Shortages at U.S. grocery stores have grown more acute recently as new problems — the fast-spreading omicron variant and severe weather — have piled on to the supply chain struggles and labor shortages that have plagued retailers since the pandemic began.
- Benjamin Whitely headed to a Safeway supermarket in Washington D.C. on Tuesday to grab some items for dinner. But he was disappointed to find the vegetable bins barren and a sparse selection of turkey, chicken and milk.
Part of the scarcity consumers are seeing on store shelves is due to pandemic trends that never abated - and are exacerbated by omicron. Americans are eating at home more than they used to, especially since offices and some schools remain closed. Retailers and food producers have been adjusting to those realities since early 2020, when panic buying at the start of the pandemic sent the industry into a tailspin. Many retailers are keeping more supplies of things like toilet paper on hand, for example, to avoid acute shortages.
Worker illness is also impacting grocery stores. Stew Leonard Jr. is president and CEO of Stew Leonard’s, a supermarket chain that operates stores in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Last week, 8% of his workers - around 200 people - were either out sick or in quarantine. Usually, the level of absenteeism is more like 2%.
Lisa DeLima, a spokesperson for Mom’s Organic Market, an independent grocer with locations in the mid-Atlantic region, said the company’s stores did not have produce to stock last weekend because winter weather halted trucks trying to get from Pennsylvania to Washington.
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