Grocery stores reassure customers: ‘We are not going anywhere’

For Susan Budlong, marketing and communications director for Dave’s Fresh Marketplace, the questions keep coming: When is my favorite chicken stock coming back? The frozen vegetables? The flour? The toilet paper?

And in this past week of coronavirus crisis, where the fear of scarcity or becoming housebound has left supermarket shelves empty across the country, there aren’t many easy answers.

“We just don’t know,” Budlong said. “There is a normal rhythm of how you do your business. Everyone is out of rhythm right now, including the grocery business. We have a great team of buyers who work with amazing vendors and a local wholesaler ... but they don’t know what they are going to have.

“Normally, we might be getting 4,000 pieces and now we are getting 1,000,” she said. “We are really looking at it day-to-day.”

Compared to many businesses and industries being decimated by the coronavirus emergency, supermarkets have it pretty good. They are considered essential services in even the tightest government lockdowns and have no shortage of customers.

But that doesn’t mean it’s making their lives easy.

Staffing shortages, exhaustive sanitizing efforts and dealing with hoarding customers are among the challenges, on top of the uncertainty.

When toilet paper and popular nonperishable foods began racing off shelves late last week, some laughed, others raced to the shopping carts and Gov. Gina Raimondo sought to reassure residents that shipments with new supplies would be arriving imminently.

So, why are some products still so hard to come by?

Budlong said supply chains across the country were depleted and just haven’t had the kind of letup in demand needed to catch up.

“When more people look to buy something that’s a staple item in mass, those who supply it struggle to keep up,” Budlung said. “If you normally produce 1,000 containers of chicken stock and then it goes to 8,000, you are struggling to keep up. You don’t have the labor force, the packaging capacity or the chickens to handle it in a seven- to 10-day period.”

In some cases, she said, the manufacturers have been slowed by labor shortages caused by quarantines or social distancing restrictions.

In an effort to take advantage of products where there is no shortage, Budlong said, Dave’s is working with local fishermen to buy more seafood now that many restaurants, which usually buy more than 60% of the catch, are shut.

She urged customers to take a break from the pasta and frozen dinners and get some variety in their diet while they hunker down.

Regardless, planning sales, buying and advertising is challenging.

Will there be a run on Easter hams? Or, with church services canceled and gatherings discouraged, will demand suffer? How many hams will suppliers have available?

Dave’s is closing at 7:30 instead of 9 each night to allow for extra cleaning, shipments coming in at inconsistent hours and staffing shortages. Some managers have worked 10 days straight, Budlong said.

Despite the staffing crunch and so many people in other fields out of work, she said, Dave’s has no immediate plans to hire more workers, partly because there is no one available to train them.

The independent chain is opening a new store on West Shore Road in Warwick, but that may be delayed somewhat because of the coronavirus emergency.

Rhode Islanders planning a predawn raid on their local supermarket in hopes of finding a trove of new items might want to keep the supply chain uncertainty in mind.

“Deliveries are not predictable anymore,” Budlong said. “I could not say exactly when we are getting a truck like usual. We are sometimes getting them at 3 a.m. and 8 a.m. ... People who think they have to be in the door at 7 a.m., that is not the case.”

All of that feeds into the message stores, like public officials, are trying to get across — panic buying is counterproductive.

“What we are trying very hard to communicate to people is, you don’t have to buy $300 worth of food today,“ Budlong said. ”We will be here tomorrow. We are not going anywhere.“ panderson@ providencejournal.com

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On Twitter: @PatrickAnderso_