“Due to supply shortages, some items are temporarily unavailable.”
On any given day, dining stations at the Market at the Kansas Union may brandish that sign, forcing students to see what’s available to eat at the next hot table. It’s one of many issues the University of Kansas is facing as it readjusts to a nearly full campus after 18 months of decreased student activity.
The coronavirus pandemic has forced ongoing supply chain disruptions, but labor shortages and inflation rates are also putting KU and local Lawrence businesses in difficult positions as they continue to navigate serving their customers.
Since the start of the year, KU Dining has received a statement from its food delivery services called a “short sheet” that lists every item, such as grab and go sandwiches or prepackaged meals, that will not be delivered on that day — this is because of ongoing global supply chain disruptions that have affected nearly every sector with delayed deliveries and reduced inventories.
“We receive from our food vendors what are called short sheets, those are items that are either not going to be delivered to us because they don’t have them or some other reason,” said Jim Schilling, director of KU Dining. “It’s been this way the entire year. So far, we have on average, we’ll see 20 to 25 items on a short sheet every single day.”
On the worst days, short sheets are up to 100 items long, Schilling said. While it’s out of hundreds of items, the shortage in food options has affected how each dining location on campus prepares its food day to day. KU Dining has been able to adjust its options because food vendors will offer substitutes to its missing items, but some vendors have discontinued options altogether.
In November, KU Dining had to find a new vendor for grab-and-go sandwiches because Del Monte, a major food production and distribution company, notified KU that it was stopping manufacturing its grab-and-go sandwiches due to supply and labor shortages, Schilling said.
“A lot of [the shortages] are driven by the labor challenges throughout the entire cycle of food production, going all the way back to the animals in the feedlots and seeds in the ground to grow things all the way through us putting it on somebody’s plate,” Schilling said. “We have, for example, several vendors who have just stopped making things altogether because they don’t have the staff to do it any longer.”
And growing inflation rates nationwide are impacting food and supply acquisition for KU Dining, Schilling said.
“All of our food and supply costs are just under 17% higher than they were last year…so that affects obviously, you know, what we can do for the prices that we charge,” Schilling said. “We didn’t have a price increase going into the year, but I can tell you we’re going to have a small price increase between the semesters because that level of inflation on our costs is too much for us to bear.”
All retail products except Pepsi bottled products at KU’s retail dining locations will increase in cost by about 3% this semester. KU Dining is still working to determine exactly what prices will look like for the next semester, Schilling said. Although residential dining center meals will not increase for the spring, students with dining plans are able to use dining dollars on Grubhub orders off-campus, Schilling said, which has helped students find food that is sometimes unavailable on campus.
But businesses across Lawrence are also feeling the effects of the global supply chain disruptions. Great Blue Heron Outdoors, a coffee shop and outdoor supply store that opened on Massachusetts Street in August, has faced issues obtaining inventory, said owner Bob Marsh.
While it only occasionally struggles with coffee inventory, like a shortage of oat milk, it is mostly the outdoor supplies it has had trouble acquiring.
“Oat milk was hard to get for a while, some prices have gone up, but if things are out of stock it’ll be four weeks not four months,” Marsh said. “On the fishing equipment side and the canoe side in particular it was more of an issue. Most of the issue was, since we’re a new store, as we reached out to some of the brands we wanted to carry, their response was, ‘We can’t even get enough product to take care of our existing retailers, we don’t need another one, so call us back in a year or two and see if we’re interested.’”
In the future, he hopes to carry canoes and kayaks, but many brands that manufacture them are not able to meet its current customer’s needs. Marsh also hoped to carry more inventory at Great Blue Heron Outdoors, but business has been steady since the shop opened, he said.
He initially planned to open the shop in spring 2021, but it was difficult for him to get contractors and subcontractors to build and design the space, another manifestation of the growing labor shortage across the country.
“Our plan was to open in spring, but, you know, it was very hard to get contractors and subcontractors,” Marsh said. “So there was some delay in opening, that was not necessarily supply chain containers coming from China, but it is in the sense of everything being slowed down a little because of pandemic shutdowns.”
