The article discusses the problems that developed in the system of food supply to the population of industrial cities of Kazakhstan in the late 1940s and 1980s on the example of the city  Kentau. After analyzing archival data that did not enter scientific circulation, it was found that until mid-1960, a number of difficulties arose in the system of equipping the population of Kentau. First of all, emphasis was placed on the development of production based on raw materials, and domestic and social problems of the population were pushed to later places. In the daily life of the townspeople, the practice of sewing clothes with their own hands, making household furniture necessary for life, and building individual housing on their own has become widespread. Only after the "Temirtau incident", which shook the Soviet Union, the tense domestic problems of the newly emerging industrial cities in the country were positively resolved and began to be equipped according to a centralized system.