Abilene Reflector-Chronicle
Walking through the aisles of any of Abilene’s two grocery stores, people will notice more gaps in the shelves than usual.
The shelves are not entirely bare — there’s still plenty of food to buy.
But more and more items are out of stock.
The supply chain is still suffering, even as COVID-19 appears to enter an endemic phase.
Manager Chris West of West’s Country Mart produced a stack of roughly 10 sheets of printed paper, listing all the items out of stock at his shop — items he and his staff ordered but could not get. Normally, that list of out-of-stock items would be one sheet.
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, all this changed and it has not let up. It started with people panic buying items such as toilet paper and canned goods. Later, there would be a meat shortage around the nation due to COVID-19’s impact on meat packing plants.
Now, largely because of labor shortages, there are still shortages of certain items.
Prior to COVID-19, restocking his shelves was not the issue that it is today, he said.
“If you wanted to order something, we’d have it for you the next day,” West said.
The pandemic has changed both where the store’s stock comes from and what they are able to keep in stock.
West said he feels his business did a good job of keeping items on the shelves during COVID-19, but there are still items the store simply can’t find anywhere.
Meat is still harder to come by than it was pre-pandemic, he said.
West does not believe there will be a shortage of meat in Abilene anytime soon, but the supply chain has made it much more difficult to come by than it used to be.
In terms of sales, West said he gets a weekly report from the warehouse that provides his stock and it’s often 40 to 50 pages long, he said.
It’s not just food that’s in short supply.
Canned cat and dog food has been impacted by a shortage of containers for these foods. Both steel cans and glass jars are in short supply around the country.
Paper goods, plastic items and anything else that comes from Asia is in short supply, according to West.
“It looks like our shelves are full, but we spread out on a lot of that stuff,” he said. “But the variety’s not there.”
As supply has gone down, prices has gone up.
Inflation has had an impact in Abilene, West said.
The store’s bakery and deli department are supplied through a wholesaler and the wholesaler’s prices are up a little more than 10 percent in the year to date, he said. This has caused the price of the end product to rise as well. The cost of cakes in the bakery have gone up roughly $4.15 over last year.
Meat prices have gone up about 14.5 percent, West said. Produce has become harder to find, from strawberries to eggs.
The price of grain is up which means the price of cattle feed is up which means the price of meat is going up.
“High priced corn becomes high priced meat,” he said. “It costs more to feed the cattle.”
Cattle and hog producers have been compelled to liquidate their cattle herds because it costs so much more to feed them. Poultry producers are not exempt. Poultry prices are made worse by the spread of the avian flu. The cost of chicken breast has also gone up exponentially, West said. He also said it was hard to find eggs. Eggs are running around $4 per dozen at this time, he said.
Turkey supplies are low, though he said he did not believe this would be the case around Thanksgiving of this year, though prices for turkeys may be higher this holiday season. There may be fewer turkeys available in stores this summer because of the avian flu.
According to West, experts have predicted it won’t be until the end of the year in 2023 that shelves in grocery stores will be fully stocked again — if they’re ever fully stocked again at all.
And they might not be, he said.
Zey’s Market is suffering the same problems.
Owner Robert Zey said the supply chain was having a similar impact on the store’s stock of dry groceries such as canned goods.
“We’re probably being shorted not quite 50 percent in every order,” he said. “But the meat’s been pretty good and dairy and everything like that’s been fair. Frozen’s been — about a third of that’s been not coming in.”
Zey said he and his staff dealt with the problem by trying to back order items that they did not receive in any given order.
“We’re getting by, anyway,” he said.
Customers have mostly been understanding with his people, he said.
“They know what’s going on,” Zey said.
He said it was hard to say what was causing the shortage on some items, especially items produced in the United States. He said he does not believe people are hoarding items as they did when COVID-19 first arrived in the United States.
“We just deal with it,” Zey said. “It’s all you can do.”
Grocery stores are not the only businesses affected by problems with the supply chain.
The Lumber House is also seeing the impact.
Owner of the Lumber House Matt Engle said they were still struggling to acquire items made with certain resins and latexes.
“We’re seeing a lot of things come back,” he said. “Some of the spray paints are getting better, some of our calking silicones and adhesives are getting a little bit better. We can get lumber, but lumber prices are extremely high. And so we see the markets just going up and down a lot. And the cost of fuel is not helping that a whole lot temporarily, anyways. That keeps driving up costs. But as far as availability of products, they’re getting a little bit better. We still do have certain cavities, I guess.”
Fuel costs going up has an impact on the ability of trucks to haul products to stores around the country such as the Lumber House and also means it costs more to haul, raising the prices for consumers.
The shortages go in cycles, he said.
The biggest thing the Lumber House is having supply issues with right now include some steel products such as galvanized pipes and items with resins and latex in them.
“We have to look to multiple vendors to try to fill our shelves,” he said.
Engle was unable to say what needed to change to fix the problem.
“That’s probably a larger question than what we have on the local level,” Engle said.
