Thibaud Hue, edited by Romain Rouillard
1:23 p.m., August 07, 2022modified to
1:56 p.m., August 07, 2022
The shelves of supermarkets have been gray in recent weeks. Several basic products, such as bottled water, are sometimes impossible to find. A new blow for consumers, already facing many shortages due to drought and the war in Ukraine.
After mustard shortages and D’oil, other products tend to disappear from the shelves of our supermarkets. This is the case of charcoal for barbecues but also sandwiches and even bottles of water. What confuse many consumers.
“We haven’t had any in the store for weeks because it’s summer or whatever. It upsets me because these are products that I used to find and I find them more. It changes the way I do my shopping,” says Anne-Marie, who leaves the supermarket empty-handed.
No shortage of bottled water
But unlike other products, such as mustard for example, we cannot speak of a shortage, as explained by Olivier Dauvers, specialist in mass consumption: “On sandwiches, on water, on drinks more generally, we are faced with a problem of overconsumption which is linked in particular to the context. When it is hot, we obviously buy a lot more water, a lot more drinks than usual, so we are at a higher rate of consumption . And the stores are not necessarily stocked in the right quantities. So there is no shortage of bottled water and there will not be, “he reassures.
This phenomenon should therefore only be temporary, the time that the temperatures soften first and that distributors can reorganize and offer much larger stocks. “As long as we don’t run out of ice during the heat wave, everything is fine”, proclaims a customer.
