Tesco is out of stock for everything - we’re doomed!

[Nowisthesummerofourdiscontent]

Logged onto the Tesco site this morning to book a slot for early November. Everything is showing out of stock! Perhaps they know something we don’t…
Apparently they only have one type of red wine to sell (Malbec) and that’s out of stock, too. Gonna be a long and hard winter.🙁

Exactly this. People have become accustomed to continuous, plentiful and varied foodstuffs.

There is an enormous variety of veg available in winter,far more than in the summer

Ships carrying bananas use heavy oil so while not strictly 'airmiles' a considerable amount of fuel is used.

My Tesco is up and down lately website says out of stock for a few things but the store says different and the freezers are empty alot of the time and in the summer the fridges & freezers went down completely. It's so frustrating

There are genuine issues with the supply chain and staffing, but at the same time today's Tesco delivery is apparently coming with one substitution (curly not flat leaf parsley) and nothing missing.

At the same time I did recently have to visit three shops apiece to find plain flour and aubergines.

Not in the UK there isn't if we are going to eat seasonal. There is if we import from all around the world.

@nannybeach Even in victorian times very rich people grew more exotic food in their heated or protected greenhouses. Growing on a commercial scale is totally different.

The problem is around March - its called the hungry gap for a reason.

Its the most depressing in cooking if you want to stay seasonal. Its endless green shit which I don't like or know what to do with.

Freezing the glut of other stuff from the rest of the year is the way forward for this.

My one weakness is wanting fresh onions all year round. Leeks do not work as a substitute.

Big gaps on the shelves today at my local Tesco; I couldn’t work out what was missing as they’d taken the tabs off but it turns out it was bacon. I don’t eat bacon but thought it was unusual as it normally has a long shelf life I think?

Look at what people ate during the second world war when not as much food could be imported. Ordinary fruit like bananas and oranges were very rare. Onions and garlic were very hard to get and expensive if you could get them.
These are now thought of as very ordinary and not at all exotic.
We would have to significantly change what we cook and how we eat if we only ate seasonally based on UK food.
I think most people who urge people to eat seasonally do not understand the implications.

I must be lucky. My last Asda order was all present and correct (admittedly a first in the two years I've been using the service).

No-one starved, and people's health improved!

My weekend Tesco order was OK, although I've noticed some things have become permanently unavailable & some disappear for a while (weeks without Dreamies!) & then return.

Can anyone explain the Sainsburys website to me? I was looking for a certain, slightly niche product. The ones Tesco stocks have bad reviews. Turns out we bought our last one at Sains, so I look at their w/s: it's still available, great! So I log in & it's disappeared. Where there were 3 choices of this item, only 1 is shown & it's not the one I want. I search via every term known to man or beast, & it's not there.

Just to check, I log out & do one search - bingo! All 3 items are there again, with the apparent option to add them to my basket, which of course I cannot do as I'm not logged in.

The only explanation I can think of is that when I log in, it knows my location & checks against stock levels in the vicinity.

Special mention to Sains for its confusing vouchers & offers. I get vouchers in the post which I can only use in-store (I've been in-store once in the last 2-3 years, you'd think they would notice). I get money-off-a-shop offers via email which are apparently good for my first online shop. At first, I ignored these as I've been shopping online since Covid started, so I didn't think they'd be valid. When more arrived, I tried one & it worked. Maybe it meant 'first since you got these vouchers'?

They sent me more, even though they now knew I'd shopped online, so the vouchers couldn't possibly be any use - or could they? I tried one, & it said I couldn't use it as it wasn't my first online shop. Fair enough. Then they sent me more of them. Headdesk.

RedToothBrush,if you have a garden, grow your own onions,sturron,or Stuttgart. They are fantastic keepers. I know about the hunger gap. March! We're October. All the root veg is available now, cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli,kale, spinach,chard. Yes, I do freeze, for Ron. If you've got the patience,you can grow your own fruiting bananas, Cavendish. Since lockdown a lot more people are "growing their own" fruit veg, window sill, window box,shelf,jam jar for mung beans. Kitchen paper for cress. A lot cheaper,and you grow what you want.

@ifIwerenotanandroid

I've had the same issue with Tesco actually. Item I want is available, but disappears when I log into my account. I suspect it's because when I'm logged in, it connects me to my local store where the order is picked, but not logged in and it shows what's available nationally. Maybe.

Must be a regional thing, it'd be interesting to know where people who are struggling to get supplies live. I went to Tescos today (Gloucestershire) and came out with all the items on my list - cat food, cans tomatoes, tomato puree, carrots, banana, oh and a packet of Tescos cookies not on the list😊.

There have been times when I've struggled to get certain items, and at times like those I find it much easier to shop instore as I can clearly see what alternatives are available.

You have to be flexible. If you can't get one type of potato, get another. People are too reliant on very specific items.

Doh! Yes of course. But when there are no carrots at all, neither organic, normal, etc., what do you do? Likewise when my Sainsbury order came with NO eggs, not even a substitution! If they genuinely didn't have any eggs, then what's an appropriate substitution?

do you only have one shop @Badbadbunny ?

Not starving is all we can aspire to now!

You are not going to starve. So apparently we should stop mentioning this.

Just to check, I log out & do one search - bingo! All 3 items are there again, with the apparent option to add them to my basket, which of course I cannot do as I'm not logged in.
The only explanation I can think of is that when I log in, it knows my location & checks against stock levels in the vicinity.

The same with Tesco. Once logged in, it knows which store you receive your deliveries from or C&C and only displays what's currently in stock in your local store or local delivery warehouse.

18 months ago I was told by a group of lorry drivers who always did the EU runs with wine that within the next two years Brexshit was going to hit hard.....wines would be difficult to get....there were going to be ongoing problems with everything brought in from the EU because of the time taking to get lorries through. Costs would sky rocket and the supermarkets would be suffering from empty shelves.

Nothing has improved since that time, indeed...its a lot worse. We are now a third country and as such, will be back to being the sick man of Europe that we were in the early 70s before we grew a brain and voted to join the EU. This is a total own goal....and sadly our kids and grandkids will be stuck with the shitty mess we have given them for their future. My heart weeps.

In March 2020 DH and I made a very conscious decision not to panic buy, but only get what we needed as usual. Due to the idiots stock piling this meant that our family of 4 ended up having 7 weeks without any toilet roll what so ever. The toilet paper manufacturers made a point of stating that there was no issue with materials to meet supply - but the panic buyers caused issues with manufacture and distribution. I don't know if you have ever had to manage without TP but it was pretty grim.
As for people mentioning being unable to get courgettes etc - they are not in season in the UK. We get locally produced seasonal veg from the market. We also have a veg box system here. Might be worth swapping to something locally grown? Yummy butter mashed neeps anyone?

That’s why I use Ocado.