Back when COVID19 hit and the essentials like face masks, Lysol, toilet paper, wipes, etc were all sold out, I think it took it a month or two (I want to say April or May) before food distribution took a hit. I remember my Safeway stores started to limit people to 2 meat packages per person. People were hoarding meat and putting it in freezers, which then reduced the supply of chest freezers. And it’s not easy for manufacturers to just ramp up product of chest freezers like they can with toilet paper. Even as I type this, almost all of the chest freezers on Best Buy are still sold out.
The 3.5 cu ft chest freezers sold for $150 and you could get $300 locally. The 5 cu ft goes for $189 and that went for a bit more. I think the 5 was the sweet spot for most people. These things were big and heavy and you could only fit 1-2 into an SUV. I probably only sold 10 due to the amount of space it took up in my garage. Plus, people on FB and OfferUp would just berate you for price gouging even though the alternative is… 1. a refrigerator or 2. maybe don’t hoard meat and let others buy it too.
This is one of the items that made this Slack user $10K in a month.
Actually, manufacturers couldn’t just ramp up toilet paper production, which one would think you would have realized considering the massive shortages we saw. Toilet paper production is a 24/7 endeavor, with very low margins kept afloat only efficiency. When the residential market soared, the commercial market tanked, and the two are not interchangeable. Roll sizes and quality are vastly different.