LONDON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – U.S. consumers have begun spotting rare Quilted Northern and Charmin toilet paper rolls on store shelves across the United States, as stocks start building after weeks of severe shortages.
A shelf at a Kroger-owned Ralphs store is stocked with toilet paper in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 25, 2020. Picture taken April 25, 2020. REUTERS/Lisa Baertlein
Shoppers who bagged the coveted rolls are crowing on Twitter about their finds. “Found some toilet paper in the wild! Driving it home now,” tweeted @TransForYang on April 23. “This is as close as I’ll ever come to knowing what it feels like driving one of those armored money trucks.”
Empty shelves were still a problem at nearly half of American grocery stores as of mid-April, but supplies were markedly more plentiful than they had been during the prior week, according to the consumer products data tracker NCSolutions.
About 48 percent of U.S. grocery stores were out of stock of toilet paper for some part of the day on April 19, the latest date for which figures were available. In comparison, out-of-stock shelves were prevalent at 73 percent of U.S. grocery stores one week earlier, on April 12, according to the data, provided exclusively to Reuters.
Demand for toilet paper is still up 27 percent from pre-Covid-19 levels, NCSolutions said.
The aver