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A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

thehustle.co

11–20 of 236 posts

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#11
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

I imagine it's folks like me who are baking now for no good reason but to pass the time. I previously didn't eat any bread. Now I'm getting fat.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#12
post #8
post #6

> Parker did some work around town, scrounged together $3k, and began taking a state-subsidized ferry to Juneau, where he bought Costco inventory to resell in Gustavus at a small markup. > As the store grew, Parker and his father launched their own freight company, purchased the town’s gasoline station, and bought two of their own ships — a $300k “insurance policy” that gave Parker tighter control over the supply cha…

Moving inventory on the existing ferry service and selling it at a profit?

I believe GP is criticising the journalism :)

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#13
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

Everyone is buying a mega bag thinking that they will now suddenly do a lot of baking. My mother did this. My grandmother did this. Many of my 23 year old friends did this.

They end up baking one loaf and then just forgetting about it in the pantry, but they bought a 20 lb bag because of how much they expected to bake.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#14
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

Interesting article about this, one of Canada's biggest flour suppliers has not run out of flour, but rather bags to put it in. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/robin-hood-flour-baking-yel...

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#15
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

Consumer flour and commercial/industrial flour are apparently different enough that they can't easily redirect the latter into the former's supply chain.

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#16
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

The most likely explanation to me is (4) -- but it's because flour (et al) producers are struggling to get their flour into the consumer supply chain. Shipping goods to businesses is quite different to shipping it to consumers -- businesses order in bulk and (to be frank) don't care as much about trivial things like packaging or minor product differentiation. Compare the giant packages of cheese and cured meat at your deli counter to the small individually wrapped packages you get elsewhere.

Costco is the exception here (their entire business model is to buy things wholesale, from the business supply chain). Most grocery stores can't stock 12.5kg bags of flour because they don't have enough space on their shelves, not to mention that in their view most consumers would be put off by a lack of choice (even if it means that products are in stock).

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#17
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

Everyone is buying a mega bag thinking that they will now suddenly do a lot of baking. My mother did this. My grandmother did this. Many of my 23 year old friends did this. They end up baking one loaf and then just forgetting about it in the pantry, but they bought a 20 lb bag because of how much they expected to bake.

> Everyone is buying a mega bag thinking that they will now suddenly do a lot of baking

I normally go through a 5kg bag of flour every month or two, just baking some breads and cakes occasionally. So far, I've gone through almost 20kg of flour in 6 weeks. And I know many others who are baking much more than usual

That said, mine is mostly a couple loaves of bread every 3 days substituting a couple bread products from the grocery store every 2 or 3 days. So not causing extra demand for the ingredient, just a different format (i get my flour by the 5 to 10kg bag, the grocery store that normally does my baking likely gets theirs in ...slightly larger volumes)

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#18
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving inventory on the existing ferry service and selling it at a profit?

I believe GP is criticising the journalism :)

Oh, that could be the case. I've always been too literal to ever be good at literary criticism. :P

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#19
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

On what planet does anybody pivot to eating home-baked bread without consuming substantially more of it?

Re: A man feeding a remote Alaska town with a Costco card and a ship

#20
post #10

The scarcity of flour, especially bread flour piques my curiosity. I haven't heard about anyone eating vastly more bread than before the quarantine. It's just that everyone is making it at home instead of buying it with meals at restaurants. One would expect the flour not being shipped to the restaurants would be redirected into the retail supply chain but that doesn't appear to be the case. The only explanations I c…

I've looked into this, and it seems pretty much down to the retail vs. commercial packaging and the assorted supply chains. Both the packaging materials themselves, as well as the plant capacity to pack a bunch of 5lb bags of flour vs. giant 50 or 100lb bags a baker would pick up. I'm sure FDA labeling requirements/etc. are likely different as well so it's not quite as simple as "find a few trucks worth of burlap bags".

One thing I've done is found a local restaurant supply store and had a friend with a business tax ID add me to their account (account is setup to actually charge sales tax so it's all good there). At these places, very little is in shortage - plenty of flour to be had of all types they typically stock. The only shortages I've noticed have been in chicken at the moment, and of course PPE. Everything else seems quite well stocked for the time being.

The downside of course is that when you want to buy some chicken thighs, your minimum order qty is 40lbs. But I started a co-op buying group with my friends in the neighborhood and just spend some time splitting things up into usable quantities.

It's come in handy for stuff that is hard to come buy in the grocery stores or costco like chocolate chips. Of course, the minimum qty of those is 25lbs so we had to divy quite a few up! The cost savings are absolutely astronomical on a per-unit basis for most staple items.

I've also noticed at least at my local costco they have started to get "alternative" sources redirected from the commercial supply chain. Such as 50lb bags of rice in plane white nylon bags with a sticker slapped on it. This seems to support the theory that packaging (both material and labor) is the bottleneck for retail staple goods.

Add in all the waste of every 23 year old who has never baked in their life buying 20lbs of flour to go bad in their pantry and things.

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