Thanksgiving is now officially less than a week away with the holiday coming up next Thursday, Nov. 25.
It is expected this year that many people will be hosting larger Thanksgiving gatherings this year, despite recent surges in COVID-19 locally and nationally, and heading out to stores to begin preparations for their Thanksgiving dinners.
However, with the supply chain issues ongoing across the United States and around the world, should people be worried about finding what they need on the shelves of their grocery store?
According to Wegmans spokesperson Michele Mehaffy, while stores have been busy, their stores are staying well-stocked for the Thanksgiving holiday.
"Certainly everyone is preparing for the holiday season, whether they're doing it with just their own intimate families or whether they're hosting as well. People are getting ready, and we know they're certainly shopping early as well, but we're good with supplies," Mehaffy said on Thursday at the "Turkeys for Tickets" drive.
When it comes to any last-minute shopping for turkeys, Mehaffy says Wegmans was well-ahead of the curve, making sure people would be able to have their turkeys available for any Thanksgiving dinner.
"We've had really good supply," she said. "We actually placed those orders for turkeys back in January and February. When our customers are thinking Valentine's Day, we're thinking Thanksgiving and Christmas internally. We really are confident about the way our turkey supplies are this year."
Another local grocer that says they have plenty of turkeys and Thanksgiving essentials available on their shelves with less than a week before the holiday is Tops Market.
"Activity at our stores always picks up as we lead into a major holiday week, as shoppers begin to prepare for their Thanksgiving feast," said Tops' manager of public and media relations Kathy Sautter.
"We have done our best to keep everyday low prices for our customers on all of their holiday staples from cranberries to potatoes, pumpkin pies to stuffing mix," Sautter said. "Like most retailers, we began ordering our Turkeys months in advance. As for other holiday items, we began to plan in June and July."
So what happens if you head to the grocery store this upcoming week and find a product you may need come Thursday may be missing? Mehaffy says that if that may be the case at Wegmans, you may just have to check again the next day.
"There may be occasion where you might not see a product on your shelf, but if you go back the next day, chances are it will be there," Mehaffy said. "Knock on wood, we've been really, really good with our supplies, and our merchants have been working really hard for the past year to make sure that our supplies are there for the customers who want them."
However, as Sautter points out in certain cases, if you are missing a certain brand of an item you may want for Thanksgiving dinner, there are other brands available to satisfy your needs.
"Because of supply chain challenges, customers may have to buy off brand in order to ensure they get the items they want to have on their holiday table versus year's past," Sautter said. "Because we carry many brands, customers will have many choices to make their holiday a success."
So what could stores be short of for the Thanksgiving holiday? According to Vice President of Sonwil Transportation, Bill Loupee, he believes the supply chain issues have resulted in the same issues that are currently bogging down the consumer across many different items.
"While the big impact is going to be at Christmas when people go to put things under the tree, some of the simpler items that you would get for Thanksgiving, even if it was just like plastic utensils and paperware, stuff like that, are still subject to the same shortages," Loupee said.
How can people get ahead of any potential shortages this holiday season, whether it is preparing for Thanksgiving and even Christmas about five weeks from now? One solution Loupee has is for people to try and reserve anything that may be affected by the current supply chain issues.
"Any time you can reserve any of that stuff in advance, whether it's reserving your Thanksgiving turkey or some of the other sides or those items that can be pre-made, I think that's a good idea," Loupee said. "I think there's a lot of people who have done stuff like that with prepared foods in the past from some of the local grocers, and all the local grocers are still under labor constraints. Their capacity to produce some of those items and get them out to people might not be what's it been in past years this year."
