The following is an updated version of something I said on a separate thread a few days ago.
For much of my career, now over, I was involved in what was known as large-scale consumer logistics, basically ensuring that the major retailers never suffered any periods of empty shelves. That is very costly to them so they will go to great investment to avoid it happening.
There were two main concepts. Firstly, just in time delivery, which involved having very large out-of-town warehouses, typically close to motorway junctions that could be used to replenish stocks at short notice, during promotions or during any sort of disruption to manufacture.
The other concept was vendor managed inventory. This entails retailers providing their sales information to their suppliers so that suppliers could then be responsible for ensuring correct deliveries. If this short scale panic buying causes any disruption, then 10 years of my career will have been in vain. If people panic buy today, they won't be doing it again, it's a one-off event, the infrastructure of retail is designed to avoid this happening.
I think there might be a temporary shortage of fresh produce from overseas, but it will also mean that there is a glut of home-grown produce which can't be exported so some things will actually be very cheap while others might temporarily be missing. Staff shortages might occasionally cause minor delays.
Martin
