[bostik]

To be fair, toilet paper is in a very special product category. It is used by everyone (sudden interest in bidettes notwithstanding), is pretty cheap, weighs very little and takes up an absolutely enormous amount of shelf space relative to its unit cost.

When the panic buying started here in the UK, people were stocking up 2x or 3x the amounts they'd normally buy. You don't need that many customers hauling out multiple 24-roll bags to completely exhaust the in-store stock. Sure, the managers would be stocking up as fast as they could, but even with 80+ pallets per restocking round, customers going locust will have them wiped out in no time.

This resulted in the very predictable photos of empty supermarket shelves. Toilet paper shelves were particularly empty because they couldn't hold that many sales units in the first place.

No wonder the stores imposed limits on how many units of product, or even category, you could buy.