Businesses across America may be reeling from the economic impact of COVID-19, but local grocery stores and markets are not only weathering the storm, some are booming.
For one, groceries and markets are deemed as “essential businesses” and can keep their doors open. Moreover, large chain stores like Walmart have been compelled to enact buying limits, and are facing supply chain problems which in turn bring about product shortages.
One such shortage that has affected many people are those related to buying meat.
Consumers have been going to their usual big-box stores and are walking away frustrated, for example, by being told they can buy only a single package of hamburger, or finding shelves emptied of products altogether.
In one such story, as told by Mitch Bolling, a young mother had visited store after store from Independence to Iola.
But “there was no meat!” said Bolling.
While shopping in Iola, she “went to pieces,” he said, “scared” because she was worried she’d have “nothing to feed [her] kids.”
Places like Walmart, “they’re in trouble,” said Bolling. Since “they depend on distributors getting it from the packing house,” many of which are currently shut down.
And when large producers like Tyson or Smithfield close, this causes a ripple effect that throws significant portions of the food system into disarray.
Kansas-based facilities alone supply over 25% of the nation’s total meat supply.
Hence people are increasingly turning to locally-sourced meat markets, which because many butcher cattle, pigs, goats and even buffalo on-site, are not facing the same supply-chain problems and shortages plaguing larger retailers.
ENTER Bolling’s Market with its on-site processing center in Moran.
Bolling’s has been operating at the Moran location for 30 years, but in practically all that time, suggested Mitch Bolling, they’ve never seen business like today’s.
A surge like this, they “haven’t seen since the 90s,” he said.
“If there’s a food scare, [people are] gonna buy meat.”
