G4 EZ EE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22 , 2020
agement. He says to expect plen-
ty of milk, cheese and sour cream
(although he says butter is al-
ways a little tight around the
holidays).
And from row crops to special-
ty fruits and vegetables, the sup-
ply chain is solid, according to
USDA cold storage data released
Oct. 22.
“Much has changed since
March in terms of preparation
and adaptation throughout the
food supply chain,” says Ameri-
can Farm Bureau Federation
President Zippy Duvall. “While
the system is better prepared for
a spike in purchasing, we’re hop-
ing the public now realizes our
food supply is safe and strong, so
we don’t see widespread panic
purchasing.”
Despite such confidence, re-
tailers say they’re beginning to
see spurts of increased demand,
particularly in regions where
shutdowns are imminent. Online
toilet paper company Who Gives
A Crap says sales in Ohio, which
began a new round of curfews
and business restrictions, have
doubled in recent days. Company
executives say they’ve tripled the
amount of inventory in their
warehouses and increased staff
by 50 percent.
Boxed.com, a website that sells
household products in bulk, says
sales of essentials have doubled
since last week, as shoppers stock
up on cleaning and disinfecting
products (up 134 percent from a
week ago), baking mixes (132 per-
cent), wine (126 percent) and
toilet paper (123 percent).
“People are hunkering down
again,” said Chieh Huang, the
company’s co-founder and chief
executive. “It’s not the ‘Oh, my
gosh, the world is ending’ panic
we saw in early April, but we’re
definitely moving in that direc-
tion.”
Darleen Gillyard, who lives in
Passaic, N.J., is preparing to stock
up on cat litter and refrigerated
food for her two cats, TeeCee and
Choo Choo.
Back in March, when the first
round of shutdowns took hold,
she struggled to find basics such
as paper towels, tissues and
masks. Since then, she has begun
stashing packages of toilet paper
in her attic and keeps her freezer
stocked with extra meals.
“Right now, everything is okay
— most of the stores are still
stocked, but I’m scared that we’ll
have to scramble for basic items
again,” the 63-year-old said. “The
last time, I went crazy looking for
things because the shelves were
completely empty.”
[email protected]
[email protected]cilities, total red meat and poul-
try production has been increas-
ing and, according to the U.S.
Department of Agriculture, is
expected to continue to increase
for the remainder of 2020 and for
2021.
“While we saw out-of-stocks in
many cases in retail meat cases
during the spring, product avail-
ability is now essentially back to
normal,” says Bridget Wasser,
senior executive director of prod-
uct quality and education at the
National Cattlemen’s Beef Asso-
ciation, an industry organiza-
tion.
And dairy, which saw huge
disruptions in March and April,
is strong going into the holiday
season, according to IRI, a mar-
ket research firm.
“In the first two weeks of the
pandemic, retail dairy sales were
up 54 percent — a grocery may
carry a four-day supply of milk
and suddenly you had people
loading up on a two-week supply
— but we’ve plateaued,” says Paul
Ziemnisky, executive vice presi-
dent of global innovation for the
trade organization Dairy Man-better.’ And some of the excite-
ment of home prep has lagged, so
we’ll see an increase in prepared
meals.”
And while grocery chains are
confident in their ability to meet
demand over the holiday season,
their success depends in part on
smooth shipping and transporta-
tion.
James Kwon, chief executive of
technology and logistics whole-
sale platform ePallet, says freight
costs have risen significantly
from last year and that produc-
tion costs are also expected to
increase because of labor short-
ages due to coronavirus out-
breaks.
But Kwon says these disrup-
tions are more likely to result in
higher prices paid by retailers
and then passed along to con-
sumers, not supply chain gaps.
Agricultural sectors report
strong supply and that much of
the food that had been slated for
food service before the pandemic
has been repackaged or resize for
retail consumers. Despite signifi-
cant disruption because of c ovid
outbreaks in meat-processing fa-od of time better than we did in
the first wave.”
While in March and April
there was hoarding of inexpen-
sive pantry items such as dried
beans, flour, yeast, pasta and rice,
Janet Garetto, co-leader of food
and beverage for global law prac-
tice Nixon Peabody, says other
food sectors could be more in
demand if there are additional
shelter-at-home advisories or
stricter restaurant closures. Her
prediction is that American con-
sumers will turn to more upscale
indulgences and ready-to-eat
foods and that retailers might see
shortages of those.
“At the beginning of the pan-
demic, there was tremendous
uncertainty: ‘Was my job secure?’
‘Could I get access to basic neces-
sities?’ For those whose jobs
haven’t been directly impacted,
there was this notion that we’re
not spending money on vaca-
tions, spas or movies, so what
people are doing is staying home
doing home repairs and spend-
ing money on food: ‘My reward
for a hard day of work is a treat
that makes my day feel a little bitand April kick-started some tech-
nology investment that the in-
dustry had been postponing,” she
says. “The technology is there to
understand what the consumer’s
intent is and how to fulfill that.”
Target is stocking stores with
more inventory than usual this
holiday season and limiting pur-
chases of disinfectant wipes,
cleaning sprays and disposable
gloves. Other items, such as food,
over-the-counter medicines and
baby products, are being “fast-
tracked through the supply chain
and prioritized for restocking,”
spokeswoman Jessica Carlson
said.
Walmart’s executives said
shoppers have been stocking up
on paper goods, cleaning sup-
plies and shelf-stable groceries.
“It’s disappointing to... s ee as
many out-of-stocks as we have in
consumables right now, although
it’s a whole lot better than it was
earlier in the year,” CEO Doug
McMillon said in a Tuesday earn-
ings call. “We’ll manage through
these curves. They’ll be localized.
We will respond. It feels to me
like we’ll work through this peri-around, it’s a little bit of every-
thing: cleaning products, toilet
paper, cold and flu medicine,
shelf-stable food. There’s less fear
than there was at the beginning
of the pandemic — people aren’t
as worried that stores are going
to run out of toilet paper or that
grocery stores will be completely
empty, but they’re definitely
shifting their consumption hab-
its again.”
Green says Thrive Market has
doubled the number of drivers in
its two fulfillment centers in
Nevada and Indiana and has
added vertical shelving to store
more inventory and to increase
its ability to anticipate and han-
dle surges in demand.
The company is also buying
more products directly from
brands, instead of relying on
third-party distributors, he said.
Similar calculations are taking
place across the country with
stores increasing inventory, ex-
panding the number of distribu-
tion centers and adopting new
technology to become more effi-
cient at anticipating consumer
behavior and managing restock-
ing. Retailers also say that con-
sumers’ shift to online purchas-
ing has taken pressure off bricks-
and-mortar stores.
In Charlotte, Raydiance Swan-
ston began stocking up on disin-
fecting wipes, toilet paper and
hand sanitizer last month, after
seeing a rise in local covid-19
cases and hearing talk of another
shutdown. She’s also been buying
more shelf-stable foods, such as
crackers, nuts and canned tuna,
but says she isn’t as panicked
about shortages as she was in the
spring.
“It was very scary at the begin-
ning, but now I’m noticing that
the bread aisle isn’t as empty and
things like toilet paper are back
in stock,” says Swanston, 28, who
works as an account manager for
an IT firm. “But stores are enforc-
ing limits again, and you can
start to see that some items, like
Clorox wipes, are getting deplet-
ed again.”
Melanie Nuce, senior vice
president for corporate develop-
ment for GS1 US, a company that
investigates new technologies,
says the whole food supply chain
is trying to be more predictive,
overcoming inventory inaccura-
cies and gaps in communication
with artificial intelligence,
smartphone-enabled bar codes
and computer-connected in-
store cameras to monitor stock
levels.
“Once we got over the initial
shock, what happened in March
FOOD SHORTAGE FROM G1
Grocery chains say they’re ready to handle demand surges
DAVID ZALUBOWSKI/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Many stores, such as this Target in Sheridan, Colo., have reinstated limits on high-demand items such as paper goods and disinfecting
wipes. Retailers and manufacturers have spent months simplifying their supply chains, among other measures, to counter panic-buying.tion that increases the risk of
developing breast and ovarian
cancer, Downing wants her group
and others like it to be able to
back up their history, move it off
the platform and delete it from
Facebook. She is still on the site,
even while advocating that the
company be broken up and regu-
lated.
Facebook declined to comment
on its Groups settings or any
plans for them in the future.
“I would love to say people
should be avoiding them, but I
know for that long-hauler covid
group or for someone who just got
diagnosed with cancer, they’re go-
ing to do what they can to find
other people to direct them on
that path,” Downing said. “I’m not
leaving until we can all leave
together.”
The people who stay on Face-
book and work, for free, running
and managing groups don’t do it
for the company. They’re commit-
ted to the communities they’ve
made and joined — connections
that can outweigh concerns about
the company.
“I don’t feel some special alle-
giance to them because I feel as if
I’ve done so much work for free,”
said Sandy B., an attorney in Los
Angeles, who spoke on the condi-
tion that only her last initial be
used.
Sandy runs a handful of groups
and does anti-racist education on
Facebook. She puts in hours of her
time trying to combat racism in
public and private Facebook spac-
es, from flagging groups with the
n-word in their name to dealing
with her own Messenger inbox,
where she receives threatening
and racist messages. She prizes
the connections she has made on
the site and says it has led her to
communities of people she
wouldn’t have met otherwise. But
the work she puts in to stay on
Facebook is tiring.
“It feels like being in an abusive
relationship,” Sandy said. “How
many times do you complain
about the same things, and how
many articles can be written, be-
fore they make any changes?”
[email protected]Discord, and creating private chat
groups on tools such as Signal or
iMessage. And Silicon Valley is
creating start-ups for groups,
such as Mighty Networks, as well
as social apps with a specific polit-
ical bent such as Parler, which
does not offer groups. But moving
from one tech company to an-
other might not be a panacea.
“In order to solve this problem,
we need structural change, we
need policy change,” said Andrea
Downing, a security researcher
and privacy rights advocate who
started a nonprofit for supporting
online health communities called
the Light Collective.
In 2018, Downing found a loop-
hole on Facebook that allowed
third parties to download mem-
ber lists from closed groups using
a Chrome extension. Facebook
subsequently closed the loophole.
The administrator of a group for
people with a BRCA gene muta-to replicate immediately on an-
other site. Like most groups, it
also requires a large amount of
unpaid labor from the adminis-
trators and moderators who man-
age it.
Facebook offers ways to export
your profile data so you have a
copy, and even a tool for moving
your photos to competing ser-
vices. But there are no export
settings for groups, no easy ways
to port them over to a new site.
And even if there were, it would
be a near-impossible task to per-
suade a hundred members, let
alone hundreds of thousands, to
leave and learn how to navigate
an entirely new app. Without a
systematic way to move groups
off Facebook, gre-formare left to
reform themselves from scratch.
If they’re interested, there are
options for groups ranging from
private to public forums, includ-
ing Slack, Reddit, Twitter andcome back. They might delete the
app to limit how often they use it,
or stop sharing personal informa-
tion and passively scan their feed.
Without the ability to export a
group’s history or transfer its us-
ers to an outside option, there’s no
perfect alternative to its commu-
nities.
“I don’t think it’s about Face-
book, per se. I could easily imag-
ine a better platform, but I don’t
know how you could even trans-
fer a fifth of the people,” said
Robyn Tevah, a 63-year-old com-
munity organizer in Philadelphia.
Tevah is a moderator on a
group for her Germantown neigh-
borhood, which has more than
7,000 members. Members use the
group for everything: finding lost
pets, soliciting plumber recom-
mendations, getting out the word
about food pantries. It has mem-
bers of all ages and backgrounds
— something that could be harddoesn’t make a dent. In April,
more than 1,000 companies took
part in a boycott over how Face-
book had handled hate groups,
pulling their ad dollars from the
platform. It generated a large
amount of media attention but
did not significantly affect the
company’s ad revenue.
The company has pushed
Groups as the future of Facebook
since 2017, when users’ interest in
their traditional news feeds was
waning. It invested heavily in the
feature, made Groups a central
part of advertising campaigns
and even started hosting an an-
nual “communities summit.”
“The only reason I wouldn’t
leave Facebook right now is be-
cause of the groups. Everything
else can be replaced,” said Julia
Pfeil, a 23-year-old from North
Florida who is in 55 Facebook
groups.
She’s in neighborhood groups
to get local news, groups about
gaming and conspiracies, one
dedicated to crafting while high
and another that is only for react-
ing angrily to corn (it has more
than 150,000 members). Her fa-
vorites are a dog-spotting group
and one for people who have had
an illness that Pfeil has experi-
enced. These days she estimates
she spends up to two hours a day
on Facebook, even while checking
Twitter more.
But over the past weeks, she
has become increasingly worried
about how Facebook enforces its
policies and believes it is censor-
ing people, often without an ex-
planation. Her main issue, she
says, is chief executive Mark
Zuckerberg: “I don’t like his influ-
ence, I don’t like his choices, I
don’t like what he says.”
Some people do manage to tear
themselves away from Facebook
while continuing to use Insta-
gram or WhatsApp — either un-
aware the apps are owned by the
same company and share data, or
unwilling to let them go. Others
try more-temporary measures to
distance themselves from the
company, such as disabling their
accounts instead of deleting
them, leaving the door open toonce a month, for everything
from health issues and hobbies to
political organizing.
Facebook says there has been
an increase in people using the
Groups feature during the pan-
demic. With in-person social op-
tions limited to slow the spread of
the coronavirus, people have
turned to virtual communities
such as Groups for companion-
ship or just to pass time.
But the past few months have
also seen another wave of calls to
leave Facebook. People have crit-
icized the company for not doing
enough to crack down on groups
spreading the unfounded QAnon
conspiracy theories, and then for
saying it was banning all QAnon
accounts. For not taking enough
action against posts from Presi-
dent Trump that contained mis-
information and lies, and for
labeling his posts that falsely
declared victory after the elec-
tion.
In recent weeks, conservative
voices — including several politi-
cians and pundits — have been
upset with Facebook’s increased
moderation of misleading elec-
tion content and called for people
to move to an alternative social
media site, Parler. That company,
which prides itself on “free
speech” and cutting out fact-
checkers, saw its user base inflate
the week after t he election, jump-
ing from 4.5 million to 7.6 million
accounts. It’s unclear how many
of those new users had actually
left Facebook behind or how long
they would stay away.
The pattern of calls to leave
Facebook is usually triggered by
whatever controversy lands the
company in the spotlight. And
there has been no shortage of
controversies in the company’s 16
years, from Cambridge Analytica
and data privacy issues to the
ways it has handled disinforma-
tion.
Because of Facebook’s massive
size, the effects of any exoduses
are, so far, negligible, like attack-
ing a T. rex with spitballs. It’s so
big that even advertisers leaving
FACEBOOK FROM G1
Despite new waves of discontent, defections from Facebook remain negligible
OLIVIER DOULIERY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
In recent weeks, leading conservatives upset with Facebook’s increased moderation of misleading
election content have called for people to move to an alternative social media site, Parler, seen above.