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Comment by aazaa | Hacker News Reader

Those talking about the economics appear to live in areas with abundant flour.

In many places in the US at least, it's very difficult to find any. It has been this way for weeks. Supermarkets get it and it flies off the shelves.

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In the UK, according to various sources including the BBC[0], there is plenty of flour, but one of the main problems is that most of the production lines are geared up to producing large e.g. 25kg sacks, given 96% of sales are to bulk buyers for trades like bakeries, with only 4% of flour sold direct to consumers in retail outlets in small 1kg or 1.5kg bags. I'd imagine it might not be dissimilar in many other countries too. So in the UK you should no problem buying a 25kg sack of flour from a wholesaler. There are actually lots of companies who specialise in providing food in wholesale quantities to places like schools and restaurants, most of whoch are in difficulty given their market has disappeared, although some are now temporarily selling to the general public to try to stay afloat[1]. I feel like I've learned an unexpectedly large amount about supply chains in recent weeks.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52212760

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-52066764

>... one of the main problems is that most of the production lines are geared up to producing large e.g. 25kg sacks, given 96% of sales are to bulk buyers for trades like bakeries, with only 4% of flour sold direct to consumers in retail outlets in small 1kg or 1.5kg bags.

For anyone who's interested, The Indicator podcast by Planet Money briefly touches on this point in their most recent episode on potatoes in the US.

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/23/843437140/the-great-potato-gi...

In Canada, there have been supply shortages but according to Robin Hood (major Canadian flour producer), the supply issues are both at the endpoint (grocery stores not stocking enough) as well as in secondary products, e.g. they cite that there's a lack of packaging, but that their flour supply is healthy.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/robin-hood-flour-baking-yel...

That said regions will obviously vary. Canada is a major wheat producer.

In other words, supply-chain problems just like we're seeing in many other segments: paper products, sanitizer, rice/beans, etc.

This is another example of our economy being so interconnected that it's really hard to tell what is and isn't essential. If you lack enough "non-essential" goods for your business, then your business doesn't work either. I just hope that the businesses relying on machines for their output aren't reliant on some obscure parts that will be impossible to source if they break.

This is an opportunity to reduce use of one-use packaging. Simply ship the flour in a gaylord to the point of distribution and have people bring their own canisters, tare them, and fill them.

This is almost certainly not the time for that. Stores have eliminated a lot of their self-serve stations and even deli counters and the like.

The bulk bins are still open in my neighborhood.

When the virus persists for days on most surfaces and everyone is required to wear disposable gloves, customers bringing their own reusable bags has never been less appealing than it is right now.

NYC (coincidentally) banned single-use plastic bags a week or so before the COVID-19 outbreak, and it was quickly reversed on sanitation grounds.

I don't know if it's statewide but all my local stores in Massachusetts have banned bringing in reusable bags.

“Eco-friendly” reusable bags are also made from non-woven polypropylene, which is now in short supply as it’s essential for producing N95 filters, surgical masks, and hospital-grade fabrics like gowns and pillow cases.

I live in NYC and they still do not give us plastic bags anymore. Was this ban really "reversed"? I've been using reusable bags for the whole pandemic, and a quick google tells me the enforcement has been postponed, not that the ban was reversed.

You’re right that it was only delayed, but it has so far been delayed three times. Retailers filed lawsuits against the ban that the courts have no capacity to deal with, so it’s unlikely to be enforced (or formally reversed) until the outbreak subsides.

I live in Brooklyn and still get plastic bags at three different grocery stores I can think of. (I reuse them as trash can liners, so the ban always seemed silly to me — I’d need to start buying my own plastic bags in addition to the paper ones I recycle.) There was a week or two that most stores switched to paper, so you may be seeing paper-only bags from stores that have unused stock to go through. Some grocers (Whole Foods) have always been paper-only.

New Hampshire, Illinois, and Massachusetts have specifically banned the use of reusable shopping bags in grocery stores state-wide on sanitation grounds. San Francisco has as well. I was confusing these with NYC when I commented above. NYC’s enforcement delays are unrelated to concerns over reusables.

> This is an opportunity to reduce use of one-use packaging. Simply ship the flour in a gaylord to the point of distribution and have people bring their own canisters, tare them, and fill them.

One of the first things to go at our local grocery stores were bulk-binned products that weren't fresh produce. They've also banned reusable shopping bags. I don't anyone is going to try an idea like yours soon.

I like this model, and this is how I normally buy my flour, but since this pandemic started, my bulk goods store no longer allows you to bring in containers or scoop your own goods - a staff member escorts you around the store and scoops what you want into plastic bags. Works alright, though it’s a bit less convenient to estimate the amount of their bags that I need to fit my containers.

> That said regions will obviously vary. Canada is a major wheat producer.

Mildly interesting number I worked out the other day: Canada produces about enough wheat for 2000 Calories/day for 80 million people. (With a population of ~38m.)

And what percentage of an average person's calorie intake would wheat normally be? 20%? 50% seems high? So you could multiply that 80 million figure by something like 5 to get a number of people that Canadian wheat farmers feed (400 million!).

Of course there's a lot of flaws with that type of math (I'm sure a significant percentage goes into animal feed, etc), but it's a fun way of thinking about the numbers. :) The vast size of the Canadian prairie wheat farms (and the relatively small number of people it takes to run them) are difficult to comprehend for a lot of people that don't live there.

Where are you? At the big stores in Brooklyn for a while there was no flour. But now going to smaller stores I see it no problem. Seems like less of a shortage issue than just that most folks in my area are all inefficiently picking their grocery store.

In Columbus, Ohio here. Last week was the first time we have had flour back on the shelves and the types were limited. Still haven't seen any yeast available.

Newport Beach, CA here and it's been off the shelf for awhile but also recently popped back up, along with other essentials like the infamous toilet paper.

Maybe ask a local bakery or pizza shop.

I don't need any more so haven't made a real study but I'd note that both King Arthur and Bob's Red Mill are out of their main products online. (But they're somewhat artisan so they probably have more capacity constraints than the bigger players do.)

I wonder how much of that is because they are out vs it's just a lot more efficient to send it by the pallet to grocers instead of one bag at a time to end users.

I've seen this in other industries too - manufacturers will sell retail direct when times are "normal" because it's easy profit and they can fulfill out of "slack in the system". But when demand skyrockets they lack the slack energy to deal with retail-direct, so they just send everything through distribution.

Yea I live in NYC (fidi) and also been having problems finding flour. I can't necessarily travel long distances to different grocery stores because I don't want to ride the subway etc. The grocery stores around me don't have it and haven't had luck with delivery.

Last week finally got costco to deliver a 50lb bag which is apparently all they have at the moment...

But I think I agree with you, it's less of a true shortage and more of a supply chain to certain stores issue. Are we really consuming more flour at this point or are we just throwing all these established supply chains to completely restructure?

It seems so bizarre that so much flour is being consumed now. Are people hoarding it, or would this demand otherwise have been met from restaurants?

I think it's more that people are going from purchasing fresh bread to purchasing the ingredients for fresh bread.

Yes, there doesn't seem to be a shortage of bread on the shelves although if you only shop once a week it might not last.

A spike in demand for ingredients used to make baked goods. People have the time now to experiment with things they previously had an interest in but not enough motivation to see it through.

More importantly, baking your own bread saves you a trip to grocery store. My household went from shopping 3-4 times a week to less than once a week. I.e. we no longer do the "fresh bread + some small items" morning runs, only the one bulk trip every ~10 days. That means reducing the number of opportunities to get infected or infect others by a factor of 5.

https://xkcd.com/2296/

Baking at home has skyrocketed. When you're bored it's an easy, family-friendly rewarding way to spend a couple hours.

Think about how often people bake normally. Not often. Now it's all the time.

Same reason why eggs and vanilla are also harder to find in some places.

Eggs seem to be pretty much back in stock where I live though they were scarce for a while. With eggs, it may not be baking so much (and you mostly don't even use them with yeast bread). But you've got whole families at home and I imagine there are a lot more hot breakfasts going on which can chew up egg stocks pretty quickly.

This was true for us. I live with my fiance and we started cooking an omlette to be split between us every morning since this started. At three eggs a morning we can go through a dozen every 4 days. At one point we were trying to skip a trip to the store so I made a batch of black beans that we were eating for breakfast with tortillas and fresh cilantro.

Store pickup also complicated things as you usually only get about 60 to 70 percent of the items you ask for, and usually it's the sundries that get knocked out. So you can ask for all the ingredients for a complete meal plan and wind up with all the vegetables and a little meat but nothing else. Or you get shorted on other aspects of the pickup(this is just a bare statement of fact). We gave up and just went into the store with homemade PPE.

I do think this situation is revealing just how fragile our system of just-in-time delivery and globalization is. For things like N95 masks national borders are very real, and being dependent on China for everything in the US is really really bad.

It's also highlighting for me how important it is to know how to cook and be fluent in different kinds of cooking besides the standard American diet. When this first started the store shelves were picked clean of anything that most people recognize as nonperishable food. So I grabbed things like textured vegetable protein and millet. The shortages are really only a problem if you don't cook from first principles or don't have much experience with spices or other sources of flavor.

>Store pickup also complicated things as you usually only get about 60 to 70 percent of the items you ask for, and usually it's the sundries that get knocked out.

Making a grocery store run about once a week (earlyish AM on a weekday) is one of the few compromises I've been making to just staying on my own property or adjacent basically unused forest trails. And the reason is as you say. I find a lot of real-time adjustments are still needed depending upon what's in stock.

GP was asking if the assertion is being made that overall aggregate demand has increased, and if so why.

ie. if people are baking more and buying bread less.

Homemade vanilla takes a few months but it's easy and tastes fantastic. Some vanilla beans with some vodka or rum.

I doubt that much more flour is being consumed.

It's probably all logistics and supply chain issues because everything was geared towards delivering 1000lb loads of flour to a bakery instead of 100 x 10 lbs bags of flour to the grocery store.

People used to buy bread every few days, or go out to eat sandwiches, pizza, etc.

Now, my bread purchases have gone to zero (Since we go shopping every few weeks, and have no room, or interest in freezing bread.) I'm not eating out.

My net consumption of flour probably hasn't changed much, but my purchases of flour have gone up, dramatically.

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