Eldest and I went to Costco this afternoon. The parking lot was crazy, but it wasn't terrible inside. We're surmising that most people aren't bringing an entire group of people with them. There wasn't a line to get in, but the person checking memberships cards was using a clicker to keep track of occupancy.
We grabbed two carts and did a stock up. We got 2 bags of dog food even though we have 1 unopened bag already. I'm hoping with the much cooler temperatures the big dog won't get fussy about old food. We bought 2 jugs of All Free and Clear because it's what we use and it was on sale (limit was 2). We bought some veggies for the week, but they were out of both the organic and artisan bags of romaine. They were out of baking potatoes (I didn't need them). No eggplant. Broccoli looked terrible. Other than buying pears, we avoided the fruit area since we didn't need any. We bought two packages of the b/s chicken breasts, two bags of frozen grass-fed beef patties, a bag of frozen wild salmon filets, and canned tuna. Bought 10 dozen eggs, 3 gallons of almond milk (in the half gallon cartons), 3 gallons of ultra pasteurized whole milk (again, in the half gallon cartons). We bought salted butter, and unsalted butter to make ghee. 6 containers of Chobani yogurt because it was on sale for $2.99. Also got olive oil, ketchup, honey, coffee, salt, vanilla extract (price keeps dropping), kalamata olives, corn tortillas, tortilla chips, a jug of Dawn, and deodorant for the men.
At the door Costco indicated they were out of toilet tissue and paper towels, disinfecting wipes, vinegar (which I wanted because we clean the coffee maker with it), bleach, masks, sanitizer, and a few other things. They were low on stock of chicken, but that may have been in part because they had a case devoted to turkeys. I only saw organic turkeys, not regular. From a distance, the beef and pork area looked well stocked, but I don't know if they had all cuts. Bakery area looked full of all sorts of breads and desserts.
I don't think of it as hoarding, but I do now have 5 unopened jugs of laundry detergent, and 4 of Dawn.
Tomorrow I'm going to the regional grocery chain for two standing rib roasts (Thanksgiving and Christmas -- my pizza idea was rejected), and then that's it, we're planning to stay out of the stores until we're vaccinated. We'll use Instacart for pickup at Sprouts, and Instacart for delivery from other stores. I want to go to Aldi to stock up on a few things, but we'll probably place that as an order since the markup at Aldi is low. Aldi is the one store during this pandemic where I've consistently seen poor Covid measure compliance. They stopped disinfecting carts early on and rarely have wipes to do it yourself, they don't enforce wearing masks, and they continue to give you the cart handled by the previous customer without disinfecting it.