Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

jefftk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 170 posts

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#101

Post by ardy42 »

greedo wrote: post #10

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.

> 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 haven't seen that yet, but at least one grocery chain in my area was offering 25 lb bags of flour for sale about a month ago (or maybe they were 40-50 lb bags).

Haven't been back since to that store since to see if they're still doing it (been slowly rotating through the four we visit regularly), but flour has been available in 5lb bags so long as you're not too picky about the brand or type

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#102

Post by dantheman »

baybal2 wrote: post #89
markdown wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 t…

Where was this? Is there an article about it?

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#103

Post by MisterBastahrd »

bruceb wrote: post #54
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #27

This isn't really a political point as much as an observation, but... the people in this country who have the worst compensation and benefits are the ones who are involved in the harvesting and preparation of our food. To this point, the supply chain hasn't been too badly affected because poor people need to work to survive and so they'll go to work sick. But now COVID has spread all over the place, and people who ar…

There is not a shortage of people who have very little money and will take risks.

There are plenty of people who have an extra $600 a week to take their chances at home.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#104

Post by jdashg »

ChristianBundy wrote: post #85
khazhoux wrote: post #81

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.

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 hoar…

You don't really need hoarders to have a problem. If only twice as many households are cooking now than before, instead of stores having say 10% slack, they run out half way through the week. If you have four times as many people cooking, you run out your slack in two days.

So the store increases their orders. But their suppliers only have X% slack. So they have to ramp up too. The whole supply/demand balance takes time to stabilize.

The same number of people are eating the same calories as before, but the supply chains for those calories have shifted rapidly. Same for toilet paper: No one's pooping on company time anymore!

Yes there are some hoarders, but we'd get temporary problems even with 0% hoarders.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#105

Post by ceejayoz »

jdashg wrote: post #104
ChristianBundy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hoar…

You don't really need hoarders to have a problem. If only twice as many households are cooking now than before, instead of stores having say 10% slack, they run out half way through the week. If you have four times as many people cooking, you run out your slack in two days. So the store increases their orders. But their suppliers only have X% slack. So they have to ramp up too. The whole supply/demand balance takes t…

Yep. It was basically a Thanksgiving-level event without the usual months of prep work preceding it.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#106

Post by pixl97 »

AdmiralAsshat wrote: post #41
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…

I question how many people are actually using the flour they're hoarding, and how many are just putting it in the back of the pantry because, "When the end of the world comes, you'll need flour!" It's very irritating for those of us who actually bake on a regular basis and resisted the temptation to hoard for hoarding's sake.

Around 50% of US meals are in commercial kitchens, be that schools or restaurants. The massive change in commercial to retail sales is going to cause far more issues than hoarders.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#107

Post by vector_spaces »

sneak wrote: post #37
gegtik wrote: post #15

Earlier 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.

Cutting out the middleman (grocery stores) won't remove the hub and spoke architecture.

Particularly when it comes to staple commodities like flour, salt, sugar, etc -- grocery stores by and large buy these items from the same small number of distributors. Grocery and food distribution in general have been consolidating aggressively over the last decade or so.

More can definitely be done on this front with regional produce or prepared/processed foods though.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#108

Post by djrogers »

dickjocke wrote: post #75
baybal2 wrote: post #63

Earlier 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…

In North America are non-supermarkets and non-warehouses even 5% of grocery retail? I think that restaurants being allowed to sell groceries would've been cool. But I don't see how mom and pop grocers move the needle at all here.

>I think that restaurants being allowed to sell groceries would've been cool.

At least 2 restaraunts in my town do this. Order online, drive around beck (sometimes with a line of cars, but never more than a 5 minute wait), and they drop your food/tp/etc in the trunk. Much better than hitting up Safeway or Costco, and not really much more expensive.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#109

Post by baybal2 »

dantheman wrote: post #102
baybal2 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Where was this? Is there an article about it?

Nur Sultan city. Stuck here when I came to collect last payment from a delinquent client for whom we did a project half a year ago.

That was a very foolish thing to do just for a few thousand dollars

The very same situation was happening in some cities in China in first weeks of quarantine, before they also realised that.

After some reading, I realises that this did happen during great lot of modern day famines around the world. "Throwing food off the truck" seems to be a really counterproductive way to distribute food, because of it facilitating overconsumption by the few.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#110

Post by 55555 »

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…

Sometimes stores just keep selling when out of stock to collect your email address. Especially likely if they only authorized his card instead of fully capturing the charge.
Post reply on HN