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If it was chocolate Brooklyn babkas you were looking for Friday at Trader Joe’s, you were in luck. Several boxes of the coffee cakes clustered in a lonely pile in the otherwise nearly empty grocery bread section of the South Burlington store.
Cashew butter, sports bars, shampoo and clementines were in equally abundant supply.
But those seeking paper goods, potatoes, apples, chips, or frozen food were largely out of luck at the store, which like others has seen heavy traffic as worries about the COVID-19 virus have intensified.
Grocery stores of all types and sizes are seeing runs on supplies, chiefly toilet paper and paper towels, which have been in high demand worldwide as people prepared for recommended quarantines. Many supermarkets, such as the Hannaford’s and Market 32 supermarkets in Brattleboro, ran out of toilet paper altogether last week; others put limits on how many packages customers could buy at once.
The Hannaford’s in Morrisville was out of toilet paper, Clorox wipes, broth, beans, fresh carrots, bottled water and frozen vegetables on Saturday.
In the St. Johnsbury Price Chopper, the store’s toilet paper supply had been nearly cleared out, and the paper towel racks appeared headed that way Friday.
“I think people need to take it seriously,” said Holly Blair, 36, of Sutton. “But I think stocking up for the end of the world is not necessary.”
The frozen meals at Trader Joe’s were a hot item; not a single one was left Friday afternoon. Kristen Hayden of Richmond, who emerged from the Trader Joe’s with just a few bags of groceries, said she had earlier restocked her supply of the over-the-counter cold remedies Nyquil and Mucinex, but in general had resisted buying large supplies of food, because the family has a well-stocked pantry now.
“There’s a possibility of not being able to get what we want, but if we have to make a creative choice about how to meet our basic needs, we can,” she said.
Hayden said she expected supplies to remain available no matter what lies ahead with the spread of COVID-19, and noted that the crisis appears to be abating in China, where COVID-19 was first recognized.
“In general, influenzas fade in the summer and come back the next year,” she said.
Whether this new virus has a seasonal pattern is not clear. Public health officials say that, at this time, there is no reason to believe that the virus will behave differently in warmer seasons.
Hoarding behavior
Stockpiling groceries is a common response to news of impending disaster, and under the circumstances, the run on stores in Vermont and the rest of the world hasn’t been unusual.
Humans might have an instinctual drive to hoard supplies, said Jay Zagorsky, an economist and senior lecturer at Boston University who writes about public policy, law and human behavior for The Conversation.
The Boston-based Zagorsky skied with his family at Jay Peak last week. Nobody there seemed to be talking about coronavirus, he said. But back at work on Saturday, Zagorsky reflected on the forces that lead people to stockpile things like diapers. He stocked up on wine a few weeks ago.
“When disasters happen, there’s a huge amount of uncertainty, and when there’s a huge amount of uncertainty, people feel better about nailing down something,” he said. “And for some people, it’s toilet paper.”
The run on supplies affects stores large and small. Price Chopper sent out a missive Friday announcing it was prepared to limit purchases of some items such as the high-demand sanitizers and paper products.
The two-room Buxton’s country store in Orwell ran out of ketchup and tomatoes for sandwiches Saturday, sending owner Andy Buxton down the road to the Hannaford’s in Brandon for more. Buxton estimated that he’s doing about twice as much business as usual at the family store, with people ordering 15 pounds of ground beef at a time at the deli counter. Buxton’s store sold out last week of deli meats, other meats and produce, though a regularly scheduled delivery Friday night allowed him to restock. The store, already an informal community center that is across the street from the school in the small Addison County town, has been humming with COVID-19 news and theories, said Buxton.
“Nobody was panicked, nobody was in a bad mood,” he said of visitors Friday. “What people needed yesterday was interacting with other people, the comfort of going through the same thing.”
Like so many people in person and online, visitors also needed to trade the information they had heard, and the store provided a place for that — especially for those who don’t regularly use computers. There was a lot to talk about. Most Vermont colleges had moved to online instruction that week, and on Friday Gov. Phil Scott declared a state of emergency. Late that day, the Jay Peak and Burke ski areas closed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was reporting more than 110,000 cases of COVID-19 worldwide.
“It just seemed like everything became real yesterday,” Buxton said of Friday. “I’ll remember this day for a long time.”
On Friday, Buxton posted a message to the store’s 3,500 Facebook followers offering free deliveries to people who are quarantined and need supplies. Neighbors wrote back with offers to help with those deliveries. The pandemic has prompted the same kind of fellow-feeling that Buxton experienced during the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
“With 9/11 a very tragic thing happened and everybody united for each other, and I think we’re going to see that again,” he said.
Long-term effects
Like so much else about the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of stockpiling supplies is uncertain. The Northeast Organic Farming Association is looking at ways to help vendors survive after farmers’ markets cancel.
“The current pandemic shines a light on the importance of a resilient, local, just food system,” the Richmond group said as it announced Friday that its office staff would switch to remote work.
Because they are durable goods and don’t go bad, if the toilet paper and paper towels aren’t needed immediately, they will serve as a supply until mid-summer, possibly resulting in a slump in paper product sales a few weeks from now, said Zagorsky. The large stores are better positioned for a drop in sales that might follow the stockpiling.
“Big grocery chains almost always have lines of credit with large banks, so they can borrow temporarily,” Zagorsky said. “With large banks, your local grocer or small country store doesn’t have the ability to walk into the local bank and say, ‘Can you lend me $100,000 to tide me over until COVID-19 disappears?’”
In other cases, the money and the food will likely go to waste.
“When people panic, they typically tend to buy everything – the orange juice, milk, ground beef. If they keep it in the fridge, it just spoils and they’re going to end up throwing it away,” he said.
That said, Zagorsky is steering well clear of economic predictions.
“Your guess is as good as anyone else’s,” he said. “We have no idea. There are a whole bunch of scenarios.”
Meanwhile, Trader Joe’s on Friday had run out of bags, and shoppers who hadn’t brought their own were leaving with boxes instead.
Haile Hamlett packed her supplies into beer and wine boxes. She said she hadn’t done much stocking up in the face of the coronavirus.
“There’s only two of us, so there’s not a ton of need, and my roommate works in the restaurant business,” said Hamlett, who lives in Vergennes. Toilet paper hadn’t struck her as a priority.
“It’s not a toilet paper kind of illness anyway,” she said.
Kevin O’Connor, Aidan Quigley and Justin Trombly contributed to this report.
