Portland's Grape-Nuts shortage nightmare is over

The year 2020 took so much from us -- birthday parties, our faith in humanity and, apparently, Grape-Nuts.

That’s right, according to many things including an all-caps post on Portland’s Reddit page back in December, the cereal that you either love or hate, was nowhere to be found. The culprit? Supply chain issues and high demand.

Portlanders were probably especially hard hit by the loss of the not-grape and not-nuts breakfast food. An Oregonian article from 1989 notes that at the time Portland ranked number one among all U.S. cities for Grape-Nut consumption.

The source for this information? Harper’s Magazine’s monthly numbers.

And while the author of that article couldn’t verify Harper’s numbers, they were able to get Frank J. Smith, director of SAMI corporate development services, to say that Portland was number one in purchasing dry cat food and last in spray deodorants.

Sure this was 32 years ago, but it still feels relevant.