FANCY BISCUITS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 165, 15 July 1941, Page 2

FANCY BISCUITS

STOCKS GETTING LOW

EFFECT OF WAR CONTRACTS Chocolate fingers, cream sandwiches and other fancy lines of biscuits are still seen on afternoon tea tables in Auckland, but supplies are getting short, and soon there will be none available as a result of the concentration by manufacturers on Army orders, details of which were announced some time ago. Retailers in the city and suburbs state that stocks are low. even of plainer types of biscuits, such as wine, arrowroot, water-crackets and ginger-nuts. All manufacturers in the Dominion are now greatly restricting the range of their products, and are confining their output for the domestic market to the cheaper and plainer varieties. "While we have large contracts in connection with the manufacture of the service biscuit to fulfil, we find that the time taken to coat fancy biscuits with chocolate and the double handling involved is too valuable,', said the principal of a large manufacturing firm to-day. "Our customers are being rationed and treated a.s fairly as possible under the circumstances." The manager of the grocery department of a large retail store admitted that stocks were considerably less than they were a month or so ago. ■•Sometimes we find it difficult to satisfy requirements." he said. "It is a hand-to-mouth sort of business." Another retailer pointed out that biscuits in fancy packets and wrappings were also disappearing, and that he was getting only ,'iO per cent of his normal requirements.