Empty shelves. I am a member of a lot of social media prepping groups and one of the things I am seeing over the last couple of weeks are pictures of empty grocery shelves at big box stores.
The empty shelves sport signs that say that due to crop failures, vegetable supplies will be limited until this summer’s crops are processed.
Really? That’s interesting.
So I went to where I shop for my groceries, and this is what I found:
Why the small stores won’t be as empty?
A balance of two things impacts profitability for stores: How much they have to pay for the goods and storage space.
For a big box store, the balance favors minimizing storage space. This is “Just in time” delivery. They sell a lot of goods, so they get good prices without having to over-buy what they can sell in a short amount of time. They can minimize on stored goods. That works great…until the goods stop coming.
The smaller stores don’t go through as much product so chances are they won’t be as empty. To get a decent price, they have to buy enough to last them a longer time. They have to keep relatively more product in storage. (ou can notice that goods in the little stores are often closer to their ‘best by’ dates, or in older style labels, than similar goods from a big box store. The up side is that it takes them longer to run low. In fact, when prices are rising they tend to maintain the old prices longer, since they got them bought at the lower cost.
The smaller stores
They are not on the beaten path. Often, they are tucked away in small towns and back streets away from the main business districts… the Mom & Pop type stores that cater to people who live a more “traditional lifestyle”. People who make things from scratch, who buy ingredients in bulk, who bake their own bread, grow their own vegetables and who learned to be self-sufficient starting in their generations-old handmade oak cradles.
These stores are absolute gold for preppers. We have several of them in north Missouri, and we have found them invaluable for stocking up on supplies at reasonable prices.
An example
We were at our personal favorite store today, located in a small town in the middle of nowhere. The town has less than 100 people, but there were about 30 customers in the store when we were there today… filling carts with 50 pound sacks of flour, rice, hard red wheat, rolled oats, ingredients of every kind. In the summer, the store is filled with every kind of locally produced food a person can imagine, purchased from local farmers.
This store is an example; it’s run by an extended family of members of the Mennonite community. It’s also located within a couple of miles of a commune (yes, a real-life, honest to goodness commune) as well as a small community of like-minded environmentalists. Much of the area around the store is Mennonite & Amish.
PRO TIP: As a prepper, don’t look for where the Amish sell their stuff. Look for where they BUY their supplies. That’s the place you want to be shopping.
Sprouting seeds & gardening starters. At appropriate times of year, they have a wide variety of garden seeds too. Also booklets on various food growing and storage methods, from pruning fruit trees to building root cellars and cold frames.
EVERY kind of supplement you can imagine. This particular store is kind of fun, in that the bulk herbs and spices and everything for cooking in canning is dead cheap, but the fancy supplements are at the usually inflated fancy prices.
Alternative medicines & treatments galore, plus information from people who use them.
Canning? Not just the standard stuff, but EVERYTHING… Spice picking up some wide canning lids…
Buy in bulk to make from scratch… this place has isle after isle of ingredients. The bulk herbs are also priced without the giant markups of major grocery chains, and include things that are often marketed as fancy (overpriced) natural remedies.
SPICE’S PRO TIP: Look close.
The people who run this type of store do not tend to be masters of display and marketing. They know where things are; their usual customers either know where things are or know where to ask. If you know what you are going for, asking works great; but if you take a careful look around you might find surprisingly useful things you wouldn’t have thought to ask about.
Many of these odds and ends may be things our great-grandmas used regularly, but we don’t. Still, for a prepper-type homestead they might be very valuable. Today for example I found a mortar and pestle. I haven’t seen one of them outside of a lab in years, but if you have to do your own fine grinding (necessary for many herbal medicines, for example) nothing is better.
Right next to that was a metal tea ball. We generally used prebagged teas now; but those are wonderful if you’re making your own infusions and don’t want plant bits in your teeth. There are a lot of small tools like that that are very useful in a lower-tech lifestyle; these small shops are the place to find them.
PRO TIP: Not Pictured
Places like the one pictured here only put a small fraction of their “big bags” on the shelf, this isn’t like a warehouse club where you can see all they have in stock on pallets. They may well have 500 pounds of hard red wheat in the warehouse, and it may be at a heck of a price, but you can’t see it. If they have one, they probably bought it by the pallet load and have a bunch available. When they buy by the truckload, as a place like this does, shipping is LOW, so it can save you a BUNCH of money to buy this way on heavy/bulky stuff.
PRO TIP: Home long-term packing
If you see small bulk bags/containers of something, they have it in bigger batches as well. This can be a really inexpensive way to buy food items to do your own home long-term storage packing. Just be careful about shelf life.
Start looking around, places like the one featured here are out there… just probably not on the beaten path.
Ultimately unless the Amish or Mennonite make the item I.E. Maple Syrup and even then maybe recycled jars?) all items like canning jars and lids come from the same supply system that the big box stores get them. Thus nation wide shortages will affect them and Mom and Pop stores also.
Wal-Mart for example carries some things only seasonally thus canning jars don’t stay all through the year for example. Annoying when Corporate replaces deicing salt and shovels for swim suits when it’s snowing like mad around here….
I’m not an economics professor but I do look around and listen to folks smarter than I, like my Grandmother who not just survived the Great Depression but thrived providing needed services then.
That said I see 2 forms of “Shortages”. When there is a real lack of the item AND the “Shortage” when due to a perceived shortage of the item folks panic buying “Extra” until the system fails to provide “Enough” for the shelves. Thus feeding the Panic.
I am old enough to personally remember how a 1970’s Jonny Carson JOKE about a shortage of toilet paper CAUSED a Real Shortage of Toilet Paper as HERD Mentality caused people to rush out, slowly at first and then faster as folks NOTICED a lack of TP on the shelf….
My folks didn’t panic and buy “Extra” Toilet Paper (maybe too broke at the time) AND we had to use newspaper crushed, dampened as TP not into the toilet but into the burn barrel. Not fun.
I also remember more recently the 22 ammo shortage. Again rumors caused folks to buy “Extra” until most folks panicked and the shelves were swept bare. The amounts coming into my Wal-mart were almost normal amounts for NORMAL Sales over a month or so, so they failed to refill the shelves. Thus every morning at 0600 the 22 “Vultures” were there to grab whatever was unboxed that day. I know I “Vulture’d” for a month as to provide 22 ammo for the local kids shooting club.
All this long winded chatter to say this:
From the point of view of you and I in the short run IT Doesn’t Matter if it’s a real shortage or a Herd Panic Buying caused shortage. You STILL cannot BUY those items and your family will suffer that lack. I still shudder at burning nasty newspaper because of the Toilet Paper shortage caused by a JOKE.
That and Supply and Demand WILL create HIGHER Prices for whatever gets on the shelves.
Panic “Shortages” will resolve themselves as items continue to show up and even the 22 “Vultures” are over stocked.
If it IS a REAL Shortage like caused by the under reported flooding and lack of successful plantings of food stuff then it will not resolve before NEXT YEARS hopefully Better weather (lack of flooding) and successful plantings. That for folks who do not garden means a YEAR Plus of Food Shortages.
Look to your food storage friends. If you have an excellent deep pantry to feed your selves for three months GOOD JOB! That will cover most “Panic” Shortages BUT at the cost of eating up your reserves. AND Due to Supply and Demand the PRICE to Rebuild that 3 months storage will be higher, much higher (anybody notice the price for 22 ammo is still much higher than pre-panic time?).
If it’s a REAL Shortage out there a YEARS worth of Food Storage will get eaten up and we all hope for a better harvest from farmers AND our Gardens next year. Again at the cost of eating up your reserves.
Knowing human nature I can almost guarantee a lot of less prepared friends will be eager to help you with your “Excess” food. A years supply for a family of 4 divided between say 12 equals……..
Currently American’s enjoy the CHEAPEST, most available foods in the world as a percentage of average incomes. In Mexico for example most families spend almost 70% of their income on food.
Yesterday I looked around at Best By Dates at Wal-mart, a Hannaford’s grocery store and a Dollar Tree. The Dollar Tree had Green Giant green beans at 79 cents a 14.5 ounce can but best by was December 19. Wal-mart Green Giant was 1.69 and Hannaford’s was 1.99 but both had 2 years plus Best By Dates. After panic buying I can bet those prices will jump, just saying.
Personally I buy my Jeans ON SALE and Car Salesmen hate me but……
If you choose to invest in more deep pantry items that YOU EAT NORMALLY your only problems will be space management and ROTATION of stock as not to lose it as dusty rusty cans in a few years. As my Grandmother would say about having too much food in the house “Such A Problem”…..