MANCHESTER, Conn. — When the covid pandemic first began people flocked to the stores to stock up on toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning wipes and sprays.
Fast forward to today and the toilet aisle at Highland Park Market in Manchester is fully stocked but employees tell us customers are still stocking up on essential items, it's the stores that are more prepared.
“if the products available we’re getting it and we’re able to put it on our shelves quick as possible for our customers,” Molly Devanney VP of Public Relations at Highland Park Market said.
Nineteen cities and towns in Connecticut are now on red alert for covid levels and with health officials predicting a continued increase in cases, supermarkets are stockpiling items that disappeared back in March but are still struggling to put popular cleaning brands-- such as Lysol- back on the shelves.
“With an uptick in covid cases we’ve seen an increase within our cleaning supplies category, people are coming and they're taking anything and everything off the shelves as much as possible,” Devanney said.
Devanney also said their curbside and delivery grocery orders have recently increased by 10 percent.
“With the governor’s latest announcements, we’ve seen an uptick in grocery shopping whether customers want to do pick up orders or grocery delivery to the home,” Devanney said.
Some customers remain fans of the “stock up now” way of thinking, while others said it’s overdone.
“I have been stocking up and now that we’re coming into our second round of this pandemic it’s going to start all over again with more people stocking up and I've seen it start recently,” customer Donna said.
“It creates shortages that wouldn’t exist. The distribution seems to be working well and when people panic it creates holes in the system we wouldn’t experience,” customer Bill Bright said.