Storms warm, then chill grocery sales in Lawrence

Jim Lewis can thank Mother Nature for a 60 percent spike in his grocery business Tuesday.

And a 60 percent drop Wednesday.

“It’s a tradeoff,” said Lewis, owner/operator of Checkers Grocery, 2300 La. “A lot of people think, ‘Yeah, it’s got to be great to be in the grocery business when they forecast all this bad weather,’ but what happens is you’re real busy a couple of days before the storm. And then after, they’ve bought all that stuff, and they don’t come in. They don’t get out.

“It ends up, at the end of the week, (that) it’s the same amount of business.”

The latest storms — bringing rain, sleet and snow as temperatures plunged — had a chilling effect on sales Wednesday at major grocery stores in Lawrence, but they were by no means alone.

Hutchinson-based Dillon Stores Inc. reported early runs on milk, meat, bread and other food staples, plus Ice Melt, snow shovels and windshield scrapers at many of its 112 stores in Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri and Oklahoma.

“Everybody stocks up,” said spokesperson Su-Ella McKenzie, who answered questions from home Wednesday because of impassable roads. “It’s just part of business, and we rise to the challenge.”

Before the storm hit the Lawrence area, Shawn Brown, store director for Hy-Vee, 4000 W. Sixth St., already had ordered in extra chili beans, rock salt, Duraflame fire logs and other brace-for-the-worst items, noting that grocers “live and die” by such projections.

“The big plus for us is people are going to eat more, because they’re sitting at home,” he said.