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I’ve thought about buying one of those big sacks of flour—I bake bread and other stuff routinely, so I know I’d use it up eventually. I mean, I just got a half-pound of vanilla beans. But storage becomes an issue. I’m already struggling a bit to find places for the extra stocking up.
Even something like flour doesn't really last forever--especially if you don't have ideal storage conditions. Maybe you bake enough though.
> 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…
Also, just because a flour is labeled high-gluten doesn't necessarily mean that it actually has more gluten than all-purpose flour. It varies by company and country. A percent in either direction isn't going to affect much. Even though cake flour has about half the gluten of all-purpose, you can still make noodles out of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fail to see how going to the normal location when looking for an item can be called "stupidity".
I think the stupidity refered to here are the people buying pallets full of toilet paper.
Otherwise known as a Food Buying Club. basic idea is you get enough people together to create a wholesale account with a distributor. Get your order and split it up between the members. Hippies and other Frugal people have been doing this forever (in my world forever, I grew up going to them).
The mechanical keyboard community wouldn't exist without group buys, they rely on them to hit minimum order quantities from producers of custom keycaps, PCBs, and other manufactured items. These are then shipped to proxy vendors around the world who do last-mile shipping to end users.
Homebrew clubs also put in wholesale orders for raw materials like yeast, grain, and hops. These are usually more localized given the large volumes involved, and involve a physical meetup where the goods are repackaged and distributed to the buyers.
I daresay there are more groups like this (home bakers maybe?) but they're largely invisible outside their own circles.
Our grocery chain has been buying rice and flour in bulk from restaurant supply houses and repackaging them in 1lb bags. Pretty agile if you ask me.
I've seen my local supermarket doing that with toilet paper recently. They were out for as long as everyone else and now there are these massive blank cardboard crates filled with individually wrapped rolls like you would see in a hotel or office. So some clever buyer got creative with the supply chain which is awesome. Meanwhile, my local Target is still sold out...
Smaller stores are likely more agile in this respect, because they don't need to rely on the items having bar codes and entries in their central inventory system. That's what tends to hamstring large, centralized retailers.
I’ve thought about buying one of those big sacks of flour—I bake bread and other stuff routinely, so I know I’d use it up eventually. I mean, I just got a half-pound of vanilla beans. But storage becomes an issue. I’m already struggling a bit to find places for the extra stocking up.
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
Distributed, not just hub-and-spoke decentralized. We just watched the failure mode of that one.
Our grocery chain has been buying rice and flour in bulk from restaurant supply houses and repackaging them in 1lb bags. Pretty agile if you ask me.
Otherwise known as a Food Buying Club. basic idea is you get enough people together to create a wholesale account with a distributor. Get your order and split it up between the members. Hippies and other Frugal people have been doing this forever (in my world forever, I grew up going to them).
Niche hobby communities do this all the time. The mechanical keyboard community wouldn't exist without group buys, they rely on them to hit minimum order quantities from producers of custom keycaps, PCBs, and other manufactured items. These are then shipped to proxy vendors around the world who do last-mile shipping to end users. Homebrew clubs also put in wholesale orders for raw materials like yeast, grain, and hop…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the stupidity refered to here are the people buying pallets full of toilet paper.
How many people are really buying "pallets"? It's probably more like people picking up another one of those big 18-roll packages even though they're not at the point yet where they would stock up under normal circumstances. And that adds up to a lot (of a bulky product) in the aggregate.
The only way I have been able to get any since this started is the store I mentioned elsewhere that is selling individual institutional rolls.