While some consumers panicked, grocers and other retailers kept cool heads. Sure, there may have been plenty of pictures in the press and on social media over the weekend of gaping voids where the hand sanitiser used to be, but stores handled the footfall, which some described as similar to Christmas, deftly.

By Sunday morning, store managers were proudly tweeting images of shops restored to pristine form and paying tribute to their staff for how they had managed the mayhem.