Posted on 09/28/2021 2:31:57 PM PDT by Roman_War_Criminal
The supply chain crisis that our supermarkets are facing is far worse than the mainstream media has been telling us. The mainstream media keeps trying to put a happy face on the “temporary” shortages, but an industry insider has let me know what is really going on behind the scenes. This particular insider runs a grocery store in Maine, and he says that things are as bad as he has ever seen. In fact, he says that he has “never seen anything close to what is happening now”. The email that he sent me the other day greatly alarmed me, and I asked him if I could share it with all of you. He gave me permission to do so, as long as I didn’t use his name. I haven’t received an email this startling in a long time. As you read this email, I think that you will quickly understand why I am saying that…
I’m self employed for 25 years, now, independent IGA affiliated grocery store in coastal Maine.
Supply issues are real! My supplier has limited us on orders for about a month now (limited the physical number of cases we can order)
Their issue is/was mainly the help crisis in their warehouse … order pickers and truck drivers. Same story everywhere, I know. Many of the items your reader commented about in this article are the same here … very limited gatorade, and gallon water is sketchy at best. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don’t. I’ve not seen many supply issues in produce, rather poor quality issues there. Much more than normal. Deli / bakery … yes, lots of out of stocks and “long term unavailable” as my supplier likes to word it on the invoice.
In the center store – dry grocery … like others are saying, tons of out of stocks.
Meat supply is “fair” but pricing is extremely high. Shockingly high to me. The middle class is slowly being destroyed with these prices hikes … death by 1000 cuts of sorts, I guess.
My Frito Lay delivery person tells me that he is getting 55-60% of what he’s ordering. My last Nabisco order had 30% out of stocks. Over the years, we always get 99-100% of what was ordered. Pepperidge Farm Cookies … he tells me some weeks he’s only getting HALF of what he orders. These folks all work on commission …. if they don’t (or can’t) sell it to me … they don’t get paid. Or get paid less. When we place our liquor order (twice a week) out of stocks there are running 30% most orders. This commodity was ALWAYS 99.5 to 100% fill rate over the years …. always.
It’s frustrating. As I said … self employed 25 years, and worked for Kroger for 25 years before that … so 50-51 years in this business.
Never seen anything close to what is happening now. Add to that — a far left governor, and both houses here in Maine democrat controlled …. I just know we are on the verge of another mask mandate, and a lock down of sorts would not surprise me again as we move into the colder months. As you’ve seen I’m sure, Maine is in the news with COVID case surges (so they say)
I come to work every day just holding my breath for what is next … for our business and the 35 people I employ here in Maine.
This industry insider is trying to order normal quantities, but his suppliers are often unable to completely fulfill them.
As you can see from the email, the shortages are widespread, and this is the worst that they have been during the entire pandemic so far.
If there is something that you need to stock up on, I would grab it if it is still on the shelves, because pretty soon it may be completely gone.
On Friday I went to the grocery store and they were out of several things that I wanted to purchase. Unfortunately, we continue to get more confirmations that this is going to become the “new normal”.
For example, according to Bloomberg meat reserves in this country have plunged to dangerously low levels…
A U.S. report Wednesday showed beef reserves down 7.7% from a year ago in August. Poultry supplies slumped 20% and pork bellies, which are sliced into bacon, dropped 44% to the lowest levels since 2017.
In most cases supermarkets still have meat on the shelves, but it is definitely a lot more expensive than it used to be, and we are being told to brace ourselves for more price hikes in the months ahead.
Of course other types of retailers are facing severe supply shocks as well. A few days ago, another reader sent me an email in which he described what he is seeing at his local pharmacy…
The big issue, however, is at the local drug store; Rite Aid. The place is thin at best and stripped in some areas (last week there was no Zinc available). The beer cases are notably sparse. The main issue, however, is at the pharmacy. Six or eight months ago you could walk in and have your prescription filled inside of 20 minutes. If you called in the prescription the day before it was waiting for you. Not so any more. Yesterday I went to pick up an RX for my wife that had been called in last week. Not only was it not ready but I had to wait an hour before it was filled. There were nine cars in the drive up queue. I opted to walk in and it was nearly as bad. The young woman that helped me was clearly not local with bicolor hair and a large, glaringly obvious, in your face, Baphomet symbol around her neck.
I had a chat with the manager on the way out and asked him what was up with the Pharmacy staffing. I hadn’t seen the regular pharmacist for a few months. He blamed it all on the city for not having any affordable housing (lame) and mentioned that Albertson’s pharmacy, Albertson’s and Ridley’s were all very short on help (true).
Right now, dozens and dozens of drugs are in short supply.
In fact, the official FDA drug shortage list has 149 entries on it right now.
That is the most that I have ever seen.
As shortages persist, retailers are going to start implementing more limits. Last week, we learned that Costco has already started to pull the trigger…
Costco on Thursday said it was reinstating limits on purchases of toilet paper, paper towels and bottled water.
They don’t call it “rationing”, but that is essentially what it is.
And we are also being told to expect significant price increases, because supply chain issues are causing costs to go through the roof…
Costco this week joined the long list of retailers sounding the alarm about escalating shipping prices and the accompanying supply chain issues. The warehouse retailer, which had a similar cautionary tone in May, was joined by athletic wear giant Nike and economic bellwethers FedEx and General Mills in discussing similar concerns.
The cost to ship containers overseas has soared in recent months. Getting a 40-foot container from Shanghai to New York cost about $2,000 a year and a half ago, just before the Covid pandemic. Now, it runs some $16,000, according to Bank of America.
I have been warning that rampant inflation and shortages were coming for a long time, but a lot of people didn’t want to believe me at first.
If you were one of those doubters, do you believe me now?
During the first half of this year, many economic optimists assured us that the U.S. economy would be “booming” by this point.
But instead our economic infrastructure is being shaken on a very basic level, and we are facing enormous price hikes and very painful shortages throughout the rest of this year and into next year.
Events have begun to slide out of control, and it certainly wouldn’t take too much to push us into a full-blown avalanche.
Total BS. They both use labor from the same labor pool. You don't understand basic economics. Hell, just steal the other guys workers. Just walk up and hire 'em for $5.00/hr more.
Right. Management is throwing a tantrum and refusing to hire at rates needed to get employees. So your post is dead on.
Without seeing all the numbers from the business (including an analysis of competition and the market) it is impossible to evaluate what management is doing.
Name calling without proper analysis is just not appropriate.
Oh BS. We know what is happening. Just talk to the shelf stockers at a local store. They will tell you. They pay is not going up, doesn’t keep up with inflation and no one is coming in to get jobs. It’s not rocket surgery.
Fo you have a very large freezer?
Friends of ours have been trying to have generac generators installed, since the Texas ice storm, early this year.
Their electricians cannot find the transfer switches for them.
No idea when they’ll come in, either.
That is a separate but related issue. Trucking management is absolutely horrid, and it costs them a lot of money. But the price of freight (hello fuel) plus the basic commodity has outpaced an industry and eaten the independent trucker.
No...just standard....but there’s just me so it’s sufficient.
Vacuum seal your beef and chicken. It will make it last MUCH longer.
And, frozen veggies, as well.
They also take up less space that way.
I had a problem with my washing machine - still under warranty I was told IF parts were available it would be a couple of weeks to repair - if parts were not available it could be a few months... Luckily the parts were still available...
Where do you get one of those....I’ve heard they expand freezer time. I’ve had to throw out good meat because I didn’t use it soon enough.
I had a problem with my washing machine - still under warranty I was told IF parts were available it would be a couple of weeks to repair - if parts were not available it could be a few months... Luckily the parts were still available...
But here’s the beauty of our excess - worst case I would drop off my clothes at a laundry and pick them up the next day. That’s the beauty of living in a first world country.
Biden will be out of office before commie thugs around him can destabilize enough supply chains to crash the systme..
That is what I am seeing even here in fly over country. I told the doc today that his clinic’s admin is falling apart. Boy did I get a reaction out of that. Turnover and nobody wants to work. Where they had 5 doing billing two months ago there are 2 now. They either quit outright or quit to go work in the pot growing places for more money and less responsibility and free samples.
Even his nurse, an RN, quit and she had been there for a long time. The new one has enough tattoos to be a billboard or graffiti wall. Other than that, just OK.
The doc is getting on in years and if it gets too messed up he will bail. Bad news for me.
Change and decay in all about I see. That needs to become a tagline.
We sort of know what has happened. Covid / corona / rona / C-19 etc. People got paid too much to stay home and now they can’t get over that and go back to work. I’d also say lots of people just hung it up and retired.
Applications to become an indian in the tribe have gone up to 2,000 a week. The bennies are just too good to pass up I guess. The giverment programs are lush and they have not used up all the money shoveled to them in the last 16 months or so yet with more on the way. Such problems you would not believe. Oy!
“We were receiving 2,000 applications
for citizenship a week at one
point, which is 10 times the volume
we normally receive,” Interim Registrar
Derrick Vann said. “Having
our office temporarily closed to
in-person services has allowed us
to focus heavily on catching up on
the backlog of applications. We’re
working at great speed to help our
citizens with the COVID-19 programs
and assistance they may
need.”
I had a 3 month wait on kitchen cabinets. Due Oct 29th to come in.
Franklin TN
Thin and crispy crust only
“Unless they are transporting nothing but sailboat fuel, I cannot correlate what my eyes are seeing with the claims of trucker shortages.”
The other day someone posted that CA has enacted new regulations for big rigs that cost as much as buying a new rig, and this is one reason they can’t move cargo out of LA and Long Beach.
I mostly agree. But, still, there are some weird spot shortages. Our local Wally World cannot keep French sliced canned green beans in stock to save their lives. (My daughter is partial to them.) Maybe once a month they’ll have a decent stock on hand. Otherwise, if one searches the back of the shelves and through the regular cut green beans, one in 5 times one can turn up a stray can of the Frenchies.
By chance, I was in a WalMart 6 hours from us, yesterday, picking up a few items to continue a trip back home. Glory be, they had lots of the French sliced canned green beans, and at a lower price too (which was odd, because this was in a large city and about 99% of everything looked significantly more expensive than in our low-cost-of-living area.) Anyway, I picked up 6 cans. Probably should have made it a dozen, but my wife would have yelled at me “we don’t have the space”. (We try to keep well stocked in general and eat all the oldest stuff first. But, our food storage space IS kinda limited.)
OTOH, I understand the trucking issues, but, good golly. The number of trucks on the roads is just astonishing. This as viewed on a 27 hour bus trip to near Harrisburg, PA, and a 13 hour drive back by car. (Long story.)
The only thing more astonishing was the amount of trip mileage occupied by work zones. I guess this is mainly the Trump $$. If Biden’s plan goes through, we might as well call it “work zones EVERYWHERE”.)
I believe the reference is to ITEM pickers, not fruit pickers.
And even if not, get caught up with the times. Robots that can outperform human fruit pickers (including with regard to selection) are here. Not in big numbers yet, but, that may well change.
Those are 2 very good points, and, to the first I'll add a "note": Often, working brings along a lot of costs. Transportation, maybe equipment and such (in the case of yard work), taxes (ok, 2nd point), and so on. It's not one's gross income that counts, it is the net.
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