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

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

#31

Post by Scoundreller »

bluedino wrote: post #21
MattGaiser wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So where are all the 2lb bags then?

When the cheaper 20lb bags sell out, people buy the 2lb bags.

My guess is that more production is for the 20lb bags, and the 2lb bags usually sat on the shelf longer.

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

#32

Post by jrockway »

bluedino wrote: post #22

There's a video of a grocery trip in Alaska, the prices are insane. https://youtu.be/3TVlmmVqgnQ

Some of the prices were insane, some of them are exactly what I pay at my grocery store in Brooklyn. $7.99 for a block of cheese? Yup. But as the weight/volume increases, their prices skyrocket where wight/volume doesn't seem to matter at all here. Obviously that's where the cost comes from.

What is interesting is how similar the extremes are. In the middle of nowhere, the cost of the product is dominated by shipping. In the center of modern society, the cost is dominated by rent. It's only when you go out to the suburbs, probably one of society's least efficient constructions, that you see the lowest prices -- a perfect balance of efficiency, I guess. It is weird and I wonder if there's some lesson in here.

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

#33

Post by bigiain »

pengaru wrote: post #19
joncp wrote: 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?

If it works, it's delicious and you end up eating heaps more than usual.

If your first two or three attempts a baking bread fail, then you end up becoming one of those people with 85% of a 20lb bag of flour in the cupboard waiting for the weevils to move in...

(The temp calibration on my oven is way out. Doesn't matter too much for roasting chickens or cooking lasagne, but baking is more temperamental than that, and way too easy to fuck up. Luckily I only bought a 1kg bag of flour to fail hard with...)

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

#34

Post by notyourday »

joncp wrote: 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…

> . 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.

So I have friends that are reasonably known restaurateurs who obviously shut down their restaurants. I was talking to them about the logistics and the issues with the supply chain. It was rather eye opening to me.

TL;DR : the problem with the supply chain is that the restaurants pay more for ingredients wholesale than what the public is willing to pay retail.

We do not have a product shortages -- we have excessive amount of perishable product that was offloaded at excessive markup to restaurants/cafeterias/schools/etc. I'm in NYC - I can still walk into a regular grocery store in Queens/Brooklyn ( non Whole Foods ) and get chicken quarters from Perdue for $0.59-$0.89/lb. I can get a tomahawk steak for $14.95/lb (the chefs were shocked), a whole salmon (whole) imported from Canada, received today for $6.95/lb. I can get 10 lb onions for $4.95. Leg of lamb (whole) is $4.99/lb

Restaurants pay 20-30% more than these prices as the baseline to Baldor or Sysco. I guess that 20-30% slippage does not matter for the restaurant when it is charging 4x-5x of the raw cost per plate.

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

#35

Post by teruakohatu »

MattGaiser wrote: post #13
joncp wrote: 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.

My flour usage has gone way up, but there was a shortage of yeast in my city and when I was eventually able to get some, it was a werid brand and such a large package that had more yeast that I could use in years.

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

#36

Post by madengr »

joncp wrote: 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…

Flour isn’t the problem now, it’s yeast. Fortunately my mother in law traded us a few packs for an old iMac, so my daughter can now make pizza dough.

Joking aside, we did give her an iMac, but you can’t find yeast anywhere.

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

#37

Post by AnimalMuppet »

mcny wrote: post #27
phil21 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bag…

> 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. How quickly does processed flour go bad? I’d imagine as long as you store in a dry, air-tight box, it should be ok?

How many 23-year-olds know to do that? How many are going to remember, and actually do it?

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

#38

Post by aaronblohowiak »

mcny wrote: post #27
phil21 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 bag…

> 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. How quickly does processed flour go bad? I’d imagine as long as you store in a dry, air-tight box, it should be ok?

White flour lasts a long time. Whole wheat goes rancid faster. Just like white vs brown rice.

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

#39

Post by Scoundreller »

Marsymars wrote: post #2

I visited Dawson City in the Yukon last year and was surprised to see Kirkland Signature goods on sale at the general store. Didn't think to ask how they got there.

Heh, as a Canadian living in the city, I often buy Kirkland brand allergy pills and ibuprofen off EBay from the US because it’s cheaper.

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

#40

Post by pengaru »

Retric wrote: post #23
pengaru wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The comment is about total bread consumption, not home-baked bread consumption. Home bakers and factories are both using the same basic ingredients, so why can’t supply chain’s easily swap? And the simple reality is they use different bags for transport and factories to fill the bags. Thus it’s a bag problem not a flour problem. PS: What’s so interesting about the shutdown is it exposed so much about the supply chain…

> The comment is about total bread consumption, not home-baked bread consumption.

If the majority of bread-eaters have pivoted to baking it at home, total bread consumption has very likely increased.

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