In January 1998, the collapsing Indonesian rupiah produced queues outside Jakarta supermarkets before they opened. Reuters footage and contemporary reports record shoppers rushing for rice, sugar, milk, flour and cooking oil as shelves emptied. One supermarket said it received as many as 10,000 people, roughly five times its normal traffic.
The shoppers were not waiting only for goods. They were trying to convert currency into necessities before it lost still more purchasing power. Fear of the next price rise compressed future shopping into a single day, making the supermarket entrance a visible gauge of a national currency crisis.