12 Items That Are Difficult to Find Due to Shortages in Boise

It’s been three years since the COVID-19 pandemic began and it’s hard to believe that we’re still walking into grocery stores and seeing empty shelves.

Three years later, we’ve moved beyond panic-buying toilet paper, bottled water and disinfecting wipes, but wandering through the aisles at your local Albertsons, Fred Meyer, WinCo or Walmart still hasn’t gotten back to normal. There are days when you walk in and think to yourself “what does everyone else know that I don’t” when you see a certain product completely wiped out.

Over the summer and fall months, the shortage that probably stressed us out the most was the tampon shortage. Luckily, that seems to have gotten better!

Get our free mobile app

The Daily Meal recently published its list of “13 Food Shortages to Expect in 2023.” You’re probably not surprised that eggs are on that list. Prices of eggs here in the Treasure Valley are already starting to climb to compensate for the lack of supply. Lettuce, oranges, beer and cooking oil are all predicted to be in shorter supply as the year goes on, too.

Michelle Heart, Townsquare Media

Armed with their list, we hit a Boise Albertsons to see if we noticed any signs of those shortages. We really only saw one of their predictions already coming true but did stumble on some eye-raising shortages that they didn’t mention.

Have you noticed these during your shopping trips? What other items are you having a hard time finding?

12 Items That Are Incredibly Difficult to Find Due to Shortages in Boise

We took a walk around a local Albertsons to see which items are still experiencing shortages. This is what the shelves looked like in January 2023.

LOOK: These Are the 50 Biggest Retailers in America; 2 Are Based in Idaho

Stacker recently put together a list of the top 50 biggest retailers in America using retail sales data from Kantar, provided by the National Retail Federation. They were ranked by the dollar amount of retail sales they did in 2021. We took it a step further to see how many locations they have in Idaho and across the United States.

Total stores were based on figures from Scrapehero. The number of Idaho stores is based on information collected from a brand's website. It was easier to find that info for some and difficult for others. So cut us some slack if we're off by a store or two. It was hard to count all those little dots on the map. (We're looking at you Ace Hardware.)

KEP READING: The Price of These 15 Foods Have Gone Up the Most in Idaho Grocery Stores

We dove into the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index to see which foods have gotten more expensive over the past year. They were able to show the year-to-year (April 2021 to April 2022) price change for 22 different items. These were the foods with the most dramatic increases.

Source: 12 Items That Are Incredibly Difficult to Find Due to Shortages in Boise

Filed Under: Economy, newsletter, groceries, Shortages

Categories: Local News