Local markets dealing with limited meat supplies and increasing prices

That’s because red meats have become scarce. COVID-19 has forced many meat processing plants to close, limiting the supply coming into stores.

As Sam Farris stocked his shelves, he knew getting the meats he’s selling to customers has been coming at a premium.

“The prices have gone up I would say somewhere in the neighborhood of, it could be as high as a dollar or two a pound, and sometimes as low as 25 or 50 cents a pound over a given week,” said Sam Farris, owner Sam’s Town Market.

Farris said it’s all due to the supply and demand of the meats, which has skyrocketed in light of the global pandemic.

The business owner doesn’t believe there’s a meat shortage. Instead, he said customers started “panic-buying” the meats, which prompted warehouses to cut back on how much they’re distributing.

“The warehouses themselves are the ones that ultimately decided to pump the brakes and say OK, let us regroup, we’re going to slow things down for a few days and get it back to normal, and they’ve been encouraging us as store owners to really encourage our clientele to buy at normal rates,” said Farris.

Farris said he would get roughly 10 cases a week on specialty cut steaks, now he’s only getting six or seven.

But his store wasn’t alone. Todd’s Big Star has also felt the impacts of operating under a limited supply of goods.

“We’re having trouble getting everything were ordering,” said Patrick Verner, store owner at Todd’s Big Star. “I’d say were getting maybe 30 or 40% of what we’re ordering on our trucks right now.”

Verner said beef and pork have been hard for them to get their hands on.

“Fortunately being independent, we don’t have just one source to purchase things,” Verner explained. “We can purchase things from anywhere. Fortunately at Todd’s, we’re able to meet a lot of the demands of our customers. We’re not running out, very rarely, on things we need.”

While both stores have continued to stay afloat and service their customers, they believed with things will soon go back to normal as the economy and meat processing plants begin to re-open.

“We stay in contact pretty much every day with several different distributors that we have and we’re getting the same story from all of them, which as we can expect this to last several days possibly a week to 10 days tops, just to get everything back to normal and back up and running as usual,” said Farris.

“With us being an essential business, we need to help people get what they need and that’s our main goal here, is to make sure that we’re serving people and getting them the products that they need right now,” said Verner.

Once meat processing plants begin meeting all of the demands, Verner and Ferris said the meats will also drop back down to normal prices.