The assembly lines at Katadyn North America Foods in Rocklin, Calif., were laboring to keep up with demand, churning out sealed pouches of freeze-dried sausage and pasta. In the coronavirus era, everything is a rush order at Katadyn.
"We've been out of this for about a week, so we're trying to catch up," said Ralph Boyle, general manager. "There's a huge demand, back order, on this one."
The company, which makes packaged foods with long shelf lives for campers, is scrambling to meet surging demand as Americans nervously stock up on provisions. Giant shelves in the warehouse get wiped out in a day or so, and Katadyn's customers _ coast-to-coast retailers like REI and Bass Pro Shops _ are clamoring for more.
"Everything is pretty much going out the door as quick as we can put it up," Boyle said.
Stocking up on foods with long shelf lives isn't just for campers _ or survivalists _ anymore. The outbreak of coronavirus and COVID-19 has spiked demand for a wide range of food items. Shoppers are storming Costco, Winco and other food stores, cleaning out supplies of bottled water, canned goods and other "shelf stable" items.
The reason: Americans are worried that they won't be able to shop, because of quarantines or their own reluctance to leave home. And public health officials say stocking up isn't such a bad idea.
"While we are not at the point where I could consider canceling events, closing schools or requiring widespread social distancing measures, we do want the public to prepare for that possibility," said Dr. Aimee Sisson, Placer County's health officer, at a press conference Wednesday to announce the first California death from coronavirus. "It's also good to have two weeks of supplies on hand in case your family was asked to quarantine."
Rebecca Katz, director of the Center for Global Health Science and Security at Georgetown University, compared it to preparing for a wildfire, blackout or other disaster.
"If you find yourself sick, you don't want to be running to the store for, say, more toilet paper or milk," she said. "This is not about panicking. This is about thinking about what you and your family might need." Those requiring daily medications should have at least a week's supply on hand, she said.
Coronavirus and Y2K
Based out of Nevada City, Denis Korn has been selling "shelf stable" foods for more than 40 years. He remembers the surge in business that took place in 1999, when customers got nervous about Y2K _ the predictions that widespread computer glitches would shut down much of society on Jan. 1, 2000.
The coronavirus scare rivals Y2K, and then some.
"It's as intense as I've seen it in all these years," said Korn, whose online mail-order company is called PrepareDirect.com. "It's just skyrocketed."
Korn is taking orders for 50-pound boxes of powdered eggs. Customers are buying motorized grain mills. and 25-pound sacks of rice. Canned goods are nearly impossible to find. Even solar-powered radios are selling briskly _ a development that Korn has having trouble understanding.
"It is weird," he said. "People are reacting. They're not thinking."
If anything, coronavirus has created more of an uproar than Y2K. Twenty years ago, demand built up in the last few months of 1999 as Y2K approached.
This time it came more quickly. "All of a sudden, this hit. We're talking days," he said. "Nobody was prepared for it, nobody had the inventory."
The appeal of freeze-dried foods in a worried country is obvious: They last a long time. Boyle said Katadyn's pouched meals _ chili, lasagne, Kung Pao chicken _ can last five years. Canned goods, a full decade.
The 40,000-square-foot factory and warehouse in Rocklin owned by Swiss conglomerate Katadyn Group conducts most of its sales under the AlpineAire name, a familiar brand to campers and hunters. The company is capable of ramping up quickly: Boyle said each of the five main assembly lines can produce as many as 2,000 pouches a day.
This time of year, Katadyn is typically increasing production in preparation for summer camping season. But the coronavirus scare left the company more or less flatfooted.
"We got wiped out of everything," said Shawn Hostetter, president of Katadyn North America. "We are building inventories like mad and getting raw materials like mad."
Hostetter said Katadyn's business often perks up during times of economic anxiety, like when the stock market collapsed in 2008. The latest crisis is something of a double whammy: People are afraid of coronavirus and they're afraid of what it could do to the economy. The Dow Jones average dropped another 969 points Thursday
"It's like, if I can't get into the store, or if there's some problem financially, I want to be able to feed my family," he said.
Katadyn's operation is coincidentally located in the same town where the first Californian to die from COVID-19 lived. The 71-year-old Rocklin man had recently returned from a cruise to Mexico and died early Wednesday at Kaiser Roseville.
Bottled water, warnings on gouging
On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom went on Twitter to complain about a 12-pack of Purell hand sanitizer being priced by Amazon.com at $79.80.
His declaration of a statewide emergency a day later triggered implementation of California's anti-price gouging laws, which forbid price increases of more than 10% on food, gas and medical supplies.
Not that price seems to matter much. Consumers are buying in bulk to protect themselves as the illness spreads. And it's more than just hand sanitizers and masks.
Powdered milk sales jumped 154% last week in California, compared to a year earlier, according to Florida-based market researcher Catalina. Sales of dried beans and grains were up 55 percent, while bottled water recorded a 28% increase.
The hottest item of all remains hand sanitizer. Sales increased 738% in California last week, according to Catalina.
Not surprisingly, the most dramatic spike in sales has taken place in Washington state, where 11 people have died of COVID-19, more than any other state. Powdered milk sales are up 289 percent; hand sanitizer business jumped 738 percent.
At the Winco Foods store on Sheldon Road in Elk Grove, Michael Nguyen and Callie Engmark filled their shopping cart the other day with cases of Ramen noodles, an assortment of canned goods and four cases of bottled water. Each case contained 40 bottles.
The couple already had six cases of bottled water at home and were out to buy as much as they could. They said Winco employees limited them to four cases.
"People didn't take me seriously a month ago, when I told people to stock up," Nguyen said. "You never know _ they may lock down the city."
Engmark said she was skeptical about buying extra provisions until she saw images on social media of grocery stores being depleted in San Francisco.
"I wasn't on board at first, but then friends posted videos of stores where the shelves were empty," she said.
Stories making the rounds at Winco stoked her anxiety. A store employee told her and Nguyen that a customer had just spent $700 on Spam.
"That's a lot of Spam," she said.
