I read an article on WKRK's website yesterday that suggested some groceries (and other items) may be in short supply this fall. Included in the list were holiday baking ingredients, canned goods, frozen meals, and pasta (plus the expected cleaning supplies, toilet paper, and paper towels).
For those in the US, the article suggested that grocery shopping for Thanksgiving might best be done before November 15, as traditional Thanksgiving foods would be in high demand from mid-November on. I suspect that Christmas and Hanukkah baking supplies, such as flour, sugar, butter, spices, nuts and nut pastes, canned pumpkin, dried and candied fruit, leavening agents, colored sprinkles, chocolate, and cocoa powder might also sell to shelf-depletion levels before Thanksgiving for the value-priced brands. I had a Walmart curbside pickup scheduled for this morning. After reading this article, I thought now would be a good time to go through my holiday baking plans and put the ingredients that I needed on my list for today's order. (I added confectioner's sugar and a couple of cans of mixed nuts -- not a lot of extra items, but these ingredients would be missed this holiday baking season. Obviously, I chose the least expensive brands of both items and was pleased that they were in stock today.)
If you haven't tried curbside pickup due to not wanting someone else to select your produce items, what I've been doing is scheduling a pickup for the bulk of my order then gone into the store for the few fresh produce items that I wanted -- a hybrid approach. This works well for me. I choose a pickup time that is in the earliest grouping, shop in person for my fresh produce as quickly as I can, then go back out to the parking lot to receive the rest of my order. This morning I was in the store for less than 10 minutes, including self-checkout. If I had done the entire shop in-person, I would have spent about an hour to shop for 3 weeks worth of groceries and encountered many more other shoppers and employees in the process.
Anyway, I thought I'd share what I'd read in this brief article. I hope your week is off to a great start, friends!
