SAN ANTONIO – Customers are finding increasingly long lines and empty shelves at many San Antonio-area grocery and wholesale stores like H-E-B and Costco amid the coronavirus pandemic.
While H-E-B is encouraging customers not to panic, it has not done much to deter the public from emptying shelves, causing stores to put purchase limits on certain items.
H-E-B closing all stores early to allow time to restock shelves, no need to panic, officials say
“It took about 20 minutes to get through the line just to get into the store. Then when I finally made it inside, I was shocked to see that so much was already gone. No toilet paper, no milk, no eggs, scarce on the meat, all by 9 a.m,” a woman, who did not want to be identified, told KSAT on Saturday morning.
H-E-B is adapting store hours in response to the massive increase of shoppers in an effort to better restock the shelves.
“The store was restocking as we were shopping, so I have no doubt those items will be available at a later time. It’s just crazy how much people are buying at once,” the woman said.
HEB says don’t panic, limits some purchases, restocking daily
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced Saturday that certain state trucking regulations will be temporarily waived in an effort to help stores restock shelves even faster.
“Suspending these state trucking regulations will improve our ability to deliver the necessary supplies throughout the state so that grocers and retailers are able to continually stock their shelves,” Abbott said in a news release.
Another viewer sent a video of people waiting in line outside a San Antonio-area Costco before the wholesale retailer opened Saturday morning.
“It’s just crazy how much people are buying at once. I have a 10-year-old and a 19-month-old and luckily I was able to get food for them,” the woman told KSAT.
H-E-B putting purchase limits on some items to ‘protect the supply chain’
COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new virus, stands for coronavirus disease 2019. The disease first appeared in late 2019 in Wuhan, China, but spread around the world in early 2020, causing the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic in March.
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