The Rice Mystery

Published at 11:12 on 22 May 2020

Here’s a mystery: why is bulk rice still in such short supply?

I could understand pre-packaged rice being in short supply, because of how the shortages have been created: virtually overnight, everyone has stopped eating at restaurants and relied on cooking for themselves. That has caused a sudden, tremendous, and unforeseen increase in the demand for retail food products.

Bulk grains, however, are not really a retail food product. They are a wholesale food product being sold by retail outlets. Bulk foods come in the same large packages that restaurants buy. If anything, there should be sale prices on bulk rice, because distributors should be trying to dispose of a glut of it, as restaurants are no longer purchasing the 50 lb. bags of rice that my local coop uses to fill the bulk bins with.

But no. Most of the rice bins in the bulk section remain empty as of today. It’s very strange.

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