The region’s independent pharmacies and convenience stores experienced some effect from the rush by shoppers that swamped grocery chains but say they can still get their usual deliveries of almost all items.
“We’re not being overwhelmingly impacted by this, other than we currently don’t have any thermometers. That’s one of the new things people buy; we should have some by the end of the week,” said Steve Kavadias, owner of Fisherville Pharmacy.
At the South Street Market in Concord, owner Jim Bashios was upbeat.
“So far so good, everything’ s come in. I got an ice cream delivery today; got a grocery delivery,” he said.
He might even be seeing a benefit from the shelves-emptying rush at supermarkets, which has people seeking out different stores. “We’ve seen people we don’t normally see,” Bashios said.
The story is similar at Cimo’s South End Deli on South Street.
“So far my supplies have been coming in,” said owner John Cimikowski, or Cimo as he prefers.
He has seen some ripple effects from COVID-19, however.
“My milk guys had a load of stuff for Market Basket; he doesn’t usually. He went from 150 crates to 300 crates,” he said. “One of my vendors cut down to one delivery a week, that way their interaction with people is a little less.”
Then, of course, there’s cleaning materials: “I couldn’t get toilet paper through any of my suppliers right now,” Cimikowski said.
His response: “We took toilet paper off the shelf, and sell one roll at a time.”
Independent markets appear to be more vulnerable to disruption in the long, complicated supply chain that gathers thousands of products from thousands of places and brings them to each store. They lack the buying power and contracting heft of corporate grocery or pharmacy chains and can be left out if shortages occur.
But despite the scenes of frantic shoppers at places like Marker Basket and Hannaford, there appear to be few shortages in the production and delivery household items right now, only situations where the sudden surge in demand overwhelms the usual supply chain.
It’s unclear whether that will continue to be true in coming weeks. If companies around the country and world cut back due to coronavirus-related staffing problems, then items may not be replaced in wholesale warehouses and stores won’t be able to get them. But so far, that doesn’t seem to be happening.
“I anticipate the distribution pipeline to be back,” said Kavadias. “We spend a little bit more time looking for things, but as of yet we haven’t had to steer people away.”
That includes most medications, he said. The biggest problem is that people want to stock up on medication, buying more than their insurance covers at one time.
“People trying to refill things early, but the insurance companies are slowly coming around,” said Kavadias. “We’re talking to them.”
So he’s spending a lot of extra time on the telephone.
“That’s a normal day for us, that’s what we do. We’re not getting an increase of weird questions – that’s our day, all day,” he said.
(David Brooks can be reached at 369-3313 or dbrooks@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @GraniteGeek.)
