If you're quite comfortably off...

[ILikeyourHairyHands]

Can I suggest you do something?

Which is what I've been doing, (I may get a flaming here, maybe not).

Why not buy your food from small suppliers online? There's lots of next-day availability, it helps support small businesses, you can stay out of the supermarket and thereby ease the situation for others, and you get loads of great things to eat and drink?

What's not to like?

It might seem a bit 'let them eat cake', but I like eating nice food and I want all the small producers to still exist when this is all over. So instead of hitting the already overburdened supermarkets, get online, look for local and artisan producers and suppliers, and spend some money with them.

I have never bought food online before. Could you list a few of the retailers you'd suggest?

I've tried but none of them seem to deliver to me. Suggestions welcome as I'd be happy to do it.

Examples?

I am supporting the small shops locally by buying from them. There are some bits I have to go to the supermarket for though.

It’s the panic buyers who are causing problems, not people just getting what they need

DH is annoyed that I've ordered milk, eggs, and (bog standard) bread from our local milk delivery company. It's more expensive, but I told him it's worth the extra just to stop me worrying about whether we can get hold of that kind of stuff or not.

The cafe next to me is turning itself into a bakery and I'll be buying from them to support them as I want them to keep going. They are setting up online ordering.

Which small suppliers?

And we've got some nice cheese and wine places around us that I'll probably use at some point.
As long as I can get out of the house, the little corner shops (so definitely not "artisan") are the most reliable places to get basics from. There's no flour to be found in any of our supermarkets atm, but plenty in the smaller shops that aren't close to the town centre.

Could you recommend any and the areas they cover? I haven’t been able to find any with stock and/or delivery slots.
I’ve stuck with Ocado out of necessity rather than choice.

At the risk of sounding like a total twat, I stocked up this week at m&s and our local farm shop. I'm going to try and just keep it local from now on.

I'm no millionaire but I don't need to buy the cheapest food brands either so I'm leaving the stock for those who do. Not to mention Tesco is like the seventh circle of hell at the moment.

Can you list some examples? I'd be glad see if I can afford anything.

If you look at local Facebook pages etc you can set ideas. Most restaurants, cafes etc in our local area are advertising takeaways and delivery services now.

Fortnum and Mason, Harrods, Harvey Nicks !!! Maybe not !
I've been using the local farm shop and a wholesaler who normally supplies restaurants .

Is it the sort of place where it ends up costing a tenner for a couple of small pieces of cheese because of postage costs? I could manage it for the odd item or two but not enough for it to be meaningful to most businesses.

I've just bought some meat from the local artisan butcher, not cheap but will last us a while, and also have a delivery of some fresh fruit and veg and some jam etc. coming from a local farm shop. The local cafes etc. around here are offering things for collection and delivery too, such as bread, scones, cakes, etc.

I recommend joining community Facebook pages - that's where I saw posts by all these businesses and went to investigate further.

OP- Your post is almost useless without providing examples of the local suppliers you are referring too!!!

Yes, I certainly would support a local store or supplier, but don't know of any at all other than borough market which now deliver within the M25.

The OP can't really offer examples of small local businesses given they're, well, local and probably not relevant to 90% of people posting here who don't live where she does. The point is that there are lots of little independent food stores and cafes that are offering special deals and delivered and collections at the moment, but I didn't know most of them existed until I joined a couple of Facebook groups for the local area and saw their posts!

I live in a village in rural Scotland, and if we have small businesses offering stuff online locally then I'm pretty sure elsewhere will too! It just might take a bit of looking.

In my local area (South Worcs) the farm shops are all doing delivery of veg, meat, bread etc, and the pubs/cafes/restaurants are mostly now doing takeaway or meals to heat at home. We're buying local wherever we can to support them

Ok, ones I use are;

The Cornish Fishmonger for fish and live seafood.

The Blackmountains Smokery for lovely smoked trout, welsh cheese, duck and charcuterie.

Venison, wild boar, game etc

Foreman and Field are a larger London-based company who are an old smokehouse but also sell cheese, meat, alcohol and deli items from small local producers, many of them sell online exclusively through Foreman.

Similarly Dukeshill are largely ham producers (the best ham), but also stock goods from smaller suppliers. Their pies from the Northern Pie Company are the best!

And loads of others that I use, I keep getting phone calls that are distracting me, I'll post some more tomorrow, these are just from the very top of my head that I use all the time.

Google is your friend here.

Sorry for the delay, my parents both rang me!

Sorry we are comfortably off but no I am not going to spend extravagantly. Buying from local Morissons, village shop and local farm shop.

Polish shops and asian supermarkets are great value. They dont do deliveries, but it's fun trying new foods. Think cheap rye bread, interesting cheeses, Indian sweets, and eggs come in 24 packs.

There are also online Greek, Spanish, Italian and French delis all based in the UK. There's a company who makes amazing corn tacos and Mexican cheese. I'll look up the links tomorrow, I've got loads as I love cooking so try to get the best ingredients for whatever I'm cooking.

All of these suppliers have availability and need support.

I'm lucky enough to have several dairy farms close by. I've chosen one of them to have deliveries from as of Monday. I will be getting daily milk and currently choosing other items from the online list from the farm shop. If you have milk delivery services and you can afford to, support them

That's fine Travelled, spending on food is important to me because I like to, but I know it's an extravagance, there's no need to apologise. It was just a suggestion!