“When a product was there, we’ve had to try to buy all we could buy.”Ĭustomers still frequent Wright’s Market, which is located five minutes outside of downtown Opelika, a small city of 30,000 that borders Auburn University. “We’ve just had to be creative,” Wright said. Since the pandemic began, manufacturing slowdowns, worker shortages, and volatile demand have dogged the grocery industry, forcing grocers to find new ways to stock their shelves. The investment paid off: Wright’s Market entered the holiday season with goods that were sold out elsewhere, like cream cheese and cranberry sauce.īut this was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak couple of years. To prepare for the shortages, he began stockpiling products in early November, spending $70,000 on top of the $250,000 he usually devotes to inventory. Since the beginning of the pandemic, he had struggled to maintain inventory at his sprawling store in east Alabama, and as the holidays approached, he anticipated that annual favorites-hams, gingerbread men, pies-would be in short supply. Grocery store owner Jimmy Wright spent months stocking up for the holiday season. This article appears in The American Prospect magazine’s February 2022 special issue, “How We Broke the Supply Chain.” Subscribe here.
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