What item(s) is still hard to find or low quantity in the stores now?

Clorox wipes, Purell, Paper towels.

 

I refuse to ever use Best Buy again. I also had ordered a fridge but they kept changing the delivery date (this was not during the pandemic) and one day it said "delivered" and clearly it wasn't.

I canceled it which took forever and a few phone calls and bought one from Home Depot and they did a great job.

 

Wipes.
And my 15 year old daughter wants a sewing machine. I don't want the top of the line until I'm sure its something she will use. Yes, everyone is sold out of the starter models.

 

In NJ the TP crisis of 2020 appears to be over. Still no hand sanitizer or wipes. I’m sure a few stores may have some, not the ones I shop at.

 

after two months of being sold out, I was finally able to find a bag of brown rice and can of Italian bread crumbs at the store yesterday.

 

Wow. Brown rice was one of the things you could always find here. Not white variants but always brown. Ahh, Portland. Healthy people!!

 

Art supplies are just empty shelves. Even had a hard time getting them from amazon.

 

Harris-Teeter was well stocked with PP, meat, dairy, et al.

I have a ton of wipes and the like from a cleaning binge I went on last year.

 

Do you have any Sears Outlet stores nearby? One near me has some chest freezers.

There might be some used sewing machines on Craigslist.

I still can’t get wipes in my area.

Just picked up some Fresh 80/20 ground beef at Aldi @ $3.99 per lb. One of my customers told me the wholesale price for ground beef was $8 CDN per kilo and after COVID-19 it went up to $20. They were processing 6000 head of cattle a week and it dropped to 1000, yet the price of cattle is down considerably.

 

The chest freezer and sewing machine stuff is interesting to hear about, as a grocery worker that is only looking at grocery type stuff. Hammie ground beef seems to be readily available at the same prices as always at my store but steaks have all but disappeared the last two weeks whilst meanwhile our seafood is posting 100% year over year sales increases. Baby back ribs did well over Memorial day and were in stock with limitations to customers (BOGO, limit 2 lol) but the brisket was in and out over the weekend. Meat prices, like gas from oil, doesn't just rely on inputs but also refining capacity and I'm guessing the latter is down.

 

hand sanitizer is now available most everywhere. Still can't find Clorox wipes anywhere.........................

 

I'll vouch that when grocery workers see lysol spray or chlorox wipes show up on trucks (which is still rare) we often buy them ourselves before they're stocked (still limiting ourselves to 1 per household).

 

Wholesale seafood prices have dropped for many things such as shrimp and especially Atlantic (farmed) Salmon, the guys in Chile have had to freeze much of the product. Most seafood is consumed outside of the home so demand has dropped with restaurants closed. One of my shellfish customers said his business is off about 40% and he is lucky because his company ships clams to several retail grocery chains. The shellfish guys who rely on wholesalers have gone to zero revenue, some of them are selling product at farmer's markets and doing direct sales. Lobster prices have gone down as demand from China has steeply declined.

As for steaks, our local Costco had Prime NY Strip Steaks for $15 per lb. and Choice for $12 per lb. Too rich for my blood, I just won't pay it. I guess the days of $6.49 whole strip loins are gone. I imagine its less labor intensive to just make ground beef and pack in the Modified Atmosphere pillow pack trays than to cut it into steaks and roasts.

 

I actually tried Home Depot first.
the fridge was delivered outside house. We got it inside and unboxed only to find the top rear corner completely smashed in. Called immediately to let them know.

We had to bring it back ourselves to return it. Less than an hour from receiving delivery they wouldn’t refund my extended warranty! They said window to cancel was closed and I had to deal with Assurion.

Assurion says send original receipts and include a specific written request to cancel. You should get your prorated refund check by mail in 6 weeks!!

WTF. So that’s why I ordered the fridge from Best Buy immediately. I was so annoyed with Home Depot.

Yesterday BB actually took the money from my account. If they tell me it was delivered and it wasn’t I will be really pissed at the waste of my time!

 

If we can get a hard good through Costco we seldom look anywhere else. And Costco's subs are as reliable as Costco.

 

There's not one near me, but a great idea. Went out this morning and opened the freezer door (now empty). Thermometer I put in yesterday said -4 degrees F. I put some frozen pizzas back in there and figured I'd monitor it for a week.

Another poster brought up buying from HD and or BB. I've had so much better luck with a local shop, from delivering it to where it goes, or it has a blemish and the installer says "I'm going to get another one, I'll be back in 20 minutes, to the warranty expired a month ago, but let me just change this date in the computer.....

Of course it helps when you have 50+ apartment units and the owner knows I'm buying everything from him.

 

This still eludes me - it is a great multi-surface cleaner. And there are a few spritzes left in my last bottle.

 

The other night at about 9:00 pm my son tells me he has to make some waffles that another person in his class at school posted the recipe and post online by midnight. (This is part of the online schooling they are doing here). I look at the recipe and we don'd have the stuff and I've never even heard of "Sourdough Starter". I know what sourdough bread is but not sourdough starter. After about the 4th grocery store not having it, I decide to google what I can substitute for it. Turns out yeast will work. Next three stores don't have sourdough starter or yeast so i end up buying a packaged waffle mix.

So no lysol wipes, sourdough starter or yeast.

 

Paper goods, especially toilet paper. Still. This week was the 1st time I've seen tp in a grocery store since all this began. (About a month in, our hardware started carrying generic single rolls.) This was at Aldi. Their brand only. One size only. Limit 1. I'm sure they get shipments, but I have yet to see any tp or paper towels in Kroger.

 

isopropyl alcohol Impossible to find at Walgreens, Kroger etc.