When shopping at the cereal aisle of your local grocery store, you may (or may not) have noticed a lack of Rice Krispies cereal on the shelves. “I went to 3 different stores to find the cereal only to find the shelves wiped clean. Is there a damn SHORRTAGE?!”, wrote one Twitter user. Eventually, other users experienced the same problem and everybody is expressing their concern over the lack of Rice Krispies. Fortunately, the Kellogg’s company has spoken about and explains the lack of cereal:

Ever since the pandemic, rice production has significantly declined, along with the ingredients needed to create the cereal, dropping almost 20% since before the pandemic. Furthermore, the costs of packaging and shipping has exceeded that of production, meaning that even fewer boxes of the cereal were produced. The Kellogg’s company has dubbed this phenomenon as “supply constraints in manufacturing”. However, these constraints are not the only reason for the lack of production.

Due to the pandemic, many workers and labor unions had been laid off. This had led to a strike and even a boycott of the Kellogg’s Company. The strike did not end until December of 2021 when the workers agreed to a five year contract. While production of Kellogg’s cereal still hit a budget surplus, it did cause grocery stores to end sales on all Kellogg’s cereals for the time.

“There is no estimated date for when our company will return to normal demand”, says the Kelloggs company. “But please be patient and rest assured, this shortage is only temporary”. In the meantime, any presence of the cereal has been hoarded by consumers like toilet paper. Homemade Rice Krispie Treats have never sounded so good right about now!