It's Thursday, January. I'm Oscar and Mirrors from the Daily Dive podcast in Los Angeles, and this is Reopening America and some grocery stores around the country. We are again seeing empty shelves. Some of the reasons remain the same as early in the pandemic, others have changed slightly. The omicron surge, coupled with labor shortages, is making it difficult to keep things stocked. Supply chain issues in other countries are affecting us, and more people are eating at home.
Laura Riley, business of food reporter at The Washington Post, joins us for What to Know. Thanks for joining us, Laura, so happy to be here. Well, pandemic life has been a series of never ending disruptions that's going to continue on. Obviously, this year we're seeing the surge of the omicron variant and all the disruptions that it's causing. There. You know a lot of people are just getting infected, having a
call out, sick of work, all this. But another thing we're seeing is, you know, some more grocery store shelves that are empty, kind of reminiscent of very early pandemic. And all through last year we saw a lot of disruption. Supply chain issues were a huge thing. But there's some four main reasons right now why it's happening all over again. Let's start with O Macron. I mean, that's one of the big things that's happening. Yeah, So we have this
huge surge which has affected grocery store workers. Truckers were about eighty thousand truckers down right now, and you know some of that is the Great Resignation or the Big quit, whatever you're calling it. So in almost every sector, employers are having a hard time keeping enough workers. And now you add to this this huge explosion of infection, and you know, these people are not necessarily super sick, but they're calling out of work for five days however long.
And a lot of them can't get their hands on rapid tests. So there's an impediment there to get them back in the in the building, in the office, in the in the grocery store. Because of that, So O Macron is reaking havoc. I mean, some of the CEO as I spoke with, said they have more absenteeism now than at any point during money. Yeah, and that's gonna you know, can keep continuing as the limited availability of tests. I know at my work, it's it's kind of the
same rules. Hey, you got a test negative until you can come back. And you know, if you go take a PCR test, it could be up to forty eight hours for those results. These antigen tests are hard to come by. It's really tough to nail down the timing of all of that. And you know, we're talking about workers not being in the store. We're seeing also that thousands of grocery workers are going on strike in Colorado, about eight grocery workers are gonna be you know, not
be reporting. So again, for those stores, it's tough to restock the shelves. So I mean, that's just gonna be kind of an ongoing thing until that even gets settled out. One of the other things that we're seeing a lot of is the winter weather. So that's obviously puts a big hamper on a lot of things. Sure, so we had the mid Atlantic region, saw some punishing storm the Pacific Northwest, so we've we've really seen a number of parts of the country that have been affected by winter weather.
We saw those pictures on nine five of those miles and miles of cars uck for twenty four hours. Well, a fair number of those were tractor trailers full of food on their way to grocery stores, so we're seeing shortfalls there. You know, it impacts getting food from ports, so imported food getting from ports to you know, intermotal so onto train containers, and then from there into the
trucking world. Most food gets to grocery stores via truck, so if you have enormous impediments along major thoroughfares, like that's gonna slow some things down. You may mention also school delays and closing and going back to remote learning in a lot of cases. You know, this also has an effect on families and the way they buy food. So you have kids at home more often that you know, they're gonna stock up on more things, so leaving a
little bit of less inventory for other people. That's another thing that the schools keep impacting daily life in a bunch of different ways. Yeah, so by the end of last week, there were more than fifty schools temporarily pushing off, you know, reconvening in person, and obviously every single parent then has to provide those meals for those kids. So
that's a pivot. I mean, my guess is that a lot of parts of the country, those lunchables and those kinds of things are sold out because all of a sudden, parents had to provide breakfast, lunch, dinner for for kids that they didn't anticipate. So yes, that's another impediment. And and some of those workers now have kids at home and are and you know, you can't find childcare on the fly, so they may be calling in sick to
work because of that. Supply chain issues continue to be a huge thing, but now we're feeling the effects of supply supply chain issues from other countries and things that we import from them. Sure, so you know, we've talked a lot in the past few months about shipping container backup in California and Louisiana. But some of this now in terms of imported food, and that can be finished
food or ingredients that go into other foods. A lot of that now is impacted by manufacturing plants closing because of omicron surges in other places. So if China has a you know, no COVID hard and fast rule right now, that is really impacting manufacturing. I mean the UK, there's a lot of disruption there, so some products may be delayed for a significant amount of time because of those
manufacturing closures. And finally, I mean one of the other big reasons why you're seeing a lot more shells empty at the grocery store is pretty simple. More people are just eating at home, especially coming off of the holidays, when people generally eat at home more. You know, we're talking about people not maybe being a little hesitant to go out just so they don't want to catch anything. You know, a lot of people are just hitting the
grocery stores even more because they're eating at home. Yeah. I looked at open table data and Yelp data and those kinds of things mid December, and there was a significant dip in consumer you know, attendance and reservations, etcetera. Restaurants and there's just a growing consumer hesitancy about dining in. And you know, some parts of the country you can still get an outdoor table, but that's not a lot of places, right, I mean, just the weather doesn't accommodate that.
So you saw this shift back towards dining at home. And then another thing to consider is in the month of December, obviously it's holidays, but for all of us who once again we're deciding Okay, I can't go to a Broadway show. I'm not taking that trip. It's imprudent to hop on a plane. People may be rewarding themselves, so treating themselves with a splurge, so you know, sometimes that's okay, kids, we're having lobster tonight or we're doing
something like that. So we saw an eight percent increase in grocery store sales in December relative to last year. So some of the shortfalls that we're seeing was kind of exuberant spending in the month of December, and the thought is that a lot of this is going to be continuing for some months to come. Inflation is really at a high point right now, so just you know, prepare and be ready for what's going on. Laura Riley, Business of Food reporter at The Washington Post, thank you
very much for joining us. Oh thanks for having me. Hi'm Oscar Ramires and this has been reopening America. Don't forget effort today's big news stories. You can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every mondy to Friday, So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.