seasoning. I couldn't find marjoram at all. The romaine lettuce is still not good, and there were other "holes" in the produce section where items just have not come in. I wouldn't say things are dire yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to go and not be able to find certain items or brands that I am used to getting in the near future unless the items that are currently trapped on ships in ports get rolling soon.
I was talking to my mom who is Canada. She had gone shopping this morning as well and noticed similar issues with the oil. She also noticed that peanut butter and jam were in short supply, as were zip-top bags. Again, she didn't go up and down each aisle, but those were some of the things she noticed.
