People in the Denver area are buying freezers faster than appliance dealers can restock them in coronavirus-related rush

Appliance dealers across metro Denver are seeing a huge increase in demand for chest freezers as people rush to buy more groceries than they normally do amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

For Appliance Factory Mattress Kingdom, the surge became apparent late last week before state officials began ordering businesses to close in hopes of stemming the rising tide of the health crisis.

"I would say about Thursday, Friday of last week we all of sudden we had this huge influx of calls and online inquires and purchases," Jason Duong, the Thornton-based company's marketing director, said.

As of Thursday, sales volume for freezers was up four or five times over a normal week. Five- and seven-cubic-foot freezers have been the most popular item, Duong said, to the point they were never hitting the showroom floors because they were being sold online as soon as they were off the truck.

Customers who have been unable to get their hands on freezers instead started looking at secondary fridges, particularly side-by-sides with a lot of freezer capacity, according to Duong.

"It makes sense," he said, referencing the mad dash many have made load up on groceries. "They've got to somehow keep the food fresh."

Experts in logistics say the country's food supply chain is strong and barren store shelves are a result of panic or "concern buying" as opposed to shortages. But the demand for freezer space is following that trend.

At the Home Depot store at 500 S. Santa Fe Drive in Denver, appliance department staffer Steve Barber said he got four small freezers in on Friday morning and all four were gone by 1:30 p.m. Freezer sales are up threefold this week in that store alone, and the other dozen or so Home Depots in the metro area he as checked with are also selling out as fast as they can stock them.

"I could look at their inventories and they don't have any," Barber said.

It's to the point that some appliance dealers — like Lousiville-based Mountain High Appliance — can't sell out of freezers because their suppliers don't have any to sell to them.

"It's almost like every other request lately has been, 'Do you have this freezer? Do you have that freezer?' That type of thing," general manager Jim Varvil said Friday. "We've reached out to every manufacturer we work with and said, 'Can we get freezers?' and nobody has inventory."

Varvil said that while foot traffic in the company's four Colorado showrooms has dropped since staying home and social distancing has taken hold, phone calls and web traffic has picked up and he is hopeful sales will follow that trend.

With the possibility of Gov. Jared Polis following in the footsteps of the governors in California and other states and issuing a shelter-in-place order that would shut down retail sales at a host of still-operating businesses, Duong is hopeful that appliance delivery will be dubbed essential service and allowed to continue should that step be deemed necessary.

"If your fridge breaks, you can't not have a fridge for a week," he said. "If your range breaks you still need to be able to cook for your family."

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