What are you noticing at your food store?

[Aquaria]

81. Then came Friday.

The stores got so wiped out that HEB is now scaling back their hours to 8am to 8pm until further notice because they need the time to get the store re-stocked AND the inventory control set to rights. They literally do not have enough time to get the replacement goods off the truck(s) and onto the shelves in the usual hours they take for that (around 10 pm to the traditional 6 a.m. open).

They're also suspending new sales ads, limiting the amount of bakery and deli options they'll offer, and eliminating all food services/demonstrations. This includes Flaming Bird, the pizza parlors, sandwich shops, barbecue, sushi and so on. The store employees who normally staff those departments are being pulled in to stock shelves--or keep them stocked during normal business hours, as best they can.

And, oh, do they need it.

Yesterday, at the location where my husband works, they ran out of TP in 3 hours, and water not long after that. But, despite the shortages, his store did around $500K in business on Friday. They usually do that during the busiest weekends. The mega Plus store at Bandera and 1604 store may have shattered their old record from last year's holiday, which was around $1.5m. I'll ask him if he's heard what the final number was for them.

HEB is also considering bringing in entire tractor trailers of water and selling directly from the back of the trucks. I think the only thing that's keeping them from implementing it is that they need to sort out how that would work. You know, do you set up a checkout by the truck, or do you have people "buy" water inside and then pick it up with their receipt?

But maybe they're simply going to wait until the panic dies down rather than opening that can of worms.