Self Fulfilling Prophecy-Grocery Shortages?

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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I’ve been seeing more & more stories on groceries shortages*. So far my small town of 100,000 has been relatively unaffected. The only product that I that my store did not have 2 weeks ago was Nacho Cheese Doritos. I just substituted another salty snack food. And the Doritos appeared on the shelf this week.

As these “news” articles become prevalent do these stories drive people to stock up on groceries thus fulfilling the grocery shortage similar to the toilet paper shortage at the very beginning of Covid? Or the subsequent hand sanitizer shortage?
I am curious if other board members are experiencing grocery shortages?
I believe the hand sanitizer & tp shortage were driven by fear that could affect groceries.
I do not doubt there are shortages of some items such as micro chips or bicycle rims** etc. But some shortages can be created by fear rather than raw supply shortage.

*https://news.yahoo.com/u-grocery-shortages-deepen-pandemic-1…
** A friend of mine whose sole means of transportation is a bicycle had difficulty of locating a bicycle in stock in town 9 months ago. WE did find one but those shops that were out of stock could give no idea when a new rim would arrive. That the bike shop had a bicycle part supply problem at that time. And I have no idea if that problem has eased or remains the same.

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I’ve been seeing more & more stories on groceries shortages*. So far my small town of 100,000 has been relatively unaffected. The only product that I that my store did not have 2 weeks ago was Nacho Cheese Doritos. I just substituted another salty snack food. And the Doritos appeared on the shelf this week.

On the bright side, a shortage of junk food would lead to a healthier population. Junk food weakens the immune system and is pro-inflammatory.

If there’s a shortage of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, seeds, probiotic foods, or canned coconut milk (which I use to make my own yogurt), then I’ll have a problem.

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I am curious if other board members are experiencing grocery shortages?

Only spotty so far.

I’ve noticed that Charmin toilet paper is becoming increasingly hard to find while the shelves are full of store brands. Different quality.

Took three visits to different stores to find some celery, and then only the packaged celery sticks.

Hard to find original V8 juice. Plenty of low sodium and spicy hot.

Mildly irritating. Nothing major.

Biggest irritation has been shortage of checkout personnel, stores rearranging their layout, and difficulty in finding someone to tell you where the stuff has moved to. Increasing pressure to us self-checkout.

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The only product that I that my store did not have 2 weeks ago was Nacho Cheese Doritos. I just substituted another salty snack food. And the Doritos appeared on the shelf this week.

On the bright side, a shortage of junk food would lead to a healthier population. Junk food weakens the immune system and is pro-inflammatory.

I’m 70 on society security & medicare. I’m one of those riding on the wagon being supported by productive members of society. So far I have no need for prescription drugs. I’m counting on Doritos & bacon to ensure that I don’t live too long. I took care of an 90+ year old uncle. IMO Life at 90 ain’t living. It’s just existing. YMMV

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tjscott0
I am curious if other board members are experiencing grocery shortages?

For SoCal (Orange County), we do see ‘gaps’ here and there on the shelves, but NOTHING like the bone dry shelves that show on TV news programs nightly.

TP and paper towels shortages came and went. Now, zero issues.

Still ‘lots’ of ships anchored out there FOR WEEKS, outside LA / Long Beach harbors. CA and the US just can’t be too careful about dropping the myriad regulations that strangle harbor rules about container handling, trucks hauling away, etc.

It seems quite like the proverbial chickens coming home to roost kind of thing. If it gets bad enuff we might see some folks getting their craniums extricated from body cavities. Theirs and others.

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< So far my small town of 100,000 has been relatively unaffected.>

I live just outside of a town with about 5,500 residents. THAT’s small! Furthermore, our small town is very remote and connected to the mainland by a 2-lane highway which is connected to a large city (Seattle) that is connected to the larger mainland over high mountain passes.

This week, our local WalMart was missing many items. The entire pasta section was bare. The checkout lady said that the snows that blocked Snoqualmie Pass prevented supply trucks from arriving from the east. However, the fruits and vegetables were plentiful so the route to the south was open.

Our Covid-19 case load is over 2,000 per 100,000. That is 10 times the level of last summer.

Wendy

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Here on the NE side of Austin TX, it seems to be sporadic?
It’s easy to see a bare, or almost bare, shelf and make up a baseless “story”.

Personally, in the last month, I’ve laid in another 3 to 6 month supply* of paper towels, toilet paper, bottled water**, and perhaps 3 weeks of canned and frozen goods for “$#it” happens.
While all is “good” I continue the normal “fresh” stuff shopping 2x/week.

This is mostly prepping for potential “bad” weather from now til April.
I typically do this EVERY winter, too.

So far TX is not included in the inclement weather forecasts.

WA, IA, TN, SC,… NC, WV, are currently being warned. The surrounding states, too.
https://youtu.be/n3LO0R6WYaY

:eyes:
ralph

*being as I’m single… one bulk pack of Charmin or Bounty goes a LONG way?
So, stop making up a story about my garage full of such items. LOLOLOLOL.
** I routinely keep bottled spring water on hand for coffee.

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In the primary grocery store I frequent, I notice my product gap in the packaged and canned shelf aisles. But, the particularly noticeable area is the doors of the refrigerated foods. I mean, it is very apparent when there is no frozen potatoes, or it gets quite low on frozen pizza or microwavable snacks.

It is definitely not as worrisome as 2020. Then, the store had small notes on the freezer doors or on the store shelves saying limit one’s purchase to two per popular items. So far, not seen the notes in 2021 or 2022.

Grocery store has a current promo on Progresso soup - that works for me with the current weather :slight_smile:

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So far no shortage of any kind of food aboard the ship we are on. That may change if the itinerary gets whacked.

Jeff
(Weather about 80F in Hawaii today)

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Only thing I haven’t been able to find are Costco’s large tins of honey roasted peanuts, but that’s pretty much par for the course even during “normal” times given their popularity. Everything else has been available when we’ve wanted it (though sometimes in smaller packages than we’d normally buy)

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I had an order for curbside pickup on Friday, and was surprised by which items were refunded. They said that there was no reasonable substitute for Fuji apples, which made it sound as if they were completely out of apples. The only other thing with no substitute was bok choy, almost equally strange since the store usually has four or five different kinds (regular, baby, mini, tips, etc.).

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I frequent Kroger and Food City, and occasionally WalMart, Costco and Whole Foods, so I get a pretty good perspective.

Unlike 2019, when every shelf was so full the products were seemingly jumping into the cart saying “take me, take me”, and unlike 2020 when so many shelves were barren, I’m finding the shortages well, short, and varied, annoying but not worrisome.

For a while I couldn’t get Clausen pickles of any kind. They’re back, but in limited quantities and selection. Cherry Coke Zero comes and goes. My favorite pretzels might be out for a while but they always come back soon enough (I now buy 4-5 bags at a time, so yeah, I’m the guy causing the shortages for others.)

Most recently it’s canned cat food, which I read about in the WSJ before I noticed it, and you better believe I ran out and stocked up (thereby exacerbating the shortage) because I do not want to face angry cats.

In all of this lurks the dreaded inflation which is not, as some argue, because I have too much money in my pocket, but because of simple supply and demand, and once manufacturers and retailers find they can goose the price a little because of the shortage (see: Ford & chip shortage = higher prices + soaring used car costs), it takes another hammer to convince them back down the ladder, and the cascade of “best profits ever” convinces me that we don’t have that hammer now.

Eventually the supply chain kinks will work out and then true competition will be the hammer. The best analogy I can give is when you are in your car and you are in a traffic jam and finally, getting slowly to the front it suddenly breaks up and you are free flowing again. And you turn to your wife and say “So what caused the jam?” And she shrugs because there was no accident, no breakdown, no nothing - it was just the push-pull of traffic that got out of hand. Eventually the jam will break up as though it was never there -

But we’re not there yet. We’re inching toward the front of the line but we obviously have several months, and more “fake inflation” to go. (I am not saying the inflation isn’t real, just that it isn’t really real.)

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I’ve been seeing more & more stories on groceries shortages*.

The media’s stock in trade these days is hype and hysteria, rather than trying to inform people.

I suspect there are people still working off the pile of TP they hoarded in April 2020.

“People are dumb, panicky, dangerous, animals”, Agent K.

Steve

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The media’s stock in trade these days is hype and hysteria, rather than trying to inform people.

You keep saying this. Do you mean the media sholdn’t report on food shortages, ships stacked up in harbors, that manufacturers say they can’t get the right products to continue production, that they expect the shortages to last another six months?

What would your idea news station be reporting? That Sara Johnson won the Spelling Bee at ChowderHead High School in Scituate last week?

If the weather forecasters predict a big snow storm there’s no hype necessary; people are going to run to the store and buy toilet paper, period. If there’s an accident on the highway people driving by are going to rubberneck, and then they’re going to go hone and tell their spouse about it, not the other 900 cars they passed where nothing was wrong.

Is there a calm way to say “A volcano blew up today in the middle of the ocean, and if you live on the West Coast there’s a chance of a tsunami according to officials.”?

I await your considered guidance

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What would your idea news station be reporting? That Sara Johnson won the Spelling Bee at ChowderHead High School in Scituate last week?

There is also a difference between trivial news and good news. For example, a hurricane and its damage always gets lots of press. At the same time, last year saw the lowest number of hurricanes in the satellite era (since 1980) and the second lowest number of strong hurricanes (Cat 3+).
http://tropical.atmos.colostate.edu/Realtime/index.php?arch&…

Did you see that reported anywhere?

DB2

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I await your considered guidance

(Noticing your sarcasm)

It’s the daily hype, like “severe weather” and “breaking news”. “Severe weather” is a daily feature on the “news” now.

How many times, over weeks and months, do we need to see ships waiting to unload? How many times do we need to be warned of a “marginal risk” of “severe weather”? The local “news” weather person doesn’t tell you what the percentage probability is, only to be afraid of the weather. “Marginal risk” is a 5-10% probability.

When the “severe weather” hype started, a local station here, if there was the slightest chance of anything, would trot out it’s default forecast of “60mph winds and 1” hail", instead of the most likely conditions. How is that supposed to inform anyone, rather than scare them? I have seen plenty of “severe weather” that was cloudy with an occasional light shower.

Even the stock footage the “news” shows now is designed to promote hysteria. I’m talking about stock shots, like a shot of the White House, or of street traffic. Notice how often the video is speeded up, so a sunny day with a gentle breeze looks frantic because the flags and tree leaves are moving frenetically, traffic lights flash like strobes as vehicles streak past. Why speed up the video, if not to create a frantic mood?

Why is all news “BREAKING NEWS”? The major networks started pasting a “BREAKING NEWS” banner on every story around the first of January 2021. I used to watch NBC, but they started doing that in the week between Christmas 2020 and New Year. That was the last straw, so I switched to CBS. CBS started doing the same thing a week later. Switched to ABC, they were doing the same thing. How can they be reporting on a self-entitled tennis player, for the tenth day in a row, and it still be “BREAKING NEWS”?

Steve

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How many times, over weeks and months, do we need to see ships waiting to unload? How many times do we need to be warned of a “marginal risk” of “severe weather”? The local “news” weather person doesn’t tell you what the percentage probability is, only to be afraid of the weather. “Marginal risk” is a 5-10% probability.

Exactly! Yet 98% of Christmas gifts arrived on time.

Despite supply chain woes, Christmas gifts arriving on time
https://www.fox5ny.com/news/despite-supply-chain-woes-christ…

Just as somebody is profiting off the vaccine ignorance and disinformation, same goes for the “inflation disinformation”.

intercst

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Just as somebody is profiting off the vaccine ignorance and disinformation, same goes for the “inflation disinformation”.

I don’t see how a profit is made off of plague disinformation. Seems more like a cult. As it happens, I dug out my VHS tape of the made-for-TV movie about the Jim Jones cult a few weeks ago.

Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guyana_Tragedy:_The_Story_of_J…

Mentioned the Jones cult and mass suicide at work one day. A coworker, who was born in 73, had never heard of it.

Steve

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Mentioned the Jones cult and mass suicide at work one day. A coworker, who was born in 73, had never heard of it.

Steve

That would mean that they also wouldn’t understand the expression “don’t drink the Kool-Aid”.

AMAZING what Jones was able to put over on his pitiful flock of sheeple/useful idiots.

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steve203,

I don’t see how a profit is made off of plague disinformation.

Anti-vaxxers make up to $1.1 billion for social media companies
https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/social-media-profit-p…

The Most Influential Spreader of Coronavirus Misinformation Online
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/24/technology/joseph-mercola…

Florida osteopath Dr. Joesph Mercola has amassed a $100 million plus fortune spreading misinformation.

intercst

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