Unpopular opinion: maybe so many people don't need to suddenly become bakers who weren't baking before, and then we wouldn't have empty shelves all of the sudden.
Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
81–90 of 170 posts
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
FWIW whisks to me are basic kitchen equipment, anything but specialized. To me specialized would be something like an "avocado cutter" or a "poached egg cooker", etc. Or a waffle iron ;)
See my reply to your comment's sibling.
Ok; I guess you can fork with a whisk ... you can't really whisk with a fork!
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#83Unpopular opinion: maybe so many people don't need to suddenly become bakers who weren't baking before, and then we wouldn't have empty shelves all of the sudden.
Are you under the impression people are throwing the bread away after baking?
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
You can also order toilet paper from the institutional supply chain yourself through a site like McMaster-Carr: https://www.mcmaster.com/toilets/lavatory-paper-products/ 2669K23 is a pack of 20 (I have this sitting in my closet right now) and 2669K24 is a pack of 60. 1-3 week lead times, plan ahead.
Nice, I ordered a pack for myself. Better than adding Tp to Instacart and hoping it magically shows up.
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#85Unpopular opinion: maybe so many people don't need to suddenly become bakers who weren't baking before, and then we wouldn't have empty shelves all of the sudden.
It's a shame that people are learning new things and experimenting with new hobbies to keep themselves busy during quarantine. All change is bad, but especially personal growth.
But really though, a family buying 5 pounds of flour isn't the problem, it's the hoarders loading up shopping carts full of toilet paper and flour that give us empty shelves. I think we'd have enough for everyone if we didn't have greedy hoarders.
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#86Our 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 think big supermarkers are making things worse at the moment. It was very hard to get basic supplies and food when all small shops were ordered to close, and only big supermarkets were kept open, and supplied by organised convoys. This appears to be rational at first, but it only led to people all rushing to those few supermarkets the moment the convoy arrives, and them being emptied clean by first 50 something peo…
> This appears to be rational at first, but it only led to people all rushing to those few supermarkets the moment the convoy arrives, and them being emptied clean by first 50 something people.
Wait, they didn't place restrictions on how many items individual customers could buy?
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#87Earlier 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.
Reddit has had no shortage of photos of people rolling into stores and trying to push out multiple shopping carts full of toilet paper and paper towels. Particularly back before stores imposed limits.
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you just invented grocery stores
No. Everyone in my vicinity buys their non-restaurant food from 2-3 grocery stores. I am talking about having the community's food supply be provided by more suppliers, and each other, p2p style. Perhaps a data-driven "farmer's market" style setup. Distributed, not just hub-and-spoke decentralized. We just watched the failure mode of that one.
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think big supermarkers are making things worse at the moment. It was very hard to get basic supplies and food when all small shops were ordered to close, and only big supermarkets were kept open, and supplied by organised convoys. This appears to be rational at first, but it only led to people all rushing to those few supermarkets the moment the convoy arrives, and them being emptied clean by first 50 something peo…
> This appears to be rational at first, but it only led to people all rushing to those few supermarkets the moment the convoy arrives, and them being emptied clean by first 50 something people. Wait, they didn't place restrictions on how many items individual customers could buy?
Around fifty people, each buying 2 bag of food, is all that's needed to empty an average load of a 40 feet truck.
> Wait, they didn't place restrictions on how many items individual customers could buy?
Barely did, and even when it was enforced, this didn't prevent panickers reliably rushing to supermarket all and every time the truck arrived to buy full bag of food, or two. People were literally running after that truck.
And the more people see that, the more people do that.
Even switching to food stamps wasn't able to stop that entirely until they got the trick with small shops.
Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 o…
>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. Knowingly putting pesticides in your body never seems rational to me, even if it saves some money. But if they were going to do that anyway, then sure, your point stands.
Organic products use pesticides, it's just that they often use older pesticide technologies or supplement the use of pesticides with other techniques for repelling pests. Most organic pesticides are no more healthy nor environmentally friendly than modern synthetic pesticides (maybe this wasn't true when DDT was popular, but these days it is).