Clarifying a Butter Shortage

Clarifying a Butter Shortage
" she said, "it has been visible for much longer." The Federation of Bakery Companies, another industry organization I reached out to, had even put out a statement in May, warning
that "many companies will be struggling in the coming months, amidst relative indifference." I also recruited the help of our intern in the Paris bureau, Eloise Stark, who went to bakeries and supermarkets in Paris to see what shoppers and pastry makers had to say. that From a professional standpoint,
3, 2017
PARIS — I knew the French consumed a lot of butter — as a Franco-American reporter in The Times’s Paris bureau covering France, I’m one of them.
Of course, those in the industry — dairy farmers, butter producers, pastry makers — had been tracking the rising butter prices
and growing tensions between producers and retailers for months.
Still, awareness of the shortages was uneven across France, depending on how closely one followed the news or whether one’s local supermarket was hit.
People were far from lining the streets — at worst, you had to settle for another
brand than the one you usually bought, or had to try another supermarket.
The butter shelves at my local supermarket in #Paris over the weekend #BeurreGate pic.twitter.com/53FYcwJ3re So this was not urgent news,
and I did not want to overstate things by suggesting that France was on the brink of a butter meltdown.