Where Have All the Products Gone

Food Industry Professionals Address Supply Chain Woes with Creativity and Patience
 

“We want our customers to understand what’s going on, so they’re not surprised when they get here,” says Beth Marcus, co-owner of Cape Cod Beer in Hyannis with her husband, Todd. “Frequently, in our newsletters and on Facebook, etc., we talk about our supply chain issues.” Like earlier this year, when the couple could not get plastic cups for the taproom. They reached out to customers via email and social media, and posted signs at the brewery, imploring them to bring their own cups. And they did.

“Supply chain issues” is one of those COVID terms that has entered our lexicon, affecting even those of us who have never given much thought to where items we use every day come from or how they get to us. Labor shortages in the Cape’s restaurant and hospitality industry have been readily apparent since the start of the pandemic. Problems with the supply chain throughout the local food and beverage space have been less obvious due to the perseverance and ingenuity of industry professionals who have been keeping its effects as undetectable to customers as they possibly can. But, says Marcus, “It’s definitely getting worse. It’s not getting better. We’re seeing it across the board.”

When the 155,000 cans the couple ordered in March 2021 for July 1 delivery were held up until September 9, “We had to find another supplier, which is almost impossible,” Marcus says. Fortunately, the mobile canner they work with was able to help them find cans. The company cans roughly 12 to 14 varieties per year and has always ordered custom-printed cans for each one. That’s a lot of potential loss. To minimize the problem moving forward, when they ran out of printed cans earlier this year, the Marcuses ordered blank cans and asked their graphic designer to print labels for each variety.

Grain that the couple has been buying from the same distributor in upstate New York for 17 years used to arrive in four days. Now it takes 9 to 11 days. And international shipping problems have meant that some of the grain that comes from Germany and the UK has not arrived at all. The brewery has been able to continue making most of the beers because, Marcus explains, “My husband is a Boy Scout. We’re planners. In most cases we’ve been able to adapt and modify some of our recipes – not to the point where customers would notice.”

The brewery has had to put a temporary halt on some specialty beers. Marcus notes, “We’ve had our own resource issues.” Usually they have five people making beer. Currently they are down to three. Rather than maintaining the full variety, “Our priority was having beer when people walk through the door, beer for restaurants and liquor stores,” she says.

In 2020, when Massachusetts mandated that bars could only serve alcohol if they served food as well, Cape Cod Beer added a resident food truck, JP’s Twisted BBQ, live music and a steady stream of special events. The staff realized, “We’re pretty good at this,” Marcus says. “There’s a little bit of PTSD in there, but what the hell.”

Walking into Main Street Wine & Gourmet in Orleans, you would never know that things this year have been anything other than business as usual. Enticing displays of wines and tabletop items greet visitors at the entry. Just beyond, a cheese and charcuterie case is filled with choice selections. Shelves are stocked with specialty food items, and stretching back through the cavernous room are rows and rows of wines from all over the world as well as spirits and craft beers. But, admits co-owner Caitlin Gomes, who bought the 12-year-old business with her husband, Ryan, in 2018, “The supply chain issues have been really a struggle for us.”

From March through September 2020, Gomes says, anything that was coming from overseas, which is a significant portion of her business, was out of stock. “Flights couldn’t come. Cheese came by boat instead. There were huge delays.” As different industries shut down – usually temporarily – there were trickle-down effects, too. For a while small glass jars were unavailable. This affected the shop’s suppliers, from olive growers to pasta sauce makers.

On the wine side, Gomes explains there were enormous shortages of refrigerated containers coming across the ocean, leading to “incredible delays. [Her suppliers] were out of stock like we have never seen before. In my store, I don’t ever buy anything I haven’t tasted. This year it’s been a constant need to adapt, find new products to fill the spots because of how much has been out of stock.” Adding to the challenge, she explains, there is no reliability regarding when they can expect products to be back in stock.

But Gomes has been resourceful. With the store’s best-selling Sancerre unavailable for all of 2021, she had to find a replacement, in this case a different Sancerre. Sometimes, she says, comparable products cost a few dollars more than customers are used to paying, but they have adapted well. “This is a hands-on business. Customer service is the most important thing here. [Our customers] trust and rely on us.”

Historically, Gomes has taken at least one wine-related trip every year, and several more to food and tabletop shows to find products to sell. She has not been on a plane since before March 2020. Though she misses the travel, wine vendors bring wines to the store regularly, so she is still able to taste every wine before selling it. She says it is much more difficult to find unique food and table items when she can’t visit locations to seek them out. But she is managing.