Those with a job saying “do you want fries with that?” will be the most impacted!
Bkmk
The US is fully capable of recovering. Unless the DemonRATs try to “fix” it.
At the beginning of the Pandemic - residential food streams were hit because people quit eating out. Food made for restaurants had to be diverted to grocery stores.
Now, the reverse is happening. Food going to grocery stores is being diverted to restaurants. And, neither Grocery Stores nor Restaurants are getting all they need.
“What are you seeing in your area?”
Ours are about normal. Very little empty spots. Cold medicine spots were empty. Rest of store ok.
My sister Northern VA said all their shelves are empty.
A lot of this is regional.
I’ve noticed the canned (wet) pet food shortage and the sports drink shortage here in the Seattle area. Also, some frozen items, but I didn’t check which specific items were short.
WARNING: Do not be between Stacy Adams and a food shortage.
Here in rural Missouri, I’m noticing mostly shortages of generic or store-brand items. At Wal Mart, their “Great Value” items are consistently out of stock these days - milk, eggs, pasta, rice, chips, mayonnaise, cereal, frozen chicken breasts, dry dog food, etc. Bidenflation is making people flock to the cheaper products. The store is well-stocked on higher-priced name-brand items, though.
Prepper ping
Supplies are still pretty normal here except for canned cat food and Gatorade. (I don’t drink it, but I’ve noticed the shortage signs on those shelves for a few weeks.)
My local HEB (Central TX) has been out of Minute brand microwave serving rice, all types, brown, brown + wild, jasmine, many other brands of rice, for a couple of weeks now.
I went to the local deli for a ham & 🧀 Swiss on rye and was offered a slice of bologna on a Ritz cracker. Crazy 😜
Probably not unusual for this time of year but some produce items I saw were from Mexico. Pepper is about all they grow that's decent. Maters from Mexico are flavorless, but they ship good.
Was just at the store, same thing I noticed last week..
No store brand cream cheese...
No entenmann’s double chocolate frosted donuts ( this one makes me angry )
For some reason chicken breasts (not legs, not whole chickens, not thighs) are not available in the city of Paducah, Kentucky.
(From the OP):" These notes above are all precursors that show significant stress in the supply chain.
Once these issues are consistently visible, we are continue toward food instability very quickly, sector by sector, category by category.
"The reason I list the shortage of potatoes as the #1 precursor is because every food outlet sells a potato in some form.
Every supermarket and every single restaurant (fancy, sit down or fast food) sells some form of potato.
Potatoes are demanded by every single food outlet"
Always out of hot salsa here. Only have mild and medium. Wonder why that is? 🤪
This is true. We went to the store to get frozen french fries for the air fryer. (1/8 shoestring no coating. Use popcorn salt it sticks better.) Sure enough the freezer was kind of empty of frozen potato products. We still got what we went for only we had to get kroger brand. Milk is weirdly inconsistent but I get organic whole milk and she likes lactose free so we can usually find those. Cream cheese and Swiss cheese were scarce. I am lucky to live in Northern California. We are in the middle of the most agriculturally productive area in the entire world.
In Ohio here. I don’t buy a lot of the items you specified, but I noticed Claussen pickles were in short supply for months during 2021. Those items have been replenished during the last month. The shelves appear to be generally well supplied here at both Krogers and our local supermarket.
I read that the shortage of wet cat food was due to a shortage of aluminum for cans. I don’t know why cat food would be impacted more than all the other products packaged in aluminum cans.