Pandemic Food Supply Chain There was a lot of chaos early on during the pandemic. Where was the beef? Restaurants and workplaces shut down and people were ordered, and forced,to stay in. The quantities and packaging that consumers buy vs. what a company buys are quite different and causes problems on distribution and manufacturing end. That left many of them with excess stock that they couldn’t easily redirect to consumers because of packaging-size mismatches. Few home chefs have the cupboard space to accommodate restaurant-size cans of fruit and vegetables, but creating consumer-friendly formats would require additional investment of capital and time. And that would put perishable materials at risk, threatening narrow margins among prices, logistics, and transaction costs.
