In general, you’d say hurricanes are bad for business. But apparently they’re good for some products—specifically, beer and strawberry Pop-Tarts.

According to an item in Sunday’s New York Times about Wal-Mart and its pretty scary knack for learning all about its customers through their buying habits, the company used some groovy software to figure out what Floridians bought as Hurricane Charley approached—and stocked its stores accordingly for Hurricane Frances.

Survival gear and canned goods weren’t the only go-to categories. “We didn’t know in the past that strawberry Pop-Tarts increase in sales, like seven times their normal sales rate, ahead of a hurricane,” a Wal-Mart rep says. “And the pre-hurricane top-selling item was beer.”

Does the next Pop-Tarts commercial not write itself?

–Posted by Tim Nudd