The cold snap and bad weather forecasts drove consumers to stores to stock up on supplies. People forming long lines of tens of meters after having stuffed their shopping carts even doubled sales in some stores. Shelves would empty as soon as they products were put on them.
“Sales of the three stores in Bucharest (Cora Lujerului, Pantelimon and Sun Plaza i.e.) went up 100%, 130% and 140% on Thursday and Friday compared with the same time in the previous week. We felt an increase in sales in the stores outside the capital city, too, but not as much as in Bucharest,” says Ana Maria Florea, marketing and PR representative of Cora. Cora sells EUR100 millions’ worth through one store alone, the Lujerului hypermarket (west of Bucharest) a year.
She says people panicked and came to the stores to stock up on supplies.
“People bought everything they could store from canned food to milk, eggs and meat. (…) Sales were better than at Christmas’ time.”
Another retailer, Profi, announced that after the first reports about the snowfall, the daily customer basket rose by 20% in value. “Moreover, on Thursday we had 10,000 shoppers more than Wednesday across the entire network,” says Gaetan Pacton, chief operating officer of PROFI Rom Food, a retail network with 108 stores.
People are therefore stuffing their shopping carts as they did in the times of boom, when consumer spending used go up by as much as 10% even. Consumer spending went down in the last three years of economic crisis.
About a week ago, the first heavy snowfall blocked several trucks of fruit and vegetables on roads throughout the country. When they eventually reached their destinations, the cargo was already frozen. Retailers have taken steps to keep this from happening again.
The chief executive of supermarket chain Billa, Sorana Georgia, at the end of last week said that to prevent such a situation from ever repeating she tried to get some of the products delivered earlier than scheduled and boost the volume of staple foods and fruit and vegetables.
Profi’s Gaetan Pacton, too, said his company had built additional stocks together with its logistics partners.
Producers, in turn, say they have been getting more orders than usual, but are afraid that delivery problems may come up if snowfall continues.
“Some clients boosted orders. Demand is up by as much as 30% for some products,” says Raul Ciurtin, general manager of dairy producer Albalact, who did not say what products exactly.
He said he did not have any trouble with delivery, but if the weather continued to be as bad as during the weekend, some areas might be difficult to reach, such as Constanta county (SE Romania).
“We felt an increase in the number of orders but except Bucharest we’ve had trouble making deliveries. Some of our deliveries to Constanta were cancelled,” says Sorin Minea, shareholder of cold cuts producer Angst. “The locals may have continued to make delivers.”
Minea says he also felt an incresae in the sales of the Angst store chain but will not provide any figures.
(English version by Loredana Frățilă-Cristescu)