Stores stock up as customers rush to get essentials before snowstorm

As the first flakes started to fall on Tuesday, there was a flurry of customers at Tim and Tom’s Speedy Market in St. Paul.

“It’s been pretty crazy since we’ve opened, and it hasn’t slowed down,” said Ted Spreigl, the store manager. “Just the mix of excitement and panic but I think it’s trending towards excitement.”

The store plans to stay open through the snowstorm.

“I’m stocking up a little,” Jen Abalan, who stopped by the store on her way home from work. “I need a few meals just in case I don’t feel like leaving the house.”

Robert Wagner lives within walking distance of the market and made two trips this week to stock up on supplies.

“Just want to be prepared,” said Wagner. “I knew Target was going to be a madhouse. I bought some pizzas and some salads and some toilet paper, and some essential stuff, and caffeine.”

He has enough items to spend up to a week at home if the conditions significantly worsen.

“We’ve got a fireplace, some fire logs,” said Wagner. “We’re good in case the power goes out.”

Spreigl told us, “A lot of people said they’re going to hunker down and watch movies and enjoy the snow day.”

He explained they’ve been doing their own storm preparations at the market. The heaviest snow is expected on Wednesday and Thursday, which are typically big delivery days.

“Probably started on Friday communicating with our vendors of what we should order ahead on, just telling them we’re going to order heavy on Tuesday so we don’t have to order again on Wednesday or Thursday in case they start pulling their drivers,” Spreigl said. “I’ve already been talking to drivers [about whether] they’re going to get pulled off the roads and they don’t know because we haven’t seen snow like this in a while.”

As anticipation grows, many are also getting ready for the daunting task of digging out still ahead.

“When [storms] hit, I get busy,” said William Plante, the store manager at Frattallone’s Hardware Store on Como Avenue in St. Paul. “All of my electric snow blowers went out the door today.”

Salt, sand and grit were the high-demand items on Tuesday. While the store was sold out of grit and was nearly out of sand on Tuesday afternoon, it still had plenty of shovels and bags of ice melt. Still, Plante has been fielding questions about when items will be back in stock.

“We probably won’t get a shipment in from one of our suppliers tomorrow, but if we get it in our warehouse, we’ll try to get it on one of our Frat trucks to our 23 stores,” Plante said.