Which works fine, until your suppliers are out, and THEIR suppliers are waiting on raw materials. And WalMart constantly squeezes their suppliers on price, with the result that, if there's a real shortage, those suppliers may decide to ship to higher margin customers instead.
So, walmart bigotry raises it’s ugly head
Just in time inventory is the bane of good civil defense planning.
Warehousing items with a margin is important to national security.
Sure. There’s a difference between genuine shortages caused by a spike in demand which is now happening with hand sanitizer for instance. But we’re pooping the same amount and thus the demand for TP is unchanged, the “shortage” is a result of panic buyers who see other people buying TP so they buy some too out of fear they won’t be able to get it in the future.
Which is wrong because all that will happen is a temporary outage til the stock is replenished and then no one will be buying truckloads of TP because they’ve already got a closet full at home.
The question was really about why the regular chains are coping better however, and that’s because they have better distribution systems and more leverage with suppliers.