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Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

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Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#11

Post by ghaff »

squillesque wrote: post #7
lidHanteyk wrote: post #4

I recently had no problem buying organic flour from the organic aisle, despite the regular aisle being sold out. People are stupid when they panic.

This story reaffirms my sense that the recent explanation du jour for scarcity, residential vs commercial supply chains, isn't quite right. This person set out to buy an order of 250 lb of flour and it still vanished before their eyes. My experience with commercial toilet paper has been the same, watching it dry up just like retail. People seem to be stockpiling cheap familiar essentials, plain and simple, wherever t…

Who knows what's going on in the commercial supply chain though. The usual buyers are canceling orders so the upstream distributors--maybe even manufacturers--are also canceling without necessarily anticipating being able to sell direct to consumers.

That said...

>People seem to be stockpiling cheap familiar essentials, plain and simple, wherever they can get it.

I'm sure there's some truth to this. I'm not stocking up on huge quantities of things I don't need. But, for example, a couple weeks ago there happened to be one bag of my favored flour in the store so I grabbed it even though I wasn't necessarily at the point where I would normally buy it. I also have an extra dozen eggs at home. Etc.

Multiply that behavior by most people and that's a lot of extra buying from stores and inventory scattered around everyone's houses even though most people aren't doing the two-year supply of beans level of prepping.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#12

Post by devchix »

> Webstaurant would ship a pallet of flour, 50 bags of 50lbs each, for $1,081 or $0.43/lb.

> Unfortunately, between placing the order and them shipping it they ran out of stock

Insanity! I'm heartened that people are still baking at home though. For comparison, retail King Arthur All-Purpose flour goes for about $3.69 for 5lbs, or $0.73/lb, so at $0.56/lb Sir Galahad flour is still a bargain. Whole wheat flour has bran and germ and the oil they contain make it harder to store than white flour, so I wouldn't buy a lot of it.

Flour is for more than just bread. Top of my head: tart shell, pizza dough, tortilla, thickening up sauces, can't make a roux or a bechamel without flour, fresh pasta, cookies, muffins, cakes.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#13

Post by jefftk »

squillesque wrote: post #7
lidHanteyk wrote: post #4

I recently had no problem buying organic flour from the organic aisle, despite the regular aisle being sold out. People are stupid when they panic.

This story reaffirms my sense that the recent explanation du jour for scarcity, residential vs commercial supply chains, isn't quite right. This person set out to buy an order of 250 lb of flour and it still vanished before their eyes. My experience with commercial toilet paper has been the same, watching it dry up just like retail. People seem to be stockpiling cheap familiar essentials, plain and simple, wherever t…

Not 250lb -- 2500lb!

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#14

Post by organsnyder »

themmes wrote: post #8
lidHanteyk wrote: post #4

I recently had no problem buying organic flour from the organic aisle, despite the regular aisle being sold out. People are stupid when they panic.

My local supermarket here in the Netherlands split their toiletpaper section and spread it across the store to make use of this stupidity.

I fail to see how going to the normal location when looking for an item can be called "stupidity".

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#15

Post by gegtik »

sneak wrote: post #2

I hope we strengthen and cross link our food supply chains on a local and regional basis like this more in the future. Having most everyone in a city or neighborhood buying from a single chainlink or two isn’t a very resilient system, nor does it make for very efficient markets. Commodities like flour should be available sort of like data on ipfs; the problem is, of course, trust and risk of tampering. Hopefully it w…

I think you just invented grocery stores

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#17

Post by timerol »

lidHanteyk wrote: post #4

I recently had no problem buying organic flour from the organic aisle, despite the regular aisle being sold out. People are stupid when they panic.

It's perfectly rational to want to buy twice as much flour if it's the same price it normally is, but not be willing to pay extra for the organic flour. It depends on the individuals willingness to pay and their estimation of the probability that the situation gets much worse.

For most Americans, they will eventually use their normal brand of flour, so buying extra is essentially no extra cost. (Time-value of money over, say, 6 months means that we're talking about a 1% difference here.) It's a cheap hedge against supply disruptions. But that's not very likely to happen. The organic brand is often at least 20% more expensive, making the calculus not worthwhile.

Put another way, if you expect flour prices to rise 10%, you should buy as much flour as you will use before it goes bad at today's prices, and 0 organic flour at a 20% premium.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#18

Post by droopyEyelids »

devchix wrote: post #12

> Webstaurant would ship a pallet of flour, 50 bags of 50lbs each, for $1,081 or $0.43/lb. > Unfortunately, between placing the order and them shipping it they ran out of stock Insanity! I'm heartened that people are still baking at home though. For comparison, retail King Arthur All-Purpose flour goes for about $3.69 for 5lbs, or $0.73/lb, so at $0.56/lb Sir Galahad flour is still a bargain. Whole wheat flour has br…

waffles are the perfect comfort food during these times- 2c flour, 1.75c milk, 1/2c melted butter or oil, big pinch of salt, 4tsp baking powder, 2 eggs. Throw in some vanilla or other flavor concentrate if you'd like!

A quick crowd pleasing recipe using all staples

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