Why Denmark's supermarkets are not going to run out of goods

According to Rasmus Vejbæk-Zerr, who owns the franchise for the Meny supermarket in the Copenhagen suburb of Hellerup, the only item for which there is currently a shortage is alcohol gel hand sanitiser. 

 

"Supplies in Denmark are now being concentrated on the hospitals, so now we don't have any of this alcohol gel to sell to our senior clients," he told The Local. "There is no supermarket that has any 80 percent hand sanitiser to sell: it's sold out everywhere in the country. 

 

In the initial stages of the panic buying, the supermarket struggled to maintain stocks of some other products, but supplies have since returned for normal. 

 

"For a short while we had a problem with yeast and toilet paper, which are not really emergency things, but the supplies of those products are now back."  

 

On the weekend, Vejbæk-Zerr decided that if anyone bought two bottles of hand sanitiser at his supermarket, the second would be priced at 1,000 Danish kroner, and the sign he posted up in his supermarket went viral, with more than two million views on his Facebook page.  

 

"We do this with some other products, just not as drastically, where you get one at a reduced price and the second at the normal prices," he told The Local.  "So I decided to make it really dramatic, with a glint in my eye, to make people understand. People needed to stop and think, 'maybe I can make do with just one'." 

 

The 1000 DK price marker was put up over the weekend. Photo: Rasmus Vejbæk-Zerr 

 

 

Since the first spate of panic buying, the Danish government has worked hard to reassure citizens that there is no risk to basic supplies. 

 

Food Minister Mogens Jensen told a press conference on Tuesday that the government was working hard to ensure that cross-border trade was continuing as normal. "Goods are flowing freely across borders, and as long as we continue to trade as we usually do, there will be no trouble providing supplies," he said. 

 

At the press conference, Peter Høgsted, chief executive of the Coop supermarket chain appealed to customers to shop normally. 

 

All of Coop's 3,000 supermarkets are fully stocked, as are its warehouses, while food producers both in Denmark and internationally continue to produce food, he said. 

 

Peter Høgsted, chief executive of Coop, assured Danes that his supermarket's supplies were not threatened. Photo: Scanpix 

 

 

Vejbæk-Zerr said that companies in the food logistics change were keeping some employees at home, so they could be brought in if those working become sick. 

 

"A lot of companies are already working in two-team shifts, so that if someone gets sick, another team can take over," he said. 

 

"The companies are very well aware that the food industry had to go on like normal, so my supermarket is stocked up like never before. There's no shortage of food, and there's no sign that there will be a shortage of food."