So now: no meat, no veg, no fruit, no bread....

[OnlyFoolsnMothers]

Live in London- must be 7 supermarkets within a 10 minute drive of me, I went to 3 today- no meat, no veg, no fruit, no bread- on top of no cleaning products.
What exactly are we supposed to do? I haven’t seen a restocked supermarket in weeks.
FYI I consider all preppers scum!

If your supermarket has stock, Where are you? What time are you turning up to shop?

Everything would be fine with the food supplies if people shopped as normal!!!

You mean the way YOU consider everyone should. Well, luckily, you don't rule the world. I don't live near a ton of shops and also cannot be fucked with 'nipping' out every week so what I do is one big shop, usually in a place like Lidl or Aldi, once a month. I spent time on prepping forums and sites, fermenting sites, homebrewing, dehydrating, growing food, etc. As a bit of a hobby but also because I found it sensible.

You chose to spend your time in other ways and now it's everyone else's fault?

We don't all live in London with a ton of shops nearby.

A Sainsburys Local near me in SW London was pretty well stocked today. The only things they didn’t have were loo roll and soy sauce. I guess they were restocked overnight but it’s never that busy. I’m getting more bits from corner shops, the Korean supermarket etc as they don’t seem as ‘picked-over’ (or they have a lot in reserve out the back!)

Everything would be fine with the food supplies if people shopped as normal!!!

People can’t shop as normal, they have to prepare for 2 weeks of self isolation. 🤷🏻‍♀️

thank you for those directing to places without such a shortage - seems SE London/ Kent has a major issue

Why would people need weapons?
To protect themselves if attacked buying food (there has already been brawls over loo roll and food. Just look at some of the Black Friday scenes..)
And to protect themselves from intruders given we will likely see a massive spike in crime.

Well if all you preppers aren’t shopping who is taking EVERYTHING!l?!
The ‘just in time’ system we have in this country is not made for sudden high demand, which is exactly what has happened.

All of a sudden people are buying double (or more) their usual shop.
The system isn’t prepared for that and if most supermarkets are anything like the penny DH works in, they are working understaffed so they struggle to cope.

Most ‘panic buyers’ are people buying two weeks or so of shopping in one go.
Course there will be ones buying way more but I don’t believe most are.

Things will calm down again soon, people have supplies now. The supermarkets will be able to restock.

there is going to be so much wastage

Why would there be? You can cook it and freeze it, preserve it, dehydrate a lot of it, give it away once you realise you won't be using it, you can even make pesto out of say, bags of rocket or herbs about to go off.

If everyone prepped, no one would panic buy.

If everyone who possibly could - prepped, then the shelves would be full for the people who couldn't afford to in advance.

Everyone who can - should prep. It would stop things like this happening in future.

My extra 3 tins of beans once/week throughout 2019 did nobody any harm as shelves were consistently full, and in fact will have contributed to increased supply ordering, and more on the shelves now.
If everyone did the same thing slowly and consistently as a lifestyle, they wouldn't be buying 50 cans now!

If you're over 70 you need to be preparing to be isolated in your home for the next couple of months. It's not panic buying, it's precisely following govt instructions.

Nobody was feral where I was shopping. Massive Sainsbury’s, most shelves bare. Most of what I wanted wasn’t there so bought some tinned tomsx4, long life juice.... Ok with you?

I work full time, we can only get to shops once a week. I’ll shop accordingly thanks.

People can’t shop as normal, they have to prepare for 2 weeks of self isolation.

I usually do two online shops a month. Doing a shop to cover the next two weeks is normal. Buying 80 loo rolls and 60 cans of soup is not.

Do most people own dehydrators, we have one but I didn’t think they were that common, people must be mainly freezing their veg

Here’s my theory. When I was growing up we did a big weekly shop that would last one week. Milkman delivered fresh milk. But now as a nation we have gotten used to Smaller more regular shops. We always pop out for things. Or just pop to the supermarket after work depending on what we fancy that night. People are worried about having to isolate or lockdown so they are buying more than a few days worth of meals. And because everyone is shopping like this the supermarkets aren’t restocking fast enough as they don’t have this in place. Other than toilet paper and pasta I don’t think people are buying 20 chickens and five cows

Basically most people are buying 2/3 packs of everything instead of 1. So nothing left for everyone else

I think it's obvious on a lot of these threads that people genuinely don't understand how preppers do things and lump them together with panic buyers. It's new territory for all of us.

Although saying that, I think I might have just reached peak 'well I'm a prepper and I grew/made/acquired everything I needed back in 2001, so I don't need to get a thing now, except maybe one tiny chocolate bar etc.' I think I've read more or less the same thing about 450 times now. We get it. You prepped

I should imagine this episode will encourage prepping in the future.

We are where we are now - I hope that supermarkets put in strict policies to try to reduce the level of people buying excessive items.

It's also really important that people who haven't been able to prepare and find themselves low on a regular shop get food and don't get forgotten.

60 cans of soup is not

This is precisely what I mean about people maybe seeing a big shop for two weeks and getting the wrong idea.

I have a family of 5, we like soup, 60 cans sounds like an eye watering amount but wouldn’t actually necessarily go that far.

If I have done my calculations correct, if each of us had one can of soup a day for two weeks that would be 70 cans of soup..

How long are we going to have threads where someone is shrieking and frothing and insulting preppers, claiming that because we bought pasta 3 months ago we are all cunts?
It’s not our fault if you trusted the government, believed in the gods of online shopping and thought you could rely on Deliveroo and MaccyD’s.
We didn’t, we planned ahead and we are not flapping about, panic buying and raiding the food bank stores.
So stop yelling at us please.

I’m a prepper, I haven’t needed to shop at all in the past week.
I chopped and froze veg, meat and fish, and bought a few tins of stuff a week pre the first anticipated Brexit date, we have enough to get us through for a few months which is necessary as I have a child with disabilities who is medically vulnerable.

For those of you struggling to get stuff the following might be worth a try-
Wholesale fruit and veg markets- most areas have them
Eco friendly plastic free shops where you take your own containers to fill
Farm shops
Cash and carry outlets like Bookers and Bestway
Small little corner shops and those attached to petrol stations
Amazon prime/ amazon pantry
Egg substitute, powdered milk and bread baking supplies were still in stock on amazon this morning

@PatriciaBateman I couldnt agree more with what you have said. We are the solution not the problem. Preppers have been mocked for so long but, imagine if we hadnt prepped and were now joining all the people just waking up. No thanks, i'll stay home with my well stocked cupboards.

I have most things except pasta and flour in SW London

there is going to be so much wastage

Preppers waste nothing. It takes me months to fill a bin bag. Wrappers get recycled. Food scraps go into compost. Old vegetables get turned into soup. Food gets rotated. Any slightly out of date food gets eaten.

Well I dont really conciously prep, my shopping method has been when I go to the shop if what I need is on offer I tend to buy a bit e.g. shampoo n conditioner I'd get 2 or 3 bottles, same with detergent and softener I'll grab quite a few.

Only reason is cos when I run out they are never on offer so I end up paying more. Plus the less reason I need to go to the supermarket the less I'll end up spending.

In a way it's worked for me cos I have enough of everything I can avoid the hell that is the supermarkets right now.

NeckPain you may get it, but vast numbers of irate and sweaty MNetters really don’t. Like the OP.

It's the preppers who have decided to jump on board in the last few weeks, jumping on here asking for tips are the ones culpable alongside panic buyers.