It takes about 21 ingredients to make a Totino's pizza roll, the bite-size snack that soared in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic as people sought easy-to-make meals. And on any given day since last winter, at least one of those ingredients, if not many, has either been difficult to find or insanely expensive.

The shortages became so bad at one point that General Mills, which makes Totino's, simply couldn't produce enough. "We had lots of empty shelves," said Jon Nudi, the company's president of North America. "Every time we had something fixed, something else popped up."