Who is panic buying??

[Mulhollandmagoo]

Out of curiosity (and slight irritation at having to spend all day at shops/supermarkets to scrape together a weekly shop) who is panic buying?? As everyone I hear talking about it are annoyed by it, everyone on here is annoyed by it and everyone on social media is annoyed by it.....but the shelves are bare!

So where are these elusive panic buyers?

Buying more items than you need before they disappear is being part of the problem surely?

I had to do a really big shop because we’ve spent the last 2.5 months without a kitchen during a renovation. In the last week we have gone from no food storage capacity to suddenly having cupboards and a fridge freezer (previously just a tiny and very ropey fridge). So we probably looked like we were panic buying, but we were just replacing the things we would usually keep in the cupboard. This big shop was always going to happen as we went from small shops for just a few days’ worth of food to having a fully stocked cupboard, but it came at a terrible time for the supermarkets. The problem is that we now need to keep a week-fortnight’s food in stock in case we need to isolate.

You’re so right about SM posts @CrystalAlligator. I’ve seen plenty “debunked” on MN with posters pointing out that the photo is actually taken in another country and not from the supermarket up the road (despite what Linda from Sheffield’s hairdressers aunt claims) .

It’s the same with lots of the half the people in the shop were filling their trolleys with toilet roll claims. Now I’m sure a small number of idiots did but what you get is one person witnessing this and 50 other people passing it on as half the people in the shop..., giving the impression it’s rife and causing others to think I’d better buy extra just in case it’s not there when I need it.

It’s more likely people saw somebody with a 16/24 pack which certainly takes up space in the trolley but is after all one product. You can’t just open the pack and take a couple!

Yes exactly WhereverIMayRoam! It’s funny how it’s always an older person who gets knocked down. And that all of the posts about heartbroken people staring at their empty baskets involve the elderly. When in reality when I’ve been to the shops recently, it’s been the elderly who’ve had the fullest trollies (and I don’t blame them one bit as they’re most likely to need to stay home for longer and less likely to have a network of friends and colleagues and family like younger people do). I hadn’t been out for a week until yesterday when I did a supermarket dash to stock up, I was expecting scenes of horror and empty shelves, I made a list and was genuinely thinking to myself ‘I really hope I can get coffee, it’ll be sad to go without’ based on all these posts. The reality was absolutely fine. Not a full stock of bread, no pasta or toilet paper, but everything else was there. I mean even if hand soap is sold out shower gel works just the same. We may have to do without some spag bol for a while but nobody is going to starve, there’s plenty of food. We’re just not used to being unable to get every single thing we want every time.

Yesterday my sister was trying to encourage me to start buying newborn size nappies and milk as they’re in short supply in some places. My baby isn’t due until late June! Bless her, I know that’s coming from a good place but honestly, those things are absolutely no use to us for at least another few months and other people need them NOW. I think seeing empty shelves has made otherwise lovely, considerate people go a bit crazy tbh.

In the meantime I’ll be getting a stash of terry cloth nappies from eBay in the next few months (as long as there are plenty) and teaching myself how to use them if I need to.

I work in the nhs in an admin role. At the moment me and my colleagues are working from home. So we obviously still need to do our job but it isn't frontline.

On sunday tescos are opening an hour early in some large stores for essential nhs staff to shop. My colleague are gleefully planning to and stock up on stuff because technically all nhs staff are essential but really? This isn't right is it. They could go any time, we don't work shifts. I think this extra hour should be for nhs staff who are on the frontline only.

I don’t think people on the whole are panic buying. I think most people are making judgements about how much food they’ll need for the whole family for every meal and snacks for two weeks of not going out. Two weeks. Of course you’ll have the folk who load up a trolley with milk (ridiculous but my mum saw with own eyes) but this is a problem with the system of just in time’ ‘just pop to the shops’ buying patterns we’ve all gotten used to. We’re blaming individuals but if you look at the supermarket response has been you can see its an issue with a sudden change in buying patterns that they weren’t expecting but are understandable in the circumstances. Hope things get sorted soon. Literally impossible to get a delivery. But feel worse for shift workers who have no choice but to be out and facing empty shelves.

I think lots of us are panic-buying to a certain degree because of empty aisles. As soon as things come back into stock, we buy it because we don't know when we'll see it again.

I've tried to shop every evening for about 5 days. I live 5 minutes from Sainsbury's but all I've seen are bare aisles. The fruit and veg aisle literally had a few green bananas - absolutely no vegetables, salads or fruit.
No meat, no eggs, no cheeses (except a small amount of cottage cheese), no cereals, no long-life milk, no pasta, no rice, freezers decimated, no soup, no other tinned foods, no toilet rolls, soap, washing powder, paracetamol, hand sanitiser.

I literally bought a few green bananas and 2 tubs of cottage cheese.

I went at 7 a.m. yesterday and there was fresh fruit and veg....but still virtually nothing else.

I then went on to an Asda 15 minutes drive away (which has also been decimated each evening I've visited) and their shelves had been stocked overnight. I managed to buy the last of the long-life milk. I bought 2 packs because I have to shop for a vulnerable family member too. I bought pasta for my relative and bought some for us too. I don't normally eat pasta (it's bland and carb-laden) but I bought it for us because I will have to eat something and if I can't find meat and veg and eggs and cheese, then what am I to do? I have to admit to buying loo roll too, which I don't actually need this week, because most customers had some in their trolley and I didn't know when I might see it again.

I've seen the pictures in the press of trolleys laden with toilet rolls at Costco. However, I think that was misleading at first because, whenever they do a deal in loo rolls (about 45 rolls for £11) trolleys are always laden with them. It's because we are a nation of shopkeepers. They are buying for their businesses.

Seeing pictures in the press could have triggered the stampede for toilet rolls.

I will happily admit that I’ve gone from keeping next to nothing in the cupboards/freezer to becoming much more stocked up.

I usually shop once a week, and buy 5-6 days food and maybe throw in a few bits for the general stocks. We were away for 4 weeks over Dec/Jan and before we went I literally used up almost everything So we could start afresh on return. My cupboards were quite bare.

On Monday I went to Lidl straight from the school run and spent £100 when I would only usually spend about £50-60. I didn’t buy and loo roll and only bought one bag of rice and one pack of spaghetti, didn’t buy multiples of anything actually except tinned tomatoes and 2 loaves of bread so I had one for the freezer.

I bought a bit of extra fresh veg (there was loads, no one seemed to be buying it) and made some sauces and stuck them in the freezer.

I have now got (at a stretch) 2 extra weeks food in I reckon. And I’ll keep it at this level until This is over.

I’m still not buying anything that won’t get used on rotation and I don’t have piles of stuff all over the house, but I have more than I’d normally have. It’s not panic, it’s planning IMO.

I also have 2 90+ year olds (living separately) to shop for, for the foreseeable future. Knowing that I could miss a week’s shop and focus on them is making me a lot calmer.

what confuses me is that people keep saying I just picked up a little extra here & there over the past few weeks.

How is that anywhere near enough for 2-3 months of food with no new intake when the whole family who may often eat out of the home are now all eating at home?

Every weekly shop we've done the pay few weeks we've added one or 2 extras such an extra tin of beans/bottle of wine/packet of paracetamol. So we've got a good amount of food but haven't been buying loads in one go

I work in supply chain for a supermarket. We could see early on an uplift in 'store cupboard' items. This quickly escalated to an uplift in sales across the range.

We have more transactions happening, and an increased average spend. This shows more people are shopping and when they do they are spending more than usual.

To be honest though, I don't think we can really call people greedy & selfish. Being prepared is the only practical thing we can do in the face of this virus.

As customers we're having to change the way we shop. I used to do a family shop once a week for around £80, then do smaller adhoc shops plus eat out. Now we're all home, eating all our meals here. I'm also not taking the kids to the shops so having to go less frequently when DH is home. This means I'm buying more when I'm there.

Suppliers can't produce enough of key lines. The reason there is no bread and meat left in the shops is not because people have been selfish, it's because the retailers are only getting a fraction of what they ordered from suppliers.

We do need to be mindful while the supply chains catch up. Hopefully we should see demand stabilise over the coming weeks as we catch up form this spike.

@moochpooch D o you really have 3 months of food at home??

of course not! @alloutoffucks

I can see Aldi from my upstairs window and the car park is absolutely rammed. There were lots of people standing outside from about half hour before opening. I have no interest in being in a busy confined space at the moment. I've going down when it's empty near closing and picking over what's left. They seem fine for chilled food, cooked meats, cheese, yoghurt, pies etc. Randomly they always have pickled red cabbage left. We can low carb if we need to!

I didn’t buy and loo roll and only bought one bag of rice and one pack of spaghetti, didn’t buy multiples of anything actually except tinned tomatoes and 2 loaves of bread so I had one for the freezer.

And you know, if you had bought multiples, that’s okay. It’s a sensible thing to stock up before a period of isolation or distancing and to ensure you shop less frequently by buying more when you’re there.

I’m seeing many virtue signalling posts on social media (not saying that’s you, Basin), lots of ‘I went to the shops and saw a shelf of hand wash. I bought one’ like anyone gives a fuck. Buy as much or as little as you like/need. People are staring daggers at anyone buying a few boxes of cereal and it’s crackers.

Where I work we are seeing so many panic buyers, they are buying anything and everything. We can't keep essential items on the shelves, or even get them on the shelves half the time. People will literally grab it out of your hands or out of the replenishment trolleys. I can see work having to change how we restock soon

I wasn’t trying to virtue signal @CrystalAlligator I was actually trying to say that I’d bought more than normal and got exactly what I wanted. I didn’t buy loo roll because I have a pack of 24 at home.

I bought what I thought would get us through 2 weeks if necessary. For some that is clearly bags of pasta and tinned soup, for me that looked slightly different but I did what I needed to for us, and from what I knew was most likely to be available to me in the shop.

I imagine that’s what most people are doing and I don’t think poorly of people for that.

Oh I know Basin! Sorry, I thought I’d made it clear I wasn’t referring to you. You just came across like you were genuinely just mentioning it. Not the exaggerated shit I see on social media.

The thing about handwash is that as well as people stock piling it, there are now whole families all at home washing their hands multiple times a day. Thee average household use has also increased considerably.

It’s more likely to be lots of people just buying one extra of each non perishable item than some people buying 10x packs of loo roll.

If we are being told we might have to stay in for 14 days then people who do a weekly shop will of course be buying 2 weeks worth instead, just in case! It’s not really that unreasonable. What is poor is the supermarkets management didn’t anticipate or respond to this increase in demand correctly or quickly enough. Blame the ceos not the public.

It’s more likely to be lots of people just buying one extra of each non perishable item than some people buying 10x packs of loo roll.

I disagree, there was not one box, bottle of washing powder/tabs/ etc in my local large supermarket. There's no way that's one extra item of each category per customer for a 2 weeks supply would leave supermarkets completely bare.

What is poor is the supermarkets management didn’t anticipate or respond to this increase in demand correctly or quickly enough.

Do you know how supply chains work? Planning for the xmas peak & calculating stock levels would probably start 5 months before December.

I wonder if we will forever more feel the need to have an extra packet or two of toilet roll in the same way Dh's Granny was about sugar because of the war.

I didn't go out panic buying or stockpiling. I thought it would be just a few stupid people and hoped it would all calm down. It hasn't calmed down and I'm now down to our last bit of hand wash and haven't seen any on the shelves in the shops near to me. I haven't seen a single packet of loo roll either and that's almost gone too. I'm starting to regret not joining in and picking things up when they were available as I'm now going to be without. I work for the NHS but not on the frontline so I don't feel like I deserve to take advantage of store opening hours and I feel guilty for wanting to go to Tesco's tomorrow morning with my badge for a few essentials but I might have to.

It might get worse again though, other people must be in our situation - always fairly well stocked generally and for past 7/10 days haven't been buying nearly as much as normal, bread and milk basically. At some point we'll need to do a normal 'big shop' though and that'll boost demand for goods.