beatrixpotter
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Supply shortages due to Covid? What are you doing, if anything?
As a small family, I have been stocking up a bit. Here in Southern California I have been to several major markets with empty shelves for items.
I'm not going crazy, but, I am buying extra non perishable items like rice and pasta on my shopping trips.
As a restaurant owner, we are experiencing unavailability of certain critical ingredients. As well as astounding price increases.
Sometimes, we just have to tell a customer, I'm sorry, we've had to take this off our menu because we cannot. Obtain it now.
Meat and Seafood are the hardest hit at the moment.
As a small business owner, my job is to predict future problems and try to get in front of them.
I can absolutely inform you, that restaurant owners are scrambling.
I would love to believe that our problems sourcing our food items will be over within 30 days.
However, I do not believe that for a minute.
As a family, we are not into hoarding.
We are okay with buying some back ups.
I feel like as a mother of a large family I've had to practically take on an extra part time job the past 2 years of predicting and planning ahead for needs for my family due to shortages. But I keep at it and have never regretted it. I'd have so much anxiety if I was constantly waiting last minute to see if the store had what we needed. No panic buying here.
Our local Walmart is constantly out of things. I never know what I will get in my order. I basically always buy a little extra of something though. An extra bottle of Dawn, another bag of cat food etc. I also tend to order two varieties of an item from them since if I order just one they rarely replace it with another variety when they inevitably cancel it on me.
I knew when we would be traveling and bought covid tests ahead of time. I pick up extra things I know we'll need for holiday meals ahead of time. My husband wanted pineapple upside down cake for his birthday. So I bought 2 jars of maraschino cherries instead of just the one I needed. I am buying clothes and shoes ahead for the next season. I was done Christmas shopping and had almost all presents wrapped by Thanksgiving. I buy my garden seeds months ahead of time and almost always in bulk now. I get a better price on it all that way. And if the seed companies start limiting sales this spring like they did the last two springs I'll be fine. No worries. No delays in starting my plants on time.
This summer I almost wondered if I was being foolish to even buy any more masks. Would we even be wearing masks now that we were all vaccinated? That seems so silly now. This week the company I've been buying from canceled our next shipment. And I noticed on the website they had suspended all orders temporarily due to being so overwhelmed. (most all of the masks are out of stock) But phew. I still have masks in stock and bought them before the prices were all jacked up online.
We had gotten into the bad habit of waiting till the last minute for everything and always only buying what we needed at the time. But we all spent years assuming whatever we were going to need would be on the shelves at a local store or 2 days shipping from Amazon. That is not the case now and it's not predicted to return to normal any time soon even.
So instead of just keeping money in the bank I now keep planning ahead of time. If I know I or my children or my parents are going to need it in the near future I don't consider it hoarding. I'm hedging my bets against inflation this way as well. We are almost guaranteed everything is going to continue to go up in price. I buy it early and at a cheaper price. And I'm really really thankful we can afford to do this at this time in our lives. My elderly parents can not. So I buy things for them too I know they will need. My mother was asking me about masks yesterday and I felt really good knowing I'd bought her masks she could use that were in the style comfortable to her. (Ear loops if you were wondering. lol She won't wear the N95 because she doesn't like the straps going around her head.)