Remember when we lost our collective shit about stockpiling?

[gizmo]

Turns out it was us

Shortages in the shops were mostly caused by everyone buying a very little more, not hoarders buying large amounts, according to Kantar.

To be honest I've more suspected this was the case, in the pre lockdown days I didn't see a single person 'stockpiling' and everyone I've spoken too has said they didn't stockpile, but rather than a usual shop of say 1 of each item they got 2 of each item, in case of self isolation, multiply this by 10s of 1000s of households and the result in going to be a stock shortage. On top of that I now have an extra 25 meals to prepare every week as kids are at home and dh is working from home, so my usual 1 loaf of bread is now 3, cheese, ham etc all double. This is happening in most households so the shopping is automatically increasing without stockpiling.

I think I read a post on here from someone who pointed out that the amount of extra shopping sounded huge in aggregated number terms, but was very little extra per household.

I've certainly spent a lot more, and bought less. I normally buy a lot of yellow sticker items at the end of the day. I paid full price for our loaf of bread this week, and couldn't believe the cost - something like £1.80 instead of 50p!

Yes! That's what I've been saying all along. Cut out restaurant meals/staff canteens/sandwiches on the run/cafe brunch - and takeaways for many people. That's a hell of a lot of extra food in each home! We've all seen people with trolleys loaded high, but it could be someone with four kids. Feeding six people for two weeks perhaps - 252 meals. On second thoughts a trolley probably isn't big enough for those people to prepare for a two week isolation period. Oh and snacks, don't forget the snacks.

That's very true about the cost, youngest dd eats next to nothing, so I'm having to get the more expensive brands just to make sure she has something to eat. Like uncle bens boil in the bag rice at £4.95 instead of supermarket at .80p rice is one of the only things she eats!

Yes I think the tales of people with trolleys full of toilet roll were repeated so often it might have seemed that hundreds were doing it when actually it was a tiny number. The vast majority of people bought some extra which was necessary in the circumstances.

Yes I totally agree re feeding everyone at home all day. Also because of the non essential travel I try, as I'm sure many others are, to get absolutely everything in one go. So no popping to local co ops to get extra bread milk and fruit means buying extra on a weekly shop that I wouldn't normally have to bother with.

Getting my shopping yesterday I felt really sheepish and guilty and like the check out person might have considered me a panic buyer/stock piler but it's genuinely what I need for my family to get through a week. Before that shop would have been broken up as others have said with canteen lunches, local shop trips, minus one days worth of meals for a planned weekly trip to parents house etc.

It's difficult but I've also grown to feel like it's less to do wih stockpiling and at least proportionately due to focused demand on supermarkets. Except for baby formula, I'm really struggling to buy that :(

It makes a lot of sense, it would always look like stockpiling from someone else's perspective, we always have pizza on a Friday, so normal we would have a local pizza company deliver but now they've stopped so if I went to the shop and bought two weeks worth of shopping I would need to buy 6 pizzas. Times that by however many people do the same thing and it quickly becomes a shortage

It's not even just stockpiling; it's also just having to buy more food in general. We've had to buy more because we are always in the house for every meal now. It's not a massive amount more, but everyone will be in the same boat. DH always has lunch out of the house and DD and I would do the same once or twice a week. At weekends we would usually eat out once too. All those meals now have to be absorbed into the weekly shop.

I think hoarders are few and far between, really (except for toilet roll). It's just the supply chain wasn't ready for everyone to suddenly have to adjust their buying habits to increase what they bought. It's the scale of it, not the actions of the people involved, mostly. And the fact we are a few weeks in and still have bare shelves in some places hints strongly that the issue is with the supply chain trying to catch up, not people still panic buying weeks later.

Finally! I also suspected this was the case because I just didn't see or know anyone who was doing any massive stockpiling of stuff.

The 'just in time' model cannot cope with changes like this.

Those of us who saw this coming mid January had enough supplies in place for 3 months by the beginning of February. My bulk purchasing happened well in advance of any crazy stockpiling that happened in March. I’m glad I was able to get UHt milk, cereals, tins and snacks at the prices when on offer unlike those who denied what was happening and are faced with limitations on purchases and higher prices because multibuy offers are not on.

I think there's probably also been an element of forward purchasing.

If you normally do a weekly shop, and you know there's about two week's worth of sugar (or whatever) left in the cupboard, you might normally buy a new bag next week. However, faced with the news articles of empty shelves and lockdown, you don't know if it's going to be available next week. It's therefore perfectly logical to buy the new bag of sugar a week early. If everyone does that, it starts to create a peak of demand.

@Wehttam Smug much? I did some limited stockpiling too before this all kicked off, but not everyone has the ability to spend extra on food just in case something happens to make it necessary. A lot of people are living pay cheque to pay cheque, which has been made obvious by the catastrophic effect on people's livelihoods that this has had in a manner of weeks. But well done you, you clever thing

And for allotment owners like me, our home grown supplies are now running low. My potatoes have just run out, my stored squashes are running low, and I don't have many frozen French beans left... so I'll soon be buying more fresh veg soon.

@WinterIsGone

We're at the start of the period known as the hungry gap, when very little that's grown in the UK is actually ready for harvest. It just compounds all the other problems.
wickedleeks.riverford.co.uk/features/local-sourcing-news-farm/what-hungry-gap

Yes, that's so true. We're certainly down to the old, wrinkled and sprouted potatoes here. I'm not going to the allotment now for this year's crop, but sowing what I can in the (sadly quite shady) garden.

DesLynam VERY smug. I’m very smug that I managed to convince my friends, colleagues and immediate family members to do exactly the same and those who couldn’t afford to I sent them money. So yes, VERY smug hun, thanks 😘

I heard someone from the food retailing industry say that a billion pounds worth of extra food has been bought.

It sounds a lot, but a billion pounds (I assume that's a thousand million) divided by 67 million people is about £15 per person.

It is very difficult if you have a larger family. Everyone thinks you’re being a dick but you do need more milk, eggs, bread than you’re allowed to buy.

That's what I thought. Everyone went shopping at the same time & the empty shelves came about after Bozo's first presser in which he finally said the virus was much more serious than flu & a lot of us will loose loved ones. I'd imagine that was the turning point for many in seeing how serious the situation was.

Yep. All the selfish arseholes thinking ‘I’d better just get two packets of pasta, because it’s more important that I have some spare than someone else has any at all’.

And then that initial selfishness of all the people who bought a little more than usual engendered more of the same, because all the people who couldn’t get pasta or loo roll or whatever one week got a little more than they needed the next in case it wasn’t there again.

I haven’t been able to buy loo roll since 13 March. I had to nick an industrial sized roll from work. None of the shops around me have had loo roll, tinned goods, pasta or flour in two weeks or more. So people are STILL being selfish twats, despite the endless assurances from supermarkets that supplies are unaffected and there would be enough for everyone if people would only stop being so thoughtless and self serving.

and those who couldn’t afford to I sent them money.

I’d bet my last loo roll on this being a lie.

@MoreGruel lol you stole a toilet roll from work, and you have the audacity to call people selfish? Believe me, I'd rather be selfish than a thief. Shame on you.
You could use water to clean yourself and pat dry with a towel, nothing justifies being a thief.

You can get loo roll on Amazon Pantry or Prime Now if it's in your city.

@MoreGruel 😂

@moregruel, if I was in your situation I'd have the rage too. But I think you're missing the point...it's not people being 'selfish twats'. Mostly (can't speak for the whole population).

It's people who otherwise wouldn't have lunch at home, they'd have it at work. It's people who don't want to go out to the shops for two weeks because they're doing the right thing. It's people who are now trying to help out the vulnerable. It's people whose local stores are shut or on reduced hours because some of the staff are isolating. All of these have changed shopping patterns to the point where the big supermarkets are seeing these huge spikes in demand. Which they're not set up to deal with.