People who panic buy because snow

I’m assuming that their store cupboards don’t magically replenish themselves so they top it up whilst shopping.

A handful of tinned cans might last a single person a month and a family only a week.

Nope got a large young family but why panic buy never understand that

They do their best with whatever margin they can manage (which might not be much).

It's one of those "every little helps" situations. Even an extra day or two's food from a small number of tins/packets/the freezer can reduce panicked pressure on supply chains

It can be frozen.

You have enough food in your house for 3-4 weeks???? Well I don't. We are a family of four and we get through a lot of food (two hungry teenage boys), so I need to shop every 2-3 days and we get through a lot of fresh food inc. meat, eggs, milk, bread, bananas, apples, salad, cheese. I don't tend to buy a lot of tinned food, but if I lived somewhere remote I probably would if bad weather was forecast and I feared we might be snowed in.

Well done you....

I buy for 7 here, the youngest is 17years, my weekly shop looks like panic buying every week 😂😂 stockpiling for that amount I'd need another room, the Tesco men absolutely love commenting on my weekly shop and are always commenting on the amount of food I buy and how I clear out the shop and how their backs are broken lifting my shopping off the van .

Storm season starting here so we've made sure we have enough food and that the gas bottles are full. It's predicted to be a bad fire summer too so it makes sense to be adequately prepared.

As we saw at the start of Covid, it doesn’t take much before people start panic buying. 🤷‍♀️

But, I would think most people have a cupboard with non perishable goods in, so I can’t see the point of stockpiling stuff that will go off. 🙄

It's not panic buying it's just shopping.
If snow is forecast (I'm in a rural area so challenging to get to town in snow) then I make sure I do my food shop earlier before the snow hits. I've not bought anything extra just a couple of days earlier than I would have done.

Shops may see a rise in sales before snow or a storm etc & then a dip when it slows but the sales balance out.

It's good planning & a sensible thing to do. Better than having an accident on treacherous roads because you didn't plan & then had no choice but to drive into town.

Why is it panic buying to buy something you will need in advance?

All the people with stocks of food have panic bought by that measure, just a lot further in advance

I do 2 food shops a week, 4 growing boys I can just about keep up with how much they eat. So likely I will buy bread on both shops and they eat it and if it’s a slow bread week it can be frozen. Milk is always used. I split my shop so things are fresh and don’t go off, I don’t hoard but I do buy a lot. Much more than 1 person would need.

It’s a lot easier to keep food stocks when you live alone, rather than a family who can clear food stores like locusts!

I have a stocked cupboard, but things like bread, milk and fruit and veg need topping up every few days with teenagers in the house. I bought one extra bread and 4 extra pints of milk yesterday plus extra fruit just in case we carnt get out or we lose power. Being single and feeding teenagers is not the same thing. Plus nothing will go to wast with teenage boys in the house.

Probably the same reason people panic bought toilet rolls in case they caught a respiratory virus.

I appreciate the forecast hasn’t been quite the same but this has made me chuckle. I remember people laughing in the supermarket queue one Monday in 2018 (I think it was 2018!) when I said I was stocking up because of forecast. Snowed in for over a fortnight and had the military drop by by chinook to check on us. The Beast from the East was our first winter in this house. We have a dedicated “snow” cupboard now filled with all the things (eg radio that runs on batteries) that we wished we had had but didn’t.

You're observing the world around you, but unfortunately, you're using yourself as the standard to judge what's nomal. Everyone's different, with their own needs, and nobody's stealing or taking anything unfairly.

What about people who can’t afford a stockpile of anything or are a large family with teenagers with huge appetites?

Some families go through staples like milk or bread quite quickly. I remember being shocked when my OH told me to buy 10 litres of milk, but the parents-in-law get through it rapidly. There was no storm on the way that day, but if there had been I'm sure it would have looked like panic buying.

Also, if the weather makes it unlikely people will get to the supermarket for a few days, then the food waste might be likely to happen if people don't "panic buy", because the food will be sat on the supermarket shelves going out of date there. It's not that ridiculous to bring forward a few purchases by a few days.

3 people in my house. Got extra bread and milk yesterday because everyone will be home and need feeding..... not panic buying just making sure I can feed them!!

Of course people can live without bread but you could say that about anything. It's cheap ,filling and adaptable. If you've got 3 weeks worth of food ,good for you but many don't. People don't have storage space, or the money to keep a surplus in, or they manage usually day to day. They feel a bit worried about the weather,and making plans to manage.

Why would it get chucked? We slice and freeze extra bread or make croutons for soups, salads or dog treats. We make pancakes with the milk that's gone off. We almost never throw food away. Again, 4 people in the house. A loaf of bread barely lasts a day.

Why would it get chucked? They're buying it in case they can't get to the shops over the next few days. So they'll eat it over the next few days.

Extra bread and milk go in the freezer. To keep as a "store cupboard". Or with "extra" eggs to make bread and butter pudding.

Panic buying can cause disruption to the supply chain and therefore what’s on the shelves

The trouble is that its absolute antithesis - prepping (ie buying ahead over months/years so that you do indeed have a store cupboard) - also gets routinely decried on here. Even though it doesn’t stress supply chains, and isn’t done in a panic when something is expected to happen.

The ‘just in time’ model isn’t particularly shockproof. It might be necessary for fresh fruit/flowers and some veg. But it’s very easily disrupted. Something I expect we’ll see more of because of severe weather events (not just here, but across the supply chain, which is now international)

We don’t have adequate food security in UK, nor good levels of storage.