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Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

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Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#131

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

vonmoltke wrote: post #40
ghaff wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

While not pallets, I have read anecdotal reports here in NJ that stores are selling out of toilet paper within hours after opening following a restock, so it seems to be more than just buying an extra package every time someone goes to the store. 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.

Hours?

About 3 weeks ago I went to Walmart at 6AM to beat the crowds. I got meat (20lb tube of ground beef!), rice, flour, and a bunch of essentials. Checked the toilet paper aisle and they were out.

Went back to my car and while I sitting there, I saw people leaving the store with TP. Asked a lady where she got it and went back inside. It was gone!

Between the time I checked the racks and left the store (maybe ten minutes at most), they put out toilet paper and sold out! That's insane.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#132

Post by samatman »

baybal2 wrote: post #127
robocat wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A time when people can't eat food IS a food security issue If no food is available, sure. If other food is available, no way. Are people starving in the US yet due to food unavailability?

Have you not seen news of people in the US not able to buy any normal food for weeks, and having to subsist on things like potato chips, and instant noodles? And, yeah. Having a double digit of your (American) population being socially marginalised, relying on unreliable food stamp program, and having no alternative to junk food should've also been called a genuine food crisis long ago. Famines do happen even when th…

I lived in an American food desert for about six months. I hated it! All I could get was cheap burgers and hot dogs and chicken...

The main health problem facing the poorest Americans is obesity, with opioid addiction a close second. Famine is not an issue here and I hope it stays that way.

I'm genuinely unsure what point you're trying to make, but there's an enormous gap between the supply chain being unable to fill the shelves as fast as they're emptied, and the country not having food to put back on those shelves. That's the point I'm trying to make.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#133

Post by mindslight »

ceejayoz wrote: post #105
jdashg wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The situation has given me a new perspective on the ultimate purpose of all those sales around Thanksgiving. The stores know they're going to be selling a large amount of items some time before Thanksgiving. But they can't just order large quantities of items, only to store them until people decide to buy them. Rather, the sales let the supply chain control when people will be buying the bulk quantities, so the goods can arrive in stores as close to being sold as possible.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#134

Post by baybal2 »

samatman wrote: post #132
baybal2 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you not seen news of people in the US not able to buy any normal food for weeks, and having to subsist on things like potato chips, and instant noodles? And, yeah. Having a double digit of your (American) population being socially marginalised, relying on unreliable food stamp program, and having no alternative to junk food should've also been called a genuine food crisis long ago. Famines do happen even when th…

I lived in an American food desert for about six months. I hated it! All I could get was cheap burgers and hot dogs and chicken... The main health problem facing the poorest Americans is obesity, with opioid addiction a close second. Famine is not an issue here and I hope it stays that way. I'm genuinely unsure what point you're trying to make, but there's an enormous gap between the supply chain being unable to fill…

Well, it's certainly nothing like a catastrophic famine, yet it bares the existing problem with food security in US, and it came really close to the level of something genuinely concerning.

Watch for reports of wholesalers going through many month worth of food staples. In Kazakhstan, where I am stuck now, the government came out and asked "where will we get 8 month worth of grain now?" in response to panic buying. Full shelves now came at the cost of many months worth of supplies. Biggest food silos went through 1/3 of annual throughput volume in just 2 weeks here.

> I lived in an American food desert for about six months. I hated it! All I could get was cheap burgers and hot dogs and chicken...

> The main health problem facing the poorest Americans is obesity, with opioid addiction a close second. Famine is not an issue here and I hope it stays that way.

I spent 6 years of my life in between Vancouver, Canada, and Seattle in US.

It was a big surprise to be that finding what otherwise be "normal" food was relatively hard, and you even had to pay extra for it. I was later told that Vancouver is considered very good on that side, and Seattle is actually better than most other US cities.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#135

Post by irrational »

soared wrote: post #124
irrational wrote: post #117

My local stores are totally sold out of flour. I had to travel to a different state to pick up my daughter from college. While traveling, I stopped at a Costco for gas. On a whim I went into the store and they actually had some flour available. I purchased about 200 lbs, even though I had to pay sales tax, since I have no idea when flour will again be available in my area. When I got home my wife asked me if they had…

Flour goes bad in <8 months. I hope your using a pound a day.

I do go through a lot of it. My hobby is baking. The day after I got home I made 2 2-lb loaves with my mother starter.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#136

Post by dredmorbius »

mattrp wrote: post #114
ardy42 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

We just finished our 25lb bag from the Ebola panic buying days... make sure before you buy a ton of flour you know what you’re going to do with it. Bread isn’t very good without yeast (good luck finding that), cakes aren’t very good with all purpose flour, pasta is really hard to make without a pasta maker, etc... sorry to be a downer but I’m kind of the opinion that while some flour is good, and it’s certainly good…

I've become a sourdough bread baker over the past three weeks, going from producing constructionnmaterials (dense bricks) to some of the best bread I've ever had.

Realized yeaast wasn't to be had for love or mone:

https://mastodon.cloud/@dredmorbius/103845407941910287

Starter recipe:

https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/sourdough-starter-re...

Took about 6 days to get going. 3rd loaf was a winner. Feedback from household and neighbours is strongly positive as well.

Flour sourcing has been spotty, but even that has upsides: testing out spelt and einkorn, along with whole wheat, AP, and (blech) bleached flour.

Loaves, rolls, pizza, crumpets, and more.

Most of this based of Youtube videos:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=BJEHsvW2J6M

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2FVfJTGpXnU

Dutch oven, food scale, bench knife (I use a plastering spatula) highly recommended.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#137

Post by natch »

cyphar wrote: post #90
natch wrote: post #78

Earlier 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. 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).

Yeah I’m aware the world isn’t perfect, and some things are not as labeled, but thanks for the heads up.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#138

Post by jarjoura »

Okay, but with all this flour, where is the yeast? I've actually been lucky to find plenty of flour at the local Mexican or Asian markets. Yet, no where I look have I been able to find even a tiny package of yeast. It's out all over the place.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#139

Post by khazhoux »

ceejayoz wrote: post #83
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.

Are you under the impression people are throwing the bread away after baking?

No, I'm under the impression that people who did perfectly well buying loaves of bread before, and whose family@home bread consumption increases the amount of bread usage only by a moderate relative amount, are now buying loaves and months-worth of flour.

The shortage of flour, butter, TP, chips, and everything else is due to individuals' selfishness. There is certainly enough food to account for the extra meals at home, its just now very unevenly distributed.

Re: Organizing a Group Buy of Flour

#140

Post by khazhoux »

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…

I don't care about people trying a new hobby. That doesn't account for the lack of TP, flour, and now even chips and butter. Like you say: hoarders. Everyone is acting selfishly, and the stores aren't policing purchases enough.
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