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Gone From Grocery Shelves, Now There’s a Mad Dash to Find Them

  Here’s why some everyday staples have disappeared from shelves as the
  crisis changes how people shop and eat.
  Allison Arevalo started making and selling pasta after she couldn’t
  find any at local stores or online.
  Allison Arevalo started making and selling pasta after she couldn’t
  find any at local stores or online. Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The
  New York Times
  [16]Winnie Hu

  By [17]Winnie Hu
    * May 11, 2020
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  The fallout from the coronavirus hit Allison Arevalo when she could no
  longer find pasta at the supermarket.

  She tried ordering online from Whole Foods. Out of stock. She ran over
  to Key Food. Too late: The pasta aisle was cleaned out except for two
  bags of whole wheat no one wanted.

  So Ms. Arevalo, 41, a chef and [18]cookbook author, dusted off her
  fancy pasta maker and ordered a 50 pound bag of semolina flour from a
  restaurant supplier. Soon, her neighbors in Park Slope, Brooklyn, were
  turning to her for their pasta fix.

  “I wanted to give people another way to get pasta,” said Ms. Arevalo,
  who now sells 120 pounds of pasta a week.

  Image “I wanted to give people another way to get pasta,” said Ms.
  Arevalo, who now sells 120 pounds of pasta a week.
  “I wanted to give people another way to get pasta,” said Ms. Arevalo,
  who now sells 120 pounds of pasta a week.Credit...Demetrius Freeman for
  The New York Times

  As the pandemic has gripped New York, it has caused shortages of the
  grocery staples that have become essential for coping with home
  confinement. Pasta and bread have become scarce — available today but
  not tomorrow, in this store but not that one. Paper towel and snack
  aisles have been wiped out. Frozen vegetables, chicken nuggets and even
  oat milk are rationed.

  The empty shelves have sent frustrated shoppers to online scavenger
  hunts and to store after store to wait outside in long lines. Baking
  supplies — yeast, flour, baking powder — have become particularly
  prized finds as people stuck at home have time to perfect their challah
  bread or knead out their anxieties.

  “Everybody’s becoming a mini-Martha Stewart,” said Joseph Viscomi, a
  supervisor for Morton Williams, which now limits customers to one yeast
  package each and has waiting lists at many of its 15 New York City
  supermarkets.

  Five-pound bags of King Arthur Flour have been so hard to score that
  they were selling this week on eBay for [19]$26.49, five times the
  store price.

  “There’s a black market for flour right now,” said Cristen Kennedy, 38,
  a college health educator who has scoured a dozen grocery and baking
  sites since flour disappeared from her grocery store in the Bronx.

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  The shortages began with panic buying and hoarding as the pandemic
  spread, and then continued as those staying at home consumed more
  meals, snacks, paper products and cleaning supplies.

  “I never knew we ate so much,” said Nelson Eusebio, the government
  relations director of the National Supermarket Association, who said he
  was spending between $50 and $75 more per week on his groceries than he
  used to.

  Image
  A familiar scene at many grocery stores in New York and across the
  country. Credit...John Taggart for The New York Times

  Oat milk has become a hot commodity, in part as coffee shop regulars
  have become home baristas. It topped a list of fastest-moving grocery
  items nationwide, with sales up 353 percent over last year, according
  to Nielsen data of consumer packaged goods for an eight-week period
  ending April 18.

  The slow movers? Sunscreen and vegetable party platters.

  The tidal wave of grocery shopping has wiped out inventories at grocery
  stores and, in turn, the food distributors that send them goods.

  Since most stores rely on specific distributors, what they have — or
  don’t have — on the shelves depends on what their distributors have in
  stock, and that can vary from store to store.

  The inventory shortages have spread to the part of the food supply
  chain that serves retail stores, while another part that serves
  now-closed restaurants, hotels and schools has been so overwhelmed by a
  surplus that farmers have [28]destroyed fresh food that cannot be sold,
  according to food industry analysts.

  Some manufacturers have run up against limited production or packaging
  capacity, or cannot find enough trucks to move additional loads.
  [29]Many meat processing plants have closed as their workers have been
  sickened by the coronavirus.

  “The problem is that the supply chain — which is everything from the
  farm to the supermarket shelf — is fragile at certain points, and
  that’s why we’re seeing the shortages,” said Phil Lempert, a food
  industry analyst and founder of [30]supermarketguru.com.

  So now Frank Zapata cannot get enough Nissin instant ramen noodles for
  the two CTown supermarkets he owns in Brooklyn and the Bronx. “When
  everything is normal, my supplier has a lot, whatever you want to get,”
  he said. “Now it’s hard to get, it’s not available.”

  Image
  Some CTown stores have had a hard time keeping Nissin instant ramen
  noodles on their shelves.Credit...Brittainy Newman/The New York Times

  Morton Williams is missing about 10 to 15 percent of its regular stock,
  which is better than a month ago, when it was down nearly 30 percent,
  Mr. Viscomi said. When he orders 10 cases of two-pound Gold Medal flour
  bags from a distributor, he said, “we’re lucky if we get two cases, and
  that sells out in a day or two.”

  Gristedes and D’Agostino supermarkets have been cleaned out of Charmin
  toilet paper, Bounty paper towels, and Lysol and Clorox cleaners. “Six
  months ago, you had one bottle of Lysol for your home, now everybody
  wants to have one bottle for every room,” said John Catsimatidis, the
  chief executive of Red Apple Group, which includes the supermarkets.

  His supermarkets have turned to alternative brands and tried to tap new
  suppliers. A Canadian company was ready to send a truckload of Clorox
  wipes and sprays until its driver refused to deliver to New York.

  Image
  Toilet paper has been in particularly high demand. Many stores have put
  a limit on how much each customer can buy. Credit...Brittainy
  Newman/The New York Times

  Still, shopping for oat milk and Oreos may soon get easier as some
  manufacturers expand their production and distribution operations.

  In the past month, Mondelēz International has increased snack
  production in the United States in response to double-digit sales
  growth of its brands, including Oreos and Ritz crackers.

  It has also hired 1,000 more workers for “front-line teams” in
  manufacturing, sales and distribution to get snacks onto store shelves
  faster, said Glen Walter, president of the company’s North America
  division.

  The pandemic has accelerated the expansion of Oatly, a Swedish company
  that has grown steadily since introducing its oat milk to New York
  coffee shops in 2017.

  Oatly is now manufacturing an average of 500,000 cartons a week at its
  factory in New Jersey, up more than 40 percent from the 350,000 cartons
  per week it was making in January.

  “It still won’t be enough to keep the shelves fully stocked,” said Mike
  Messersmith, president of Oatly North America.

  Image
  A delivery arriving at at a Foodtown grocery store in the
  Bronx. Credit...Desiree Rios for The New York Times

  King Arthur Flour has more than doubled production to 5 million bags of
  flour a month, up from less than 2 million a year ago. Extra shifts
  were added at mills and manufacturing plants, and two assembly lines
  were repurposed to pack flour into plastic pouches that will be sold on
  the company website, said Bill Tine, King Arthur’s vice president of
  marketing.

  Robb MacKie, the president and chief executive of the American Bakers
  Association, an industry group, said that more flour was heading to
  store shelves, with yeast not far behind. “We’re seeing daily
  improvements,” he said.

  The shortages have changed the way that Ms. Arevalo, the
  chef-turned-pasta maker, shops for groceries. She used to choose a
  recipe and stop for ingredients, now it is the other way around.

  Her fresh-made pasta has become so popular that she [31]takes orders,
  selling out in an hour and a half. She charges $6 per pound online, and
  leaves the pasta in white paper bags on the stoop of her brownstone.
  Only one bag has been stolen.

  Even when the pandemic ends, she may keep offering pasta pickups.

  “It’s been this very satisfying way to connect with the neighborhood,”
  she said. “I can’t imagine stopping it now.”

  Image
  A sign written in chalk outside Ms. Arevalo’s home in Brooklyn where
  she leaves bags of pasta orders. Credit...Demetrius Freeman for The New
  York Times

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