Emptying the supermarket shelves

[Viper254]

The small independent businesses, particularly of a more social aspect are going to fare very badly through this too.

On a brighter note, one of these - a vegan cafe, is offering 3 meals a day, for £35/week, delivered daily to the door (locally, of course). Fairly simple food - porridge, soup for lunch then dinner (stew) and pud (looked like a slice of cake). But a fiver a day for 3 meals isn't too bad, I think, and it seems to me it serves various other purposes too. The obvious, bringing food to the vulnerable who can't get out, keeps the cafe open, staff and some drivers in work, with minimal person contact, but also ensures someone is able to keep even a cursory eye on the said vulnerable folks they're serving.

I think that's pretty amazing value! :O

[ina]

I've just been shopping for the first time in a week. Even our small local Coop has a lot of empty shelves... No decent oat cakes, no decaf coffee or tea, no tins of tomatoes... But - the first local strawberries! So far they seem to have enough staff to pick them; no doubt that will change when they are in full season.

[Flo]

Yep the local co-op here is suffering from empty shelves. The last time I went in they had been restricting loo rolls to 2 packets per customer. They opened at 8am and sold the last at 10am. Usually there is bread on offer because it's last date is the day in question. As if. Fresh fruit and veg? Only the organic stuff when I looked - that's expensive like innit?

[ina]

Fruit and veg still plenty here - bread only seeded sour dough! But I rarely eat bread anyway, unless it's 100% rye, and I couldn't get to Dundee farmers' market today, where they sell that wonderful stuff...

We have a small community shop, linked to Grampian FairShare (I think that's what they are called), and there was still quite a bit there, too. Even yoghurts from the school kitchen, and all free for everybody, not just foodbank entitled. Alas, all tinned tomatoes are gone (in all shops), because they mostly come from Italy and Spain, and guess what? They have trouble producing and transporting enough just now. Maybe a taste of things to come, if we don't get a proper trade deal with the rest of Europe?

[Flo]

Lady next door (new tenant in the row, great fun she is) went out grocery shopping for the first time in over 2 weeks. She said she had to wait 2 hours to get into Aldi with their social distancing and only so many in the shop at a time - mind she did go to the one at the Metro Centre next to Newcastle where there is plenty of parking and draws from a very wide area. She said she didn't get all that she wanted and went to try and fill all the spaces in the Co-op and Herons sort of 10 minutes up the steep hill as she was shopping for her disabled son as well. She still didn't get everything. Think she might have enough for a bit though. I had suggested she went to an Aldi in the smaller town some 7 or 8 miles away. She could at least have tried to top up in T***o next door. Though she'd probably have had to queue twice there.

[ina]

Our Coop is nice and quiet, and usually quite well stocked now. I think the smaller shops in smaller communities are better off generally. Just ordered bread etc from the local bakery as well.

[Weedo]

Some of the smaller town shops are now asking for proof of residency to make sure they keep enough on the shelves for the locals. Most of the larger town supermarket shelves are reasonable well stocked now - strangely the higher quality red meat cuts go first.

[ina]

- strangely the higher quality red meat cuts go first.

That's weird - it's the opposite here! Mostly it's just steaks left on the shelf...

[Green Aura]

Getting new slots for our "click and collect" online order is becoming more problematic. When lockdown first started we couldn't get a slot for three weeks - that will be this coming Thursday. The slots are released daily, at midnight. OH waited for it to come online, the other day, (in a queue !!!), and by the time he reached the "front" all slots were already taken!

It makes shopping an entertaining distraction though. Because the online stock is directly linked to our specific store, it keeps removing items from our list when they run out (which, I imagine, can happen quite often during a three week gap between order and pick up) but doesn't replace them when restocked. Some things are limited per customer as well, so it all feels like a rather complicated game of chess. We would leave it until the last minute to finalise our order but we're rather worried that if they take too much off, due to being out of stock, they might just cancel our slot entirely and put it back up for grabs.

I say entertaining, as it sounds very much like a first world problem, but in truth the whole village couldn't live out of our tiny local shop (despite the excellent service they provide). We're much better placed than most with our pantry/freezers. Now they're talking about lockdown extending to June/July/August >>> I can't see the shopping situation improving any.

I think those washcloths and bucket might be brought into play in the not too distant future.

[ina]

They actually had loo rolls at the local Coop last time I was there... Was tempted to buy some although I don't really need any yet!

[Odsox]

How very strange, I thought the UK was the epitome of efficiency with their Just In Time deliveries.
Here in third world Ireland there is no real problem. Our granddaughter has been doing our shopping once a week, and only once was anything sold out, and that was bags of flour, but there were plenty the next week.
The Irish domestic chain supermarket SupaValu will deliver and only needs 1 day notice, and our local Lidl is fully stocked even in the late afternoon.
The local chemists make up prescription orders for pills and the local bus delivers twice a week.

I have now been "cocooned" for 3 weeks and haven't set foot outside our gate, and haven't really needed to. I did need a sheet of glass to repair the broken one in the greenhouse, but the builders yard only do deliveries now, no over the counter, and I don't think they would appreciate coming 15 miles to deliver one sheet of glass. So I covered the hole with polytunnel repair tape.

[Green Aura]

It'll probably last for years, Tony.

When I was a kid, one of my brothers put a hole in one of the bay windows, in the front room, with an air rifle pellet. It was right down in one corner, so Dad covered it up with what I seem to remember was fibre glass tape - is that a thing? Anyway it was still there some 30 years later when they sold the house to move nearer to us. (No new-fangled double glazing for my old man. )

[ina]

How very strange, I thought the UK was the epitome of efficiency with their Just In Time deliveries.

And that's where the problem is... Read (probably on BBC) one guy say that deliveries from the rest of Europe (and that's where most stuff comes from) take twice as long now because they can only have one driver per lorry, so have to interrupt their journeys for the driver to sleep. There'll be many similar cases where things take longer, imported material for domestic production as well, some companies stopped working altogether (Tunnock's!), lots of staff off along the entire production/delivery line... Didn't somebody say we are 3 meals away from disaster at all times?

Mind you, I still see lots of vans running around the place with two people on board - flooring essential? Really? And yesterday I saw 4 guys unloading a trailer full of wooden boards, goodness knows what for, but not the kind you'd need to shore up a house that's falling down... Ok, give them the benefit of the doubt, they all belong to the same family and live together in one house.

[Odsox]

It'll probably last for years, Tony.
. (No new-fangled double glazing for my old man. )

You're probably right Maggie, it's been on the tunnel repair for 3 or 4 years now.
My greenhouse repair is double glazed .... I stuck the tape on both sides.
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[Odsox]

And that's where the problem is... Read (probably on BBC) one guy say that deliveries from the rest of Europe (and that's where most stuff comes from) take twice as long now because they can only have one driver per lorry, so have to interrupt their journeys for the driver to sleep

Ah yes, I hadn't thought of that.
I presume that as we don't appear to be having these problems over here, that our supermarkets don't subscribe to JIT deliveries. Possibly because there are ferries involved and you can't rely on the sea and stormy winter weather cooperating.