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The grocery store shelves, especially the local Walmart here where I live in the small city of Rome, New York have been empty long before the virus even reached these shores. The Walmart here has been the worse, having empty shelves for at least the past three years. When I go there, I always feel like they're having a going-out-of-business sale. They stopped stocking a lot of brand named items...canned goods specifically, in order to sell their Great-Value products. I used to buy the DAK canned hams in the store. Now they no longer offer them, and if you want to buy them from Walmart online, you have to buy a three-pack. I live alone, and don't need to buy three canned hams for myself. Last Christmas I needed creamed corn to make a casserole, and all Walmart had was their own brand, and only the small cans. They had no other brand available, and none in the 15 oz. size that I needed. I ended up hunting them down at another grocery store. Just the other day I wanted to get a small jar of soy sauce, and all they had was the humongous size, so I passed.

Several products I can't find in the store, but are listed on their website, can't be ordered online, because they claim they are available at my local store, but they aren't stocked there. I've complained to the manager, but it's done no good. Over the past 6-8 months, bacon, and pork sausage products are extremely hard to get. Even Great-Value's large container of whipped cream cheese hasn't been available at the local store for months, or the other two Walmarts in my area. I've ended up having to buy a different brand because they didn't even have the small container size in stock.

Wow. The closest town to me has a population of 2,000. The local supermarket has every product imaginable (many of which I haven’t seen before because we moved from the desert to TN. Wal Mart (12 miles away) was short on paper products at the beginning of the pandemic, but only runs low on certain items periodically and usually has a selection of alternatives. We do seem to have a lot of truck drivers who are actively employed; maybe that has something to do with it. Funny you should mention it, but I was looking for a little can of creamed corn recently and they only had big ones. Go figure.