Here's a tissue for your issue
While shelves still have ample supplies as of Wednesday morning, most stores — including Super1 in Hayden — are limiting shoppers to two packages per purchase on toilet paper, paper towels, certain cleaning supplies and other products. (CRAIG NORTHRUP/Press)
While most grocers have toilet paper in stock, distributors are having a hard time keeping up with demand, leading to depleted shelves of certain brands. (CRAIG NORTHRUP/Press)
North Idaho shoppers are relieved because, well, they need not worry about being relieved.
While stores in southern Idaho and western Washington are once again having trouble keeping toilet paper on the shelves, a spot check of stores in Kootenai County revealed most retailers have supplies on hand.
Shelves across the country have once again seen a shrink to their toilet paper supplies, repeating to a lesser degree the consumer confidence crisis that sparked panic buying of the popular product over the spring. Back then, economists noted that cuts in supply chains led to stocking up — and, in many cases, hoarding — of household staples.
This second shortage has sprung up in stores across the nation over the past four days, including in Washington, Oregon and southern Idaho. But as of Wednesday, many Kootenai County stores still had ample supplies.
Albertsons on Prairie Avenue, for example, generally had fully-stocked shelves. Safeway in Coeur d’Alene had similar product levels.
Super 1 Foods in both Hayden and Post Falls had toilet paper on hand. While employees at Super 1 said they weren’t allowed to speak to the press, one member of the management team said the recent surge in toilet paper purchases “wasn’t nearly as bad as the first time around.”
Yoke’s in Post Falls was well-stocked, though both the Post Falls and Hayden Walmarts had low supplies on their shelves. A Hayden employee, however, said more was available out back.
In mid-March, as states locked down, toilet paper sales rose more than 700 percent, according to industry reports, but shoppers didn’t deplete the last of the toilet paper; they merely depleted the last of the toilet paper on hand.
Supply chain economists have said — and continue to say today, as TP purchases are once again rising — that toilet paper is both cheap to produce and relatively expensive for distributors and grocers to store.
Doug McMilon, CEO of Walmart, said in a conference call that supply chains are fundamentally no different now than they were after states across the nation shutdown, and that he was disappointed at the stores’ emptying shelves where toilet paper — and other consumables — were once full, but he said he remains optimistic cooler heads will prevail.
“It feels to me like we’ll work through this period of time better than we did in the first wave,” he said.
While local Walmarts have not yet reinstated purchase restrictions on toilet paper, virtually every other store mentioned in this story — Super 1, Albertsons, Safeway and Fred Meyer — limit to two packages per purchase.
