Global Supply Chain Crisis 2021: Megathread - A cozy thread for watching the supply chain fall apart just in time for the holidays

[Lorne Armstrong]

Local Kroger is opening an hour later and closing an hour earlier here. Walmart switched to closing at 8 about a year ago, but they're way overpriced compared to Kroger and Winco, so...

Noticed that about Krogers this week. Haven’t shopped at a WalMart in years so I wouldn’t know about that.

BTW, for folks who are interested, a way to maintain your standard of living in all this is to shop multiple stores each week. Read their weekly ads, get their apps installed on your phone. Make a list before you even go to the store and make sure you stick to it and ONLY buy the sale items or the items you know are cheapest/only available at that store. Also, go first thing in the morning. Shop around and find out which stores open at 6 and which don’t, which put out their markdown meat all at once in the morning and which don’t, and then make a schedule for yourself of which stores you’re going to, what you’re getting, how long it’ll take to get it, so that you get to each store as close to opening as possible and can get what you need from them even if supplies are limited because you’re the first one there. Pick a day you can wake up early on and do this, I do it Saturday morning but that’s just because it’s most convenient for me. It can be any day of the week but has to be early in the morning. Good luck!

PS, if you don’t have a deep freezer, get one. Even if it’s just a small chest freezer because that’s all you have room for. Buy a little bit extra meat/dairy/veggies/etc. each week until your freezer is full and then just replace what you pull out of it each week. That way if there are shortages from one week to the next you’ve got reserves to pull from. Stock a deep pantry too. Canned veggies are 3-for $1 at at least one of the stores I go to and I got 2lbs of dried black eyed peas for $0.99 on clearance yesterday. Grab that stuff up and set it back whenever you see a deal.

 

[Billy Beer]

I don't know if this counts as apparently it has been like this since July, but Tesco (haven't tried other supermarkets yet) are no longer giving cash-back at tills. Da fuq?

 

[wopirish]

I don't know if this counts as apparently it has been like this since July, but Tesco (haven't tried other supermarkets yet) are no longer giving cash-back at tills. Da fuq?

Thats been a thing for awhile. Even last year I saw some places had signs up saying they no longer have change.

 

[Billy Beer]

Thats been a thing for awhile. Even last year I saw some places had signs up saying they no longer have change.

I've never known not being able to ask the laddo at the till "can i have fifty quid cash back?". It makes almost 0 difference either way because you can always go to the hole-in-the-wall, but it's strange that such a long standing policy would be knocked on the head like that.

 

[／Ｏｕｒ Ｌａｄｄｉｅ／]

Left coast spice shortage at a single store today (didn't check others). Pasta and meat and produce were all fine. Still seems to be a lot of missing fizzy drink mixers like club soda and tonic and ginger beer, and milk comes and goes depending on the percentage milkfat.

Spoiler: Spice run? Large images

 

[Lorne Armstrong]

Left coast spice shortage at a single store today (didn't check others). Pasta and meat and produce were all fine. Still seems to be a lot of missing fizzy drink mixers like club soda and tonic and ginger beer, and milk comes and goes depending on the percentage milkfat.

Spoiler: Spice run? Large images

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The spice shortage is probably at least in part from folks making their own food rather than paying inflated prices for restaurant food/premade grocery food.

An example is breakfast sausage. It’s around $4 per lb in the US. Sale price is $3.50. Now, the ratio of meat to fat in pork sausage is about 75%-25% and that’s about the same ratio you get in a Boston Butt cut of pork. A Boston Butt is around 11lbs and 10lbs deboned and usually goes for around $0.79-$0.99 per lb when you wait for it to go on sale. Buy 2 Boston Butts, debone, cut up, add spices, grind, and package it up in 1lb packs and you’ve got 20 lbs of breakfast sausage for $1-$1.10 per lb. Buy casings and you can stuff half of that meat into casings with extra spice for hot links which cost $5-$7 per lb at the store. Save those bones too because each can be added to a pot of beans. See what I mean? Folks are buying up those spices so they can make their own.

Anyone wanting to do this should buy the largest containers of spices they can. You can buy them a lot cheaper in large containers and spices keep for years and even when they go “bad” all that means is that they lose flavor. They don’t spoil when stored in a dark, dry environment.

 

[Scale Smerch]

Left coast spice shortage at a single store today (didn't check others). Pasta and meat and produce were all fine. Still seems to be a lot of missing fizzy drink mixers like club soda and tonic and ginger beer, and milk comes and goes depending on the percentage milkfat.

Given the logistics bottleneck of late this isn't that surprising, Herbs and spices are only really used in homemade cooking, and since the majority of people are concerned with (at minimum) partially prepared meals it makes sense these companies would prioritize other products over basic ingredients.

From this to shill for a second I'd highly recommend cooking stuff yourself, especially the food which keeps in the freezer if you're able. To build on @Lorne Armstrong sausages for example are absolutely incredible if you can make them yourself, they beat store-bought, taste much better, and ultimately set you back less than buying the grocery version in the meat isle. Simply putting in the effort can often yield you more than indulging in basic convenience ever could, and if there was a time to make the change now would be so.

 

[Freedom Fighter]

WalMart, Kroger, Target, Meijer have all been out of Jose Ole Mini Tacos for several weeks now. I may not make it, frens.

 

[young chestnut]

Hey gang, finally got caught up on this thread. Figured I'd add my observations.

I'm in the suburbs of a large Midwest city and I live in the opposite of a food desert. There are so many grocery stores within a mile of my house that I haven't even been to one of them yet. They are usually all always completely stocked but since summer I've definitely observed an increasing number of empty shelves in all of them except maybe Whole Foods (which I don't visit often). Prices are definitely going up and I noticed two of the stores switched almost entirely to electronic price tags in the last two months.

Nothing has been permanently absent over the last few months (that I care about) but I've had trouble getting the following during at least two trips:
Green bag of El Monterrey frozen burritos
Friskies cat food (or any canned cat food, sometimes the sections is almost completely wiped out. This has been going on the longest.)
Dean's cottage cheese was gone for over a month (seems to be available again with new packaging)
Low sodium soy sauce
Pepperidge Farm breads
Red Gatorade
The cuts of chicken available are not the same but it changes a lot which cuts are missing.
Onions and garlic are available but often moldy
Canned diced tomatoes (and there are usually 5 different brands available)
Spaghetti noodles (fettuccine, angel hair, etc seem to be always available still)
Refried beans
Heavy whipping cream

I rarely go to more than one store in a day and luckily so far if something was missing at one store and I go to another store the next day there will be low stock of it but I can still get it.

I've also observed empty beverage shelves in pretty much every gas station and Walgreens I've been to.

 

[neverendingmidi]

Red Gatorade

Only red? Any gatorade has been out since the first covid panic buying in 2020 in my area. Maybe they get it in, but it sells out just as fast, to the point I think the last time I saw full shelves was in January of 2020.

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

Groceries in a nice suburban neighborhood outside a big West coast city. There are two other grocery stores within a 2 minute drive and another several within 10 minutes. Whole Foods looked even worse than this but I didn't think to take pics I was too busy fretting about how bad things have to get before Bezos' grocery store starts looking like Pyongyang.

Spoiler: pictures of the grain shortage getting harder to cover up

"Just put out all the corn meal. ALL the corn meal. Just...keep bringing me corn meal maybe they won't notice."

edit: fascinating they are taking the "bad weather" tactic as their excuse. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back but this has clearly been coming to a head for a long time to end up this bleak. There is no immediate, truly severe bad weather here in the area, at all.

 

[888Flux]

Groceries in a nice suburban neighborhood outside a big West coast city. There are two other grocery stores within a 2 minute drive and another several within 10 minutes. Whole Foods looked even worse than this but I didn't think to take pics I was too busy fretting about how bad things have to get before Bezos' grocery store starts looking like Pyongyang.

Spoiler: pictures of the grain shortage getting harder to cover up

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"Just put out all the corn meal. ALL the corn meal. Just...keep bringing me corn meal maybe they won't notice."

edit: fascinating they are taking the "bad weather" tactic as their excuse. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back but this has clearly been coming to a head for a long time to end up this bleak. There is no immediate, truly severe bad weather here in the area, at all.

"severe weather" causes a milk shortage?

what the fuck how long has it been like this? this is indicative of some major supply chain disruption and I doubt it has anything to do with "severe weather".

 

[Larry David's Opera Cape]

"severe weather" causes a milk shortage?

what the fuck how long has it been like this? this is indicative of some major supply chain disruption and I doubt it has anything to do with "severe weather".

Yeah especially since a fair amount of the dairy comes from farms and plants within a 2 hour drive of town.

They had the same signs hanging over the eggs, yogurt and sour cream (which looked like a war zone, total wipeout), bacon, hot dogs and sausage, and lunch meat cases too.

And then where there was supposed to be some kind of cookies or crackers this enormous wall of disgusting off brand caffeine drink I have never seen anyone buy ever.

Also, they just today got some Valentine's crap and not very much of it. Considering when I worked in retail we ordered that shit in October and put it out right after the Christmas displays came down...odd. That part of the store is covered with single-file storage bins, patio accessories, and probably anything else they could drag out of the back of the warehouse.

 

[888Flux]

Also in Germany today, to the surprise of no one there is a major heating outage in Berlin affecting over 390,000 people. Remember when the German government was airing commercials on how to heat your home and stay warm during a blackout last year?

Cogeneration plant failed: 90,000 Berlin households without heating and hot water

https://archive.is/l2pKa - Archive (translated from German to English)

We are only 19 days into winter.

 

[SCSI]

All Taco Bells in my hometown have closed because they have no drivers to deliver food to their stores.

That is Waffle House closing-tier bad.

---

US Intermountain West, fresh herbs at Kroger have been retarded for a while. (Fresh mint? Mythical elf spice, we don't have any, sorry.) Produce has in general been shittier quality for months, especially peppers that look fine on the outside, but inside are like an evil Kinder Surprise. Also, if you're after small nylon washers, good luck, Home Depot doesn't have shit, and what they do have is 3x as expensive as it was before all this.

 

[Kramer on the phone]

I'd have to assume, unless there's some huge excess mortality that is somehow magically being hidden, that most of these people are staying at home and just loading it all on credit.

while thats probably true i think two other big reasons are that 1. people who got laid off at the start of the pandemic reajusted their finances and are doing better not having a job (such as by moving from a city to a suburb or back in with family) or 2. the costs increasing for childcare+activities is more than most people would make doing a real job and the pandemic showed how easy it would be to entertain/teach their kids without having to pay others. For a good chunk of the population between the costs of driving, the commute, and private school/day care unless you're making big money you're better off teaching the kids at home rather than working. Like if daycare is $1k a month per kid, and you have 3 that means 36k a year out of pocket net pay, equal to 54k gross, and that doesn't account for the gas spent commuting or lunch so add another, couple thousand on top of that. you're already at 57K which is way past the median earnings for most people. sure you can just dump them off in public school (if you aren't secretly afraid of minorities) but even then you have to wait until they're 4 or 5, and for millennials just starting families that cost might be too much for them. then you of course have the old or comorbid who are willing to take it on the chin rather than work too. A teacher at my high school that basically taught 2 sometimes 3 generations of people's families recently retired early last year; probably because he didn't want to deal with the covid bullshit. he was a left-libertarian, cool dude would smoke weed all the time. I bet the "retired but still want to work" boomer contingent that always seemed to have some bullshit retail job near me probably aren't there anymore for similar reasons.

Those three are the ones that seem to be the reasons lots of redditors give for not reentering the workforce.

 

[Non-breath oblige]

BTW, for folks who are interested, a way to maintain your standard of living in all this is to shop multiple stores each week. Read their weekly ads, get their apps installed on your phone. Make a list before you even go to the store and make sure you stick to it and ONLY buy the sale items or the items you know are cheapest/only available at that store. Also, go first thing in the morning. Shop around and find out which stores open at 6 and which don’t, which put out their markdown meat all at once in the morning and which don’t, and then make a schedule for yourself of which stores you’re going to, what you’re getting, how long it’ll take to get it, so that you get to each store as close to opening as possible and can get what you need from them even if supplies are limited because you’re the first one there. Pick a day you can wake up early on and do this, I do it Saturday morning but that’s just because it’s most convenient for me. It can be any day of the week but has to be early in the morning. Good luck!

I'd like to add that major big grocery stores (at least the ones I shop at anyway) usually post the upcoming weekly ads online the day before. So if the weekly ad deals are effective say Wednesday 1/12 to the following Tuesday 1/18, then they usually post it on Tuesday 1/11. So I typically figure out a list on Tuesday, then wake up early Wednesday morning, add the deals on the apps, then go to the markets. You have to be careful sometimes when looking at sales price tags though since workers might still be switching out or haven't gotten to switching out the expired ones.

Some other notes:

• Sometimes deals need to be "clipped" from the app in addition to having the rewards card/account for it to register correctly.
• Make sure to read the fine print. Sometimes not all items that you think might qualify for a sale actually qualify (e.g. even though the ad has a deal for milk it might be that only that only the fat free and 1% ones qualify, not the 2% or regular); usually the app does a good job of telling you all the qualifying products, but sometimes it's annoying when you can mix and match certain items and others you can't but it's not super obvious.
• Be sure to glance by non-meat clearance sections every now and then, a lot of it is crap, but sometimes you get some lucky breaks on basic items. Snagged a 20lb bag of rice for half off a few months ago. Had just bought a full bag a few days earlier but wasn't saying no to that.
• Usually the deli and seafood departments aren't open super early so for things like hot food sales you may have to go around later in the day, maybe lunch time or so.

 

[Zbk3VmLfujjzjxBd43tL]

edit: fascinating they are taking the "bad weather" tactic as their excuse. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back but this has clearly been coming to a head for a long time to end up this bleak. There is no immediate, truly severe bad weather here in the area, at all.

Bad weather COULD tip it over the edge. There have been major snowstorms in Nevada lately plus one that hit the Midwest and as far south as northern Alabama (the one Ethan Ralph got stuck in). There's a lot of shipping going through there (Memphis and St. Louis are shitholes but very important to getting things moved around) and Memphis has a major Kelloggs plant IIRC.

Basically, would YOU want to drive a truck to California on snowy, icy roads in the middle of nowhere given all of California's bullshit laws regarding trucking that are causing a lot of this problem to begin with? Apologies if you don't live in California.

Also in Germany today, to the surprise of no one there is a major heating outage in Berlin affecting over 390,000 people. Remember when the German government was airing commercials on how to heat your home and stay warm during a blackout last year?

Cogeneration plant failed: 90,000 Berlin households without heating and hot water

https://archive.md/l2pKa - Archive (translated from German to English)

We are only 19 days into winter.

If you're unfortunate enough to live in Germany in 2022 you might as well bring a generator inside, crank it up, and take a nap right next to it. You're guaranteed to wake up in a better place.

 

[contradiction of terns]

I'm surprised nobody beat me to this.

Norwegian conscripts told to return underwear as Covid hits supplies …

archived 8 Jan 2022 10:40:50 UTC

archive.md

The Norwegian army has run out of underwear due to supply chain issues.

 

[Moist Nugget]

I used to bitch and moan that Walmart has shit selection. "I get my groceries from Kroger because they actually stock more than just the lowest common denominator." But the cancer has spread to Kroger now. I was looking for a can of chopped spinach. Nope. Whole leaf only. WTF

You don't realize you're living in the good times until the good times are past.

Edit:

Tyson frozen chicken breasts are all gone at all the stores. You want frozen chicken? You get nuggets, "tenders", strips, etc. Fuck that noise. I want a nice whole chicken breast. Nah. Can't find it.

North Texas