Why is there no yeast on supermarket shelves in Slovakia?

The tradition of baking with fresh yeast is widespread in Central Europe. Producers pledge the coronavirus-related lack in supplies is temporary.

"You must be the thirtieth person asking for it," the supermarket staffer in one of Bratislava's Tesco stores tells the customer inquiring about yeast.

The answer has been the same for some time. There's no yeast.

"First I would recommend people to take the dried yeast, but we ran out of it within two hours," the staffer says. "Now I can only advise you to make your own sourdough at home."

The situation is the same in the Kraj supermarket in the Bratislava borough of Rača.

"We have not had yeast for a long time now. It all goes to bakeries," the shop assistant shakes off the question.

The corona crisis is changing people's shopping habits. First, hand sanitiser and soaps disappeared from shelves, followed by long-lasting foodstuffs.

The Nielsen company estimates the revenues for food and drug store goods went up by 20 percent in the last week of February in the year-on-year comparison. Within three weeks since the shopping fever started, revenues went up in the year-on-year comparison by 220 percent for rice, 172 percent for flour and 150 percent for pasta.

Stocking up on yeast

1. Apr 2020 at 22:26 | Tatiana Kapitánová