The enormous efforts made by grocers and their supply chain partners over the past week are helping to bring stock levels under control. Over the last two to three days in particular, the situation has shown signs of easing, according to the latest availability figures from Edge by Ascential.

Coronavirus average out of stocks

Overall, out of stock levels peaked at 23.1% last Tuesday, but subsided to 18.4% by the end of the week. Restrictions introduced by grocers to ease stockpiling will have helped.

Last week, Tesco introduced an 80-item maximum for online deliveries in addition to its three-item limit on all individual items.

All grocers now have customer restrictions on how many of each item can be bought in-store and online, which has helped to bring stock back under control amid the unprecedented demand.

Retailers are also paying small suppliers earlier and taking on additional staff to ensure that the supply chain can keep moving at speed.

Coronavirus top 20 categories

 

By category, toilet paper topped the list of unavailable products last week at 45.6% out of stock from a pre-Covid-19 average of just 1.7%.

Demand for dry pasta led to reduced availability over the week and, as shoppers continued to stock up their cupboards with ambient items, tinned soup showed a similar trend.

However, availability of hard-to-find items improved overall during the course of the week, particularly at Tesco and Morrisons. At other retailers, availability remained consistent.

 

Coronavirus unavailability by grocer

 

Tesco achieved the biggest improvement in stock availability, moving from a peak of 47.8% of products unavailable one week ago to 27.5% this week.

Waitrose experienced a large rise in unavailable products on Saturday, March 28. However, this appears to be a planned intervention by the grocer to rationalise ranges to focus on key items, rather than the result of shopper purchasing.

Overall, it appears that the grocery retailers’ huge efforts to keep the supply chain moving amid coronavirus-induced disruption are beginning to make a difference.