Customers snap up batteries at Oklahoma City stores

After the rush to purchase generators, flashlights and other gadgets to weather the state's latest winter blast, the batteries to power them might be hard to find.

There are three Batteries Plus locations in the Oklahoma City metro area:

6315 N May Ave.

7500 S Santa Fe, Suite 200

1601 S Broadway, Edmond

But retailer Brandon Boozer said he has a never-ending supply, and he'll keep his three Oklahoma City Batteries Plus stores open to sell them as long as customers keep walking in the door.

“We want to make sure we have what people need when they need it,” Boozer said earlier this afternoon, after a busy Wednesday helping customers prepare for the city's latest round of ice and snow.

Boozer said the biggest demand has been for flashlights and flashlight batteries, lanterns and generators batteries. Lanterns have turned into a growing category, he said, “and we're running low.”

Batteries Plus carries a flashlight that runs up to two weeks or 336 hours. The store also offers more than 40,000 different types of batteries year-round, like a high-end, Optima brand car battery one customer purchased Thursday to move a tractor before putting it in a generator for home power.

Boozer may see some customers turned away from other stores where inventories have been depleted.

Earlier this afternoon at the Westlake Ace Hardware on W Britton Road, D-size flashlight batteries and six-volt square lantern batteries “are gone,” store manager John Davis said. “Even the ones we got in today.”

Customers were snapping up any item that's weather related, Davis said. “It's just been crazy,” he said.