Dan (the food industry CEO)

So that is the sporting goods store, it's the grocery store, it's the hardware store, it's just inventory, right?

Inventory levels typically hover around 1.5 to 1.6.

And what that means is that there are 1.5 to 1.6 months of inventory

virtually ready to go.

So that's on the store shelves, in the distribution centers, in the warehouses, etc.

Last spring, during the COVID rush, all the people who weren't preppers rushing out and becoming preppers, or they thought they were, that pushed our inventory levels down to about 1.2.

Okay, so last spring was about a 0.3 to 0.4 drop.

Well, right now we're at 1.0.

So what that means is we've gone from a month and a half to a little over that of inventory on backlog to about one month.

And that's nationally on all categories.

So that might not sound like a lot.

And for people not in the industry, it's like, okay, 1.5 to 1.0, no big deal.

But what that means is that we've lost two weeks from our typical supply, our six-week supply.

And as prices continue to escalate, which we'll talk about that later, too, as freight and shipping goes up, as it's doing right now, as inflation keeps taking bites out of things, that number is going to keep shrinking.

The chart, you can look at the St.

Louis spread and inflation.

It is.

And the inventory levels are influenced by many other things, right?

There's international buying pressures that are making it more difficult to get what we need to get.

We've kind of covered that in the past, so I don't want to have to rehash it.