The first three sentences ignore the fact that the manufactures/creators of the products would have nothing to gain from having “the government” control the distribution/sales of their products. The intervention by government might eliminate these new traditions of outright theft but would lead directly to giving everything away, which would effectively lead back to Square One.
I’m guessing the local governments wouldn’t interfere in the distribution process. The distributors would take the order, then deliver the goods to a government-run and government-subsidized food store.
At the store the looting would continue as before. That would hurt the city’s bottom line, but not the distributor. The distributor had better just require payment on delivery to the store’s location.