Whats Your View on the Food Shortage

Been in a few supermarkets in the past week or so and not noticed any shortage of anything, apart from yesterday in Morrisons where they were short on bottled water, not surprising with the hot weather, local Sainsburys had plenty thou.

I must admit I hadn't noticed or realised until this morning when I went to Waitrose. I wanted some scones for a cream tea tomorrow but the assistant said they hadn't had any for weeks! Also there was no Hovis sliced bread and the potatoes were horrible though plentiful. So many things seem to have such short shelf life, probably for the reason you have outlined.

My main shop is coming from Sainsbury's on Friday so fingers crossed.

I thought some of the shortage of drivers is down to less people being trained during lockdowns. I heard a local Morrison’s was out of milk one morning but I haven’t been affected personally.

I read yesterday it’s due to pingdemic so they don’t have the staff available to restock shelves. And also lack of hgv drivers.

https://metro.co.uk/2021/07/21/supermarket-shelves-starting-to-empty-as-pingdemic-hits-shops-14967863/

So is this all down to Hopeless Hancock and his app? I went into Lidl's a few days ago and maybe 3% of items were missing although Lidl's sells a lot more imported food products than most supermarkets so may have been more greatly effected. Everything was there that I need though although some of it was actually quite expensive or not looking great quality so gave it a miss. A recent visit to the Tesco at Burnham on Sea was very well stocked although Tesco have a such a wide range of items they could probably fill up the gaps in shelves.

It’s a bit ironic though, isn’t it? At the start the app was criticised for not reaching enough people, now people moan because its pinging too many!

Mate of mine works as an HGV driver for Tesco and they have been offered a wage rise and bonus . Trouble is the industry's reliance on foreign Agency drivers (many of whom have returned to Eastern Europe due to the pandemic and the fact they can now earn decent wages in their home country ) .

Get your toilet roll and bottled water in quick, guys, because here we go again.

700,000 odd pinged in the last week is going to cause a problem.

There's definitely a shortage if doing online food shops which I've had to do for the last year and a half, the last few months there's been less and less food availability for delivery.

Ann1984 I hadn't realised it was so bad ....No problems at all for me .... Last night I had my normal weekly Tesco and again no substitutions and everything with good dates too. In fairness, it was largely standard cupboard items, frozen fish and veg and fresh veg and fruit ....no meat.

One problem is lack of HGV drivers. Unfortunately due to lockdown many new drivers were unable to take tests. Also many retired including my husband.

Fortunately not seen any problems in my area yet, hopefully that will continue, but with the Media highlighting this all the time it will only add to the problem as people will buy more than they need and stockpile .

I think whilst there may be issues with delivery, I think the press is scare mongering, as I whilst my husband does the shopping he hasn't mentioned any shortages. We just may be lucky in our area

The press may be highlighting the issues but there are shortages out there. I do all my shopping online at Tesco and the number of items that are out of stock is definitely going up. This week it was chicken breasts - with no substitutions available! Its not as bad as the previous panic buying at the start of the pandemic though, yet.

The whole issue is down to several factors - Brexit - many HGV drivers can no longer freely work over here as we bizarrely decided we didn't want them coming over here and taking our jobs ( that we didnt actually want to do) - this is hitting the food producers and farmers who cant get enough people to pick their produce. The pandemic means that many people cant travel back even if they had visas and wanted too.

The Pingdemic is the latest total messup by the Govt - the app is working well and doing its job - but if you then remove all restrictions when infections are rising rapidly then more and more people are going to be pinged to self isolate. Obvious to everyone except Boris who quite frankly couldn't care less anyway.

Only been to a real shop once last month,coop and about a quarter of items I wanted were not there...had an Ocado delivery two weeks ago , everything in stock but one item,but didn't give me a quarter of them!

I haven't noticed shortages, only that veg is smaller, that could be weather related

I work in supermarket depots and there's a shortage of lorry drivers and a shortage of pickers in the depots. This is partly to do with wages paid, immigrants returning home and the sunny weather (people going off sick to get some sun)

The supermarkets are not as bad as the panic mongering media are reporting, every heatwave, holiday, event etc produces a high demand and shelves cleared of certain products..heat = cold drinks, ice creams, BBQ foods, salads etc. Some delays are happening as result of Covid - staff shortages, global import supply impact and Brexit Border issues, but nothing to warrant panic buying. (I, for one always have enough food and essentials stocked for a few weeks).

There was a warning of a future shortage of HGV drivers given by the industry to the UK Government over a decade ago...many things have caused this current sh*t storm.

1. Ageing population of qualified drivers means that more are retiring than are qualifying, the prohibitive cost of HGV training, the lack of training initiatives/funding and the loss of "grandfather rights" for 7.5 tonne vehicles without completing a CPC course means agencies and firms are struggling to find qualified drivers.
2. HGV used to be a well paid profession, although wages are rising again, they are not akin to the lucrative income it used to pay. Hence all the responsibility, nasty hours, ever changing regulations is not worth the wage!
3. Since new regs (IR35) have been introduced to agencies to make sure foreign/EU workers are registered and paying income tax and NI, most of them have left the UK...Hmmm, blame Brexit or thank Brexit...do we really want people using our countries infrastructure - schools, Drs, hospitals, social care etc without having paid into the system? The cost of staying is affordable if you really want to stay - under £1,500 with a health surcharge of under £700, far less than other countries charge, many that don't have family here and are not "settled" don't want to pay their way, and also a lot of the wages paid to foreign workers is sent back to their home countries, this takes even more revenue out of our system....Poland, Brazil, Ukraine (to name a few) have prospered well from this income being spent there instead of here. Big shopping centres popping up in Countries that were basically very poor before this opportunity was afforded them. If wages earnt here are not taxed or spent here it breaks the circular economy and it HAS stunted UK growth.
4. Add a Global pandemic and border control problems post Brexit and the already fragile distribution system will have problems. The "pingdemic" needs to be better managed with immediate and frequent testing, not isolation of potentially uninfected personell.

We need to start thinking smarter and offering training and fairer wages to people to fill these jobs, no one in this Country should be out of work and on Benefits when there are jobs available in so many sectors like crop picking and distribution. One thing that Covid SHOULD have taught us is that some of the lowest paid workers are the most critical in keeping the Country running.

Yes bottled water is getting really difficult to find! Tesco has been bad for over two months now just got gradually worse. Can’t get large bottles of water just 500ml or less if your lucky. But these are even different to get. Tonic water you can’t get multi packs of this and I guess in time won’t be able to get any Just like water. Pot Noodles is something that isn’t always available from Tesco normally there are. It’s just going back to when we went in to the first lock down.

I've only noticed staff shortages in Sainsbury's and my local Co op. They are struggling to fill the shelves and they look tired after working long hours.