Walmart on Tuesday reminded me a bit of a ‘vacation’ I took behind the iron curtain during the cold war. Now, if someone would just give me the address of a hard currency store where the elite shop....
Same in Eastern Nevada - even the salsa racks were empty. Salsa fer Chrissakes.
Try smaller regional chains. They don’t run near as JIT (Just In Time). They warehouse stuff and stuff is getting to them. Many have excess capacity up and down the process.
The big boys warehouses basically ship stuff to stores as it comes in so had not much buffer. Empty shelves + long lead times for huge resupply orders = meager picking for a while at the big boys. Their systemic efficiencies and economies of scale are working against them right now. Logistics are optimized to minimize inventory being held at points other than point of sale so when that is gone they dont have “overstock.” Orders are huge and it takes time for the manufacturer to fill a big boy order. Their trucking fleets are optimized to run full time so not much extra capacity over normal resupply. Continued heavy purchasing is emptying shelves as stuff comes in.
That said both Kroger and Walmart here locally are 40 to 50% stocked with glaring things missing like TP and hand sanitizer and low stock overall on canned goods, pasta, etc. Good news is the beer aisles were fully stocked.... overstocked even. ;-) Of course in my state that aisle is handled by a distributor that acts like a small regional chain with excess capacity.