What are people buying during coronavirus? Not just toilet paper and hand sanitizer

People have flocked to grocery stores since March and cleared shelves of cleaning products and paper products due to the coronavirus pandemic. That’s not all that is hard to find in stores and online, however.

As hobbies change and people react to COVID-19 news, many other items are selling out or seeing large increases in sales. So don’t be surprised if you have trouble finding these products.

Peloton bikes

Peloton announced in its earnings report this week that sales have surged 66% from this time last year, according to CNBC. With gyms closed across the country, many people have bought at-home workout equipment, including the trendy Peloton bikes.

Peloton’s chief executive, John Foley, said the company’s business model is “COVID-proof” and “recession proof,” according to the Financial Times.

“The shelter in place and work from home realities have created a meaningful tailwind for Peloton,” Foley said, the Financial Times reported.

Puzzles

Have you been building jigsaw puzzles as a way to pass the time during the pandemic? So have a lot of other people.

Puzzle sales for popular gamemakers Ravensburger were up 370% since last year, CNBC reported.

“It didn’t take long for the shelves to bare, the e-commerce dries up, nobody had puzzles,” Carol Glazer, president of puzzlemaker company Ceaco, told NPR last month.

Jim Silver, CEO of Toys, Tots, Pets and More, told WGN sales for puzzles were as high as they have been in his 35 years in the business.

Nintendo Switch

Good luck finding the Nintendo console, as there are shortages across the world as people find video games to be a healthy distraction.

Production and shipping for the devices are “gradually recovering” following delays due to the pandemic, Nintendo CEO Shuntaro Furukawa said this week, according to Reuters.

The device has sold 55.77 million units, making it the third-highest-selling Nintendo console of all time, Nintendo Life reported.

Its recent success has been aided by the March release of “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” which sold 13.41 million copies in its first six weeks, The Verge reported.

Yeast

If you’re trying to bake during the pandemic, you may have trouble finding one important ingredient: yeast.

Yeast sales have increased 410% from the same time last year, according to Nielsen, USA Today reported last month. It may take one to two months for shelves to regain their yeast stock, John Heilman of Fleischmann’s Yeast told the publication.

Yeast maker Red Star said there is an “unprecedented” demand for the product, but its team is “making yeast around the clock” and shipping every day.

“We could have handled twice the normal demand,” Robb MacKie, president and CEO of the American Bakers Association, told Food and Wine. “But five times the normal almost overnight, no one can prepare for that.”

Freezers

As people are buying loads of frozen food, some are having trouble finding a place to store it all.

The owner of an appliance store in Pennsylvania said he is receiving eight to 10 calls a day inquiring about freezers, according to The Courier Express.

“It’s hard to get them anywhere in the United States,” Paul Syktich of Sykitch Appliance told the newspaper. “Nobody has them. My rep just called me up and he thought he had like 10 or 12 and I said, ‘I’ll take them.’ It was just a godsend that he called me.”

Stores like Best Buy and Lowe’s also said they have had increased demand for freezers, USA Today said.

Sympathy cards

There are “temporary shortages of sympathy cards” at some CVS locations due to higher demand, WBZ in Boston reported.

American Greetings, the second-largest producer of greeting cards, said it is having trouble producing cards because of shelter-in-place orders, according to ABC News.

Many people have flocked to buy greeting cards online, but those are also selling out.

“It has been unprecedented,” Alan Friedman, a board member of the Greeting Card Association, told ABC News. “There are $250 orders for greeting cards and every one of them is a sympathy or encouragement.”

This story was originally published May 8, 2020 at 1:22 PM with the headline "What are people buying during coronavirus? Not just toilet paper and hand sanitizer."