Packaging, distribution channels and volume. People need to wake up, if this keeps up, the American food supply is going to start getting hampered. America needs to open up again.
If you want your head to explode get involved with US Agriculture laws. They are one of the the reasons large corporations are pushing the small guy out.
Serious question: in other parts of the country are you able to easily buy a cow or pig and have it butchered at a local butcher? I'm in Nebraska and its very simple. I will help Feed the Pedes if it becomes needed.
And no, while I live near Denver, which used to be the West's quintessential cow town, I have no idea how to get this process started. Nor is my freezer big enough to store a cow.
I live in a county of 10k and there are 3 businesses in my county (butcher, processors, smokehouses). I can buy a cow from a farmer I know, he delivers it to the butcher, and I pay the farmer roughly $3 per pound for the finished beef and pay the butcher about $0.60 per pound for processing. I then divide the costs and the beef between 4 families and we are setup for a year with steaks, ground beef and roasts.
The big newspapers in that part of the country have been beating the "shut them all down" drums loudly and relentlessly for the past few days and winning popular sentiment. It was inevitable. The people contacting their state representatives demanding shutdown don't realize they're risking their own hunger.
The packing plant shutdowns are because they are having Chinese Virus outbreaks. 3 plants in Nebraska that I'm aware of, one with 3600 "employees" (are illegal Mexican visitors considered employees?). Real question, how did they not foresee Virus outbreaks at meat packing plants with 95% illegal workforce? Working shoulder to shoulder, living 4 families to a house or apartment, working even when sick....
Well, in one situation, in Lexington Nebraska (Dawson county) they have a population of 10k, with 3k working at the Tyson packing plant, and 124 confirmed cases as of Monday I believe. Whether it matters or not, 95% of the 3k employees are Mexicans. This scares the Hell out of an already panicked local community. I agree with your logic, but the Governor is going to do what the panicking masses want.
Your local trucking delivery that went from farm to nearby vendor, then to restaurant, doesn't have the ability to immediately switch to selling to further markets. Hence, large scale production in one area is not able to get to another less supplied area.
Also everyone is hoarding so people buy way more than their local supply chains are used to. So what was good enough in a local region is depleted rapidly without a supply from another region.
Contracts. Restaurants buy X amount. Supermarkets buy X amount. Usually negotiated with the packaging plant which negotiates with the farmers. Some food industry only buys the whites, the other the yolks.
It's a balance of supply and demand combined with farmers wanting to keep prices stable..
Regulation. Ever buy a box of something and for each item see “Not for individual resale” or the like printed on it? The regulations around labeling and packaging are immense and to straighten that out in the supply chain takes time and a lot of money.
GEOTUS has taught us that all it really takes is a patriot with titanium balls and some brains to just come in and smash all that obama-era regulations shit right up. We don't have to live with the regulations we've been yoked with for so long, especially NOW. The fact that some dickhead obummer lackey's signed documents sitting on a shelf in some DC office is the reason why people are pouring a billion gallons of milk down a drain somewhere during a fugging CRISIS is INSANE, and won't fly for long.
Those regs are why we have massive businesses. They wrote the laws and paid congressmen to pass them. Cronyism. And we have to find a way to roll it back to get our economy chugging along.
The issue with beef right now is the slaughters going down significantly due to mandatory spacing issues, sick employees and plant closures. Slaughters are significantly down right now due to this.
Not precisely, a flat of eggs can be sold just as easily in a grocery store as they can be sold by the case to restaurant. Granted not every one needs 30 eggs at once, but that is minor.
Speaking of that... if y'all haven't watched Waco on Netflix (or through any other medium), you should.
David Koresh should've gone to jail for statutory rape. That's about it. Everyone else in there died for NOTHING. They were murdered so that government law enforcement bureaucrats could justify their jobs.
I don't get this. I haven't seen eggs sold out, anywhere. Further, people still eat, so there is no reason why egg consumption in the US should be down. Were they shipping overseas?
Further, this was Cargill, that sells egg "fluid". I buy egg whites by the carton, and they are always in short supply.
This is me, a customer in California, waving a big, red, bs flag. Something else is going on. Nobody has stopped eating, or buying egg whites in cartons.
edit: Oh, yes, prices have gone up 50 cents/carton, recently.
I didn't downvote because I thought this was a well reasoned out comment. However. I would like to point out that we are in the middle of a VERY critical period in our country's history. Multiple factions both inside and outside this country would like to see us die. Not figuratively. And some other very corrupt people inside this country would let it happen if it meant they could get their$.
So forgive the plandemics for erring on the side of caution. This could be an enemy action. Maybe not, but it could be. And that being the case, that there even might be the possibility of it being a deliberate attempt to undermine our republic by sowing chaos, makes it unrealistic and kind of polyanna to just bury your head in the sand and say "must have been some kind of mistake! I'm sure everything is fine! There's surely an innocent explanation!"
Not that that is what you are doing. But there are obv shills in this thread, and I'm sort of addressing 'Dear Reader' while at the same time addressing your comments.
Fair point. The bottlenecks in food supply chains also revolves around compliance to food safety standards, approved supplier processes, allergen declarations in retail settings etc. And those prerequisite programs are internal processes, before government regulations and legislation affects. Crisis management for pandemics were not adequately prepared for this rapid of a shutdown and redirection of materials to certain sectors.
Very few people want to buy a 5 gallon jug of liquid egg, and most food pantries don't have the equipment or manpower to convert jugs like that into portions consumers can use. Those suggestions could take a bit of the edge off the supply mismatch, but they'll never fix it
I’m in the same boat, my grocery store ran out of most staple food items the first week all this hoarding bs started but since has been restocked. All the shelves have been full (except toilet paper and paper towels) for a couple weeks now. But I’m still only allowed to buy one carton of eggs at a time. I would normally buy two anyway, just like milk. But now I can only buy one of each these items at a time.
Another big issue for me is that I work overnights and all the stores in my town (including all the 24 hour stores) are closing at night. So now I can’t even go to the store unless I cut into my sleep time.
I don’t think history will be kind to our response for this. We overreacted bigly,
The egg fluid is pre-cracked scrambled eggs that are bagged for restaurant use. For some reason it's hard to just sell those at the store. Government at work blocking it I bet.
Egg consumption falls off dramatically after Easter. Pre-Easter prices were skyrocketing on trend the same as every year (though 2019 was kind of a weird year). The week after Easter prices fall and did fall ~$20/15sz
lol. I know what you mean about roosters. we got rid of our 20 or so chickens a few years ago due to a move. now that we are stable again we are getting more soon. buff orpingtons are our fav type.
A significant portion (as much as 50%) of the egg market goes to restaurants and hotels, who buy either 15 dozen egg flats, or multi gallon bags of liquid egg which get cooked into stuff like scrambled eggs or breakfast sandwiches. The factories which produce those products can't easily switch over to making consumer size cartons which people will buy at the grocery store, so all the eggs which usually go there are being wasted.
This is just one more reason to support your local small food suppliers or buy eggs from somebody who raises them themselves. Better quality and you're not supporting big corps. I know this isn't an option for everybody, but if you can, buy eggs, meats and veggies from local farmers/farmer markets.
This is beginning to seem vaguely familiar. Most people don't know this, but Goldman Sachs actually created the Arab Spring. They invested heavily in food stocks which were destroyed to drive the price of food up so much that it caused riots all across Muslim countries. Are they doing the same thing here?
people are not eating out as much. When you eat out, they give you twice as much as you should eat (in general.). This includes eggs. This has a secondary effect of restaurant supply chain has to move to store supply chains. It's not easy to do that... Other infrastructure is needed, contracts have to be negotiated, etc. Disclaimer, I don't work in supply chain, this is just what I've read is the case
when I go to my local grocery, eggs and egg products like egg whites have a 2 per customer limit. Perhaps this isn't true everywhere but I don't think it's a stretch to assume that it is happening in some places. So the groceries are purchasing less because they are limiting customers from buying a ton of egg products.
Food service has shell eggs as well, both pasteurized and unpasteurized shell eggs. The volume of shell eggs vs liquid eggs is likely very close to 50/50
The lady interviewed said she had a CONTRACT with them that stipulated they give her 7 DAYS NOTICE. They didn't. They just came in, grabbed the chickens, gassed em and took off.
I've been wanting to raise some chickens so badly... It's sad that so many are being senselessly killed. Best case scenario it may only be a matter of weeks before everything is open again, so why not wait and see if the demand comes back? They're just going to be scrambling to get more laying hens again once the restaurant industry gets rolling once more.
Alright, I'll come out and say it: I miss eating at Waffle House.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can get it to-go, whatever. It ain't the same unless you're there and you can hear your waitress scream out your scattered, covered, smothered hash browns and all the intricacies of your 3 egg omelet to the most patient cook ever, and then somehow forget to add the Bert's chili on top.
It's a supply chain issue. No one is buying his eggs because the grocery store packaging group is a bottle neck that can't handle too many extra eggs and the restaurant group he sells to doesn't need them. That said I don't have any issues getting affordable eggs right now.
Not sure if it is a dumb regulation that keeps things tied down or just dumb industry practices.
This has nothing to do with large vs small food producers, and everything to do with the fact that millions of eggs which normally get turned into hotel scrambled eggs and fast food egg sandwiches aren't being made since those places are doing far less business. Those eggs, no matter what kind of farm produces them, are sold in multi gallon bags of liquid egg that the vast majority of consumers have no use for, and the plants which make those bags can't just instantly turn around and churn out enough consumer cartons to meet the shifted demand.
It’s another way to control us. Americans are starting to rebel against draconian measures. It we have full pantries, we will protest. If there is a food shortage and price gauging, they can control us.
The problem isn't with total food supply, it is with the supply chain.
It was designed to serve people getting what they need for 2-5 days of groceries, and even then only cooking one meal per day. Instead people suddenly need 5-10 days of groceries, and they are cooking 2-3 meals per day. Those extra shipments don't just appear out of thin air.
Shipping logistics is an extremely thin margin industry. Lots of automation. Google "Just in Time" logisitics model. A Shipment of eggs leaves the farm one day and arrives at refrigerated warehouse the same day. A few hours later it is already broken up into individual store bundles and loaded up to ship out. Within 24 hours it is on the store shelf. Within 48 hours its on your pantry shelf at home.
Its good for a lot of reasons, but it has its weaknesses. There is almost no storage capacity in the system since things move out as quickly as they come in. Which means the volume is limited to the trucks and drivers on-hand. And you can't go from 100 trucks and 200 drivers to 200 trucks and 400 drivers overnight. There is already a shortage of truckers, and they are in higher demand than ever now.
A system designed to transport 10,000 eggs a day to a small number of restaurants in bulk cannot be converted to 10,000 eggs a day to a large number of consumers in individual packages. Especially since that conversion costs a lot of money, will probably take a month or more, and in another month it will just have to be converted back.
This is why we have stimulus. The system is good and efficient in the long term, but its messy in the short term, and in times of crisis it makes losers out of a lot of people. Government should be insurance against those times.
There’s not enough demand to meet supply so what is being sold needs to be sold at a higher price to cover the costs of all the goods not being sold, and a lot of stuff is going to waste
People would bring their own damn cartons for a couple dozen eggs if they would just get them to the store. Why not allow them to be shipped as usual to the restaurants and allow them to sell them and the rest of their products to the public? Like a pop up grocery store. It’s a win win.
Some of our fast food places and restaurants were quick to move their more popular products into frozen form in the grocery stores where people can cook it at home. This is the Philippines though.
Same with dairy. They have to milk cows everyday. Even so the stores are claiming shortages. This is due to several factors not the least of which is transport. How do you get the product to market when everything and everyone is shut down?
Kroger has their own transportation. They have also a high profit motive. I've noticed their prices are being manipulated. They certainly have not foregone profit for the sake of the people's misery.
Some of our fast food places and restaurants were quick to move their more popular products into frozen form in the grocery stores where people can cook it at home. This is the Philippines though.
It's a packaging and supply chain issue. Eggs are bought in packs of 3 dozen, milk is delivered in large plastic bags, not cartons or jugs for restaurant industry supply. Most of these stories you hear are from people that supply the restaurant and food service industry. They do not have the means or tools to restructure their packaging. No restaurants, no need for bulk mass supply.
Right, they are sold in bulk. But why couldnt bulk stores like Costco or Sam's Club sell them? It wouldnt cover all the bulk. But it could help even a little bit. While they cant change their supply system that fast. Couldnt they try and sell some to consumers? I think it has to do with some government regulations blocking it.
we can stop on a dime to make a gorillion ventilators, but we can't repackage eggs?!?! GTFOH widdat shit, amirite? The idea that this is a packaging problem is a fucked up way of just kicking the can down the road and saying "this is no ones fault really"... you bet your ass this is someones fault!!
Why would a company waste millions of dollars to convert their factory for a few weeks because a bunch of retarded governors fucked them, and then when things open again waste even more time and money going back to how things were before. In the grand scheme of things this is a short term issue and the best thing for bulk packagers is to just wait for things to reopen, and not burn a bunch of cash chasing all these massive, government induced changes in demand. While that happens, some products are going to have weird supply/demand mismatches
You are assuming they arent trying to retool. They very well may be trying to, it just takes longer for them. Or more likely government is involved and they would rather waste it and not get hit with lawsuits if things go wrong.
Welp, if you look at the thread and how fast the post gained traction, I guess you could consider this the beginnings of the public putting pressure on the egg people to clear up this little mystery. People aint gonna put up with this bullshit for long.
The problem is there are only so many people doing the packaging and they’re all overwhelmed with orders right now. Food manufacturers don’t product their own packaging.
Do you want to buy a 5 gallon plastic bag of milk? It's all they have to put it in. They do not have jugs or cartons. I totally get what you are saying though.
I'm perfectly capable of refilling gallon jugs on my own, and I wouldn't mind having bulk milk for hobby cheese-making (queue "I was a humble cheesemaker" copypasta)
Personally, we go through 3 gallons a week. So I may consider it. However, just because you or I wouldnt doesn't mean others wouldnt. And given the circumstances, I think some would, just to help. A lot of restaurants near me are getting support, only so that they survive (the foods kinda sucks).
It’s the 6gallon bibs that you speak of that are unavailable. They are not shutting down production lines to keep this product active, they are 95% focused on retail right now.... which is affecting other things like the availability of non-fat milk because there isn’t enough volume for heavy cream right now.
The dramatic shift from food service to retail is massive and nobody is ready for it. Couple this with the fact that many plants are shitting down and those that are operational are enforcing mandatory spacing and accordingly production itself has been cut in half as well.
It’s a very serious situation right now and the next 3-5 weeks are going to be very difficult, especially for beef.
Source: corporate advisor for one of the largest food service companies on earth.
Perhaps you misread me. The restaurant food are packaged. They dont put milk are scrambled eggs in open containers. They are bagged. The difference is the type of packaging. Consumers get one type and restaurants another. The restaurant packaging maybe more fragile which is why they wont sell it to consumers?
Right. I know it wont fix everything. Probably not even 1% of the problem. But that small fraction could help some and lessen the pain of others. Opening up and getting back on track would absolutely be the right call. I would be happy to work tomorrow if they opened that fast.
Before this, I thought of only one supply rather than one for consumers and others for restaurants. I am still not sure why they couldnt be combined. I know government is probably why. A restaurant could get them packaged as they do now, or if they want, just go to the store and buy the consumer version. But the consumers have only the one choice. If the consumers had both, they would still be backed up, but slightly less if going by my 1% example.
Other way around. Retail packaging is less sturdy than food service packing. But the problem is that the food service lines are maxed out and they can’t produce more packaging. Instead they have excess food service packaging with greatly diminished demand for it.
I didnt know that that food service packaging is more sturdy. I've seen bags of milk and looked easier to break then a retail gallon and based it off that. Probably shouldnt have.
If it's not the packaging, do you know why the consumers couldnt just buy it like we can with retail packaging?
You're talking about the inner pack. Inner pack could be anything.
Generally speaking food service outer packing (case packing for example) is sturdier. Commercial kitchens have a lot more movement than home kitchens.
It probably costs more to kill than to just give away free food for the needy. For all the free market banter that many GOP supporters have, seems as though they are fundamentally unaware of the importance of charity. If we are to maintain America as a nation built upon the basic Christian interpretations of inalienable rights, we have to admit that this contains in itself a protection for the basic ability of man to make its materiality functionable within the society. This translates to the Republican platform's inherent protection of labor, as opposed to its creation, through guarantee of free ethical competition and encouragement of charity. We have won America already. Our challenge for this term is to guarantee the protection of America's Generation Scarlet from being infected by Communism. Capitalism contains in itself the prescription for social safetynets. We don't need failed systems to define our future.
"They" claim the eggs/milk/pork/vegetables/fish/etc., normally sold in bulk to the now-shut down restaurants, can't be sold in groceries, since there's a shortage of adequate "consumer" packaging (1-dozen egg cartons, 1 gallon milk jugs, and so on).
Apparently we forgot to teach our millenials how to reuse egg cartons or fill their own milk containers?
Reason.
Packaging, distribution channels and volume. People need to wake up, if this keeps up, the American food supply is going to start getting hampered. America needs to open up again.
A company that supplies restaurants close to me has been opening on the weekend and selling different priced bundles of meats and eggs to the public.
In many states, that's illegal. But everything is illegal right now, so what difference does it make?
And that right there is the main issue. Red tape is causing this problem more than anything.
Pedos go free and moms in parks go to jail. 🤡 🌍
THE HONK IS TOO DAMN HIGH!
If you want your head to explode get involved with US Agriculture laws. They are one of the the reasons large corporations are pushing the small guy out.
Red tape causing issues is certainly nothing new.
I’m from the government and I’m here to help
"What I do may be illegal, but it's not wrong." - Capt. Mal
I'm rewatching that series right now. Do y'all remember which episode this was?
'My work's illegal, but at least it's honest.'
Shindig.
Even Whole Foods is selling their bulk packaged foods that are usually sold in their food/salad bars.
Got a HUGE bag of spinach for 5 bucks!
I'm strong to the finich cause I eats me spinach!
I'm Pepe the sailor man!
Do you have any delicious spinach squares recipes? We always bake them just before the spinach goes bad
I have no idea what a spinach square is. I go full smoothie when the spinach is looking limp!
aka welcome to costco
I wish there was a Costco near me. I’d shop there all the time!
Tyson just shut down their biggest plant
That fucking Chinese pork producer in Iowa just shut down (biggest one in the USA)
STOCK THE FUCK UP ON FOOD
Serious question: in other parts of the country are you able to easily buy a cow or pig and have it butchered at a local butcher? I'm in Nebraska and its very simple. I will help Feed the Pedes if it becomes needed.
A live one?
And no, while I live near Denver, which used to be the West's quintessential cow town, I have no idea how to get this process started. Nor is my freezer big enough to store a cow.
I live in a county of 10k and there are 3 businesses in my county (butcher, processors, smokehouses). I can buy a cow from a farmer I know, he delivers it to the butcher, and I pay the farmer roughly $3 per pound for the finished beef and pay the butcher about $0.60 per pound for processing. I then divide the costs and the beef between 4 families and we are setup for a year with steaks, ground beef and roasts.
that's awesome!
denver is now cucked
The big newspapers in that part of the country have been beating the "shut them all down" drums loudly and relentlessly for the past few days and winning popular sentiment. It was inevitable. The people contacting their state representatives demanding shutdown don't realize they're risking their own hunger.
Realize most of those papers are owned by the same company......
Or that .. after just ten days of it .. they'd eat their own betacuck comrades.
...now i kinda want them to keep it shut down
smithfield -- and i heard someone say they heard something about a nearby hormel plant as well, but cant confirm
The packing plant shutdowns are because they are having Chinese Virus outbreaks. 3 plants in Nebraska that I'm aware of, one with 3600 "employees" (are illegal Mexican visitors considered employees?). Real question, how did they not foresee Virus outbreaks at meat packing plants with 95% illegal workforce? Working shoulder to shoulder, living 4 families to a house or apartment, working even when sick....
So because 80% of them will be asymptomatic and most of the rest have flu like symptoms, they shut down a whole plant?
Well, in one situation, in Lexington Nebraska (Dawson county) they have a population of 10k, with 3k working at the Tyson packing plant, and 124 confirmed cases as of Monday I believe. Whether it matters or not, 95% of the 3k employees are Mexicans. This scares the Hell out of an already panicked local community. I agree with your logic, but the Governor is going to do what the panicking masses want.
Iirc Smithfield is owned by the CCP. Fucking Chicoms
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/jobless-claims
We are in for a hurting. It's only getting worse.
Your local trucking delivery that went from farm to nearby vendor, then to restaurant, doesn't have the ability to immediately switch to selling to further markets. Hence, large scale production in one area is not able to get to another less supplied area.
Also everyone is hoarding so people buy way more than their local supply chains are used to. So what was good enough in a local region is depleted rapidly without a supply from another region.
Contracts. Restaurants buy X amount. Supermarkets buy X amount. Usually negotiated with the packaging plant which negotiates with the farmers. Some food industry only buys the whites, the other the yolks.
It's a balance of supply and demand combined with farmers wanting to keep prices stable..
Regulation. Ever buy a box of something and for each item see “Not for individual resale” or the like printed on it? The regulations around labeling and packaging are immense and to straighten that out in the supply chain takes time and a lot of money.
GEOTUS has taught us that all it really takes is a patriot with titanium balls and some brains to just come in and smash all that obama-era regulations shit right up. We don't have to live with the regulations we've been yoked with for so long, especially NOW. The fact that some dickhead obummer lackey's signed documents sitting on a shelf in some DC office is the reason why people are pouring a billion gallons of milk down a drain somewhere during a fugging CRISIS is INSANE, and won't fly for long.
Thse reg have massive corporate and federal backing behind them. Good luck fighting them.
Those regs are why we have massive businesses. They wrote the laws and paid congressmen to pass them. Cronyism. And we have to find a way to roll it back to get our economy chugging along.
Right and those regs help the big businesses bottom line.
Eggs packaged for restaurants come in a big box with layers of loose eggs separated by cardboard.
Eggs packaged for retail sale come in the same sized box but the eggs are packaged into dozens.
I know this because sometimes my company gets the restaurant eggs by mistake and they have to be sent back as we have zero use for loose eggs.
Multiply this sort of problem across the entire food supply chain and you can see how you have consumer end shortages and producer surplus.
Also, much of the restaurant egg supply is liquid eggs. Suppliers of liquid eggs aren't prepared to package eggs by the dozen.
once people are hungry they won't care
Very good point, makes sense.
The issue with beef right now is the slaughters going down significantly due to mandatory spacing issues, sick employees and plant closures. Slaughters are significantly down right now due to this.
so we can do ventilators real quick, but not EGGS. gOtcHa.
Open an egg carton factory. That's where the bottleneck is.
Or recycle
Ha ha, good point!
HONK HONK
Not precisely, a flat of eggs can be sold just as easily in a grocery store as they can be sold by the case to restaurant. Granted not every one needs 30 eggs at once, but that is minor.
30 eggs? Karen will buy them
karen will also complain about the unrounded dozen
Plandemic
The longer this goes on the more I see it as enemy action.
People facilitating and peddling this need to face very real and very public consequences.
Speaking of that... if y'all haven't watched Waco on Netflix (or through any other medium), you should.
David Koresh should've gone to jail for statutory rape. That's about it. Everyone else in there died for NOTHING. They were murdered so that government law enforcement bureaucrats could justify their jobs.
Kids. Toddlers.
Fuck Janet Reno and Bill Clinton.
Plandemic
Our government needs to be lynched. Men and women gone mad with power don't usually recover from their genocidal way of thinking.
I don't get this. I haven't seen eggs sold out, anywhere. Further, people still eat, so there is no reason why egg consumption in the US should be down. Were they shipping overseas?
Further, this was Cargill, that sells egg "fluid". I buy egg whites by the carton, and they are always in short supply.
This is me, a customer in California, waving a big, red, bs flag. Something else is going on. Nobody has stopped eating, or buying egg whites in cartons.
edit: Oh, yes, prices have gone up 50 cents/carton, recently.
I didn't downvote because I thought this was a well reasoned out comment. However. I would like to point out that we are in the middle of a VERY critical period in our country's history. Multiple factions both inside and outside this country would like to see us die. Not figuratively. And some other very corrupt people inside this country would let it happen if it meant they could get their$.
So forgive the plandemics for erring on the side of caution. This could be an enemy action. Maybe not, but it could be. And that being the case, that there even might be the possibility of it being a deliberate attempt to undermine our republic by sowing chaos, makes it unrealistic and kind of polyanna to just bury your head in the sand and say "must have been some kind of mistake! I'm sure everything is fine! There's surely an innocent explanation!"
Not that that is what you are doing. But there are obv shills in this thread, and I'm sort of addressing 'Dear Reader' while at the same time addressing your comments.
MAGA, fren!
And all this is on the heels of the opposition party attempting a political coup via shampeachment!
Fair point. The bottlenecks in food supply chains also revolves around compliance to food safety standards, approved supplier processes, allergen declarations in retail settings etc. And those prerequisite programs are internal processes, before government regulations and legislation affects. Crisis management for pandemics were not adequately prepared for this rapid of a shutdown and redirection of materials to certain sectors.
Very few people want to buy a 5 gallon jug of liquid egg, and most food pantries don't have the equipment or manpower to convert jugs like that into portions consumers can use. Those suggestions could take a bit of the edge off the supply mismatch, but they'll never fix it
I’m in the same boat, my grocery store ran out of most staple food items the first week all this hoarding bs started but since has been restocked. All the shelves have been full (except toilet paper and paper towels) for a couple weeks now. But I’m still only allowed to buy one carton of eggs at a time. I would normally buy two anyway, just like milk. But now I can only buy one of each these items at a time. Another big issue for me is that I work overnights and all the stores in my town (including all the 24 hour stores) are closing at night. So now I can’t even go to the store unless I cut into my sleep time.
I don’t think history will be kind to our response for this. We overreacted bigly,
China is asshoe.
3 people were up in this thread instantly to say there's nothing to see here. I mean like within 2 minutes of me posting.
Giant tropical centipedes share their territories with tarantulas...
The egg fluid is pre-cracked scrambled eggs that are bagged for restaurant use. For some reason it's hard to just sell those at the store. Government at work blocking it I bet.
They do sell it in the store packaged in cartons like the ones used for milk.
example: https://www.eggbeaters.com/
I also forgot these existed until I got to this thread.
Egg consumption falls off dramatically after Easter. Pre-Easter prices were skyrocketing on trend the same as every year (though 2019 was kind of a weird year). The week after Easter prices fall and did fall ~$20/15sz
Wonder what to block was for them to sell the chickens. I am getting chickens in a few weeks. I could have taken some.
We have chickens and I’ll let you know, you’ll love them for all the free eggs and fried chicken.
You’ll hate the rooster with a passion though... if he wasn’t necessary for more chickens I’d eat him tonight with a big smile on my face.
lol. I know what you mean about roosters. we got rid of our 20 or so chickens a few years ago due to a move. now that we are stable again we are getting more soon. buff orpingtons are our fav type.
Millions of gallons of Milk is also being thrown out. I cant imagine what is being thrown out right now from Food producers.
A significant portion (as much as 50%) of the egg market goes to restaurants and hotels, who buy either 15 dozen egg flats, or multi gallon bags of liquid egg which get cooked into stuff like scrambled eggs or breakfast sandwiches. The factories which produce those products can't easily switch over to making consumer size cartons which people will buy at the grocery store, so all the eggs which usually go there are being wasted.
This is just one more reason to support your local small food suppliers or buy eggs from somebody who raises them themselves. Better quality and you're not supporting big corps. I know this isn't an option for everybody, but if you can, buy eggs, meats and veggies from local farmers/farmer markets.
This is beginning to seem vaguely familiar. Most people don't know this, but Goldman Sachs actually created the Arab Spring. They invested heavily in food stocks which were destroyed to drive the price of food up so much that it caused riots all across Muslim countries. Are they doing the same thing here?
this sounds like a dig waiting to happen... ill check on a few things after the press beating see if anything interdasting comes up.
They are also euthanizing baby pigs due to pork farming disruptions.
Egg sales have dropped? I haven't seen a carton of eggs at my store in months, those things are always sold out.
I think it could be due to 2 things.
I think these 2 factors are causing this issue.
This farm produced eggs for liquid use in commercial foods. For grocery stores, they have to be graded and it requires a different setup.
Food service has shell eggs as well, both pasteurized and unpasteurized shell eggs. The volume of shell eggs vs liquid eggs is likely very close to 50/50
Our local store in northern Idaho has been short on eggs and will only let you buy one carton at a time, somethings not right.
They couldn't give them away so us peasants could raise a little flock?
The lady interviewed said she had a CONTRACT with them that stipulated they give her 7 DAYS NOTICE. They didn't. They just came in, grabbed the chickens, gassed em and took off.
WTF
What will the vegan progressives think of this? The longer you don’t open states, the more animals die.
SEND THOSE CHICKENS MY WAY!!!
I've been wanting to raise some chickens so badly... It's sad that so many are being senselessly killed. Best case scenario it may only be a matter of weeks before everything is open again, so why not wait and see if the demand comes back? They're just going to be scrambling to get more laying hens again once the restaurant industry gets rolling once more.
Alright, I'll come out and say it: I miss eating at Waffle House.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can get it to-go, whatever. It ain't the same unless you're there and you can hear your waitress scream out your scattered, covered, smothered hash browns and all the intricacies of your 3 egg omelet to the most patient cook ever, and then somehow forget to add the Bert's chili on top.
It's a supply chain issue. No one is buying his eggs because the grocery store packaging group is a bottle neck that can't handle too many extra eggs and the restaurant group he sells to doesn't need them. That said I don't have any issues getting affordable eggs right now.
Not sure if it is a dumb regulation that keeps things tied down or just dumb industry practices.
Thank our commie milk mafia, price fixing, regulatory capturing bastards.
This has nothing to do with large vs small food producers, and everything to do with the fact that millions of eggs which normally get turned into hotel scrambled eggs and fast food egg sandwiches aren't being made since those places are doing far less business. Those eggs, no matter what kind of farm produces them, are sold in multi gallon bags of liquid egg that the vast majority of consumers have no use for, and the plants which make those bags can't just instantly turn around and churn out enough consumer cartons to meet the shifted demand.
Fast food are the only restaurants open, they've been going nuts all day every day since this started.
They still have to deal with the lack of commuters and stay at home orders keeping people at home, especially for breakfast
It’s another way to control us. Americans are starting to rebel against draconian measures. It we have full pantries, we will protest. If there is a food shortage and price gauging, they can control us.
Empty pantries will lead to societal breakdown.
No shit. My Costco still has a two pack limit on eggs. Yes, I really like eggs.
My store has plenty of eggs.
Observation I made is that local suppliers are having it very well because the bog supply chains are having to raise prices.
For the first few weeks of lockdown egg shelves here were empty most of the time.
Now they're stocked but the prices have doubled.
Different supply chains.
Call the farm buy direct. That's what we normally do anyways. Eggs and dairy are typically a locally farmed commodity
The problem isn't with total food supply, it is with the supply chain.
It was designed to serve people getting what they need for 2-5 days of groceries, and even then only cooking one meal per day. Instead people suddenly need 5-10 days of groceries, and they are cooking 2-3 meals per day. Those extra shipments don't just appear out of thin air.
Shipping logistics is an extremely thin margin industry. Lots of automation. Google "Just in Time" logisitics model. A Shipment of eggs leaves the farm one day and arrives at refrigerated warehouse the same day. A few hours later it is already broken up into individual store bundles and loaded up to ship out. Within 24 hours it is on the store shelf. Within 48 hours its on your pantry shelf at home.
Its good for a lot of reasons, but it has its weaknesses. There is almost no storage capacity in the system since things move out as quickly as they come in. Which means the volume is limited to the trucks and drivers on-hand. And you can't go from 100 trucks and 200 drivers to 200 trucks and 400 drivers overnight. There is already a shortage of truckers, and they are in higher demand than ever now.
A system designed to transport 10,000 eggs a day to a small number of restaurants in bulk cannot be converted to 10,000 eggs a day to a large number of consumers in individual packages. Especially since that conversion costs a lot of money, will probably take a month or more, and in another month it will just have to be converted back.
This is why we have stimulus. The system is good and efficient in the long term, but its messy in the short term, and in times of crisis it makes losers out of a lot of people. Government should be insurance against those times.
Must be the rising fuel costs!
There’s not enough demand to meet supply so what is being sold needs to be sold at a higher price to cover the costs of all the goods not being sold, and a lot of stuff is going to waste
If demand is down, you lower prices to move product, not raise prices. The problems arise when demand is so low you can't sell at a profit.
61000 is a drop in the chicken ocean.
I just paid $3 for a dozen eggs that's usually 1.19
People would bring their own damn cartons for a couple dozen eggs if they would just get them to the store. Why not allow them to be shipped as usual to the restaurants and allow them to sell them and the rest of their products to the public? Like a pop up grocery store. It’s a win win.
Some of our fast food places and restaurants were quick to move their more popular products into frozen form in the grocery stores where people can cook it at home. This is the Philippines though.
Same with dairy. They have to milk cows everyday. Even so the stores are claiming shortages. This is due to several factors not the least of which is transport. How do you get the product to market when everything and everyone is shut down?
Kroger has their own transportation. They have also a high profit motive. I've noticed their prices are being manipulated. They certainly have not foregone profit for the sake of the people's misery.
Some of our fast food places and restaurants were quick to move their more popular products into frozen form in the grocery stores where people can cook it at home. This is the Philippines though.
Fuckery is afoot.
Fucking commies closed the slaughter houses
Planned Poultryhood.
It's a packaging and supply chain issue. Eggs are bought in packs of 3 dozen, milk is delivered in large plastic bags, not cartons or jugs for restaurant industry supply. Most of these stories you hear are from people that supply the restaurant and food service industry. They do not have the means or tools to restructure their packaging. No restaurants, no need for bulk mass supply.
Right, they are sold in bulk. But why couldnt bulk stores like Costco or Sam's Club sell them? It wouldnt cover all the bulk. But it could help even a little bit. While they cant change their supply system that fast. Couldnt they try and sell some to consumers? I think it has to do with some government regulations blocking it.
we can stop on a dime to make a gorillion ventilators, but we can't repackage eggs?!?! GTFOH widdat shit, amirite? The idea that this is a packaging problem is a fucked up way of just kicking the can down the road and saying "this is no ones fault really"... you bet your ass this is someones fault!!
so.... your argument is that packaging is harder than ventilators. got it.
Why would a company waste millions of dollars to convert their factory for a few weeks because a bunch of retarded governors fucked them, and then when things open again waste even more time and money going back to how things were before. In the grand scheme of things this is a short term issue and the best thing for bulk packagers is to just wait for things to reopen, and not burn a bunch of cash chasing all these massive, government induced changes in demand. While that happens, some products are going to have weird supply/demand mismatches
You are assuming they arent trying to retool. They very well may be trying to, it just takes longer for them. Or more likely government is involved and they would rather waste it and not get hit with lawsuits if things go wrong.
Welp, if you look at the thread and how fast the post gained traction, I guess you could consider this the beginnings of the public putting pressure on the egg people to clear up this little mystery. People aint gonna put up with this bullshit for long.
The problem is there are only so many people doing the packaging and they’re all overwhelmed with orders right now. Food manufacturers don’t product their own packaging.
Do you want to buy a 5 gallon plastic bag of milk? It's all they have to put it in. They do not have jugs or cartons. I totally get what you are saying though.
Yes, I'll buy a 5 gallon plastic bag of milk.
I'm perfectly capable of refilling gallon jugs on my own, and I wouldn't mind having bulk milk for hobby cheese-making (queue "I was a humble cheesemaker" copypasta)
Personally, we go through 3 gallons a week. So I may consider it. However, just because you or I wouldnt doesn't mean others wouldnt. And given the circumstances, I think some would, just to help. A lot of restaurants near me are getting support, only so that they survive (the foods kinda sucks).
It’s the 6gallon bibs that you speak of that are unavailable. They are not shutting down production lines to keep this product active, they are 95% focused on retail right now.... which is affecting other things like the availability of non-fat milk because there isn’t enough volume for heavy cream right now.
The dramatic shift from food service to retail is massive and nobody is ready for it. Couple this with the fact that many plants are shitting down and those that are operational are enforcing mandatory spacing and accordingly production itself has been cut in half as well.
It’s a very serious situation right now and the next 3-5 weeks are going to be very difficult, especially for beef.
Source: corporate advisor for one of the largest food service companies on earth.
Perhaps you misread me. The restaurant food are packaged. They dont put milk are scrambled eggs in open containers. They are bagged. The difference is the type of packaging. Consumers get one type and restaurants another. The restaurant packaging maybe more fragile which is why they wont sell it to consumers?
I'd buy a bag of milk. Don't the goofball Canadians do that anyway?
Right. I know it wont fix everything. Probably not even 1% of the problem. But that small fraction could help some and lessen the pain of others. Opening up and getting back on track would absolutely be the right call. I would be happy to work tomorrow if they opened that fast.
Before this, I thought of only one supply rather than one for consumers and others for restaurants. I am still not sure why they couldnt be combined. I know government is probably why. A restaurant could get them packaged as they do now, or if they want, just go to the store and buy the consumer version. But the consumers have only the one choice. If the consumers had both, they would still be backed up, but slightly less if going by my 1% example.
Other way around. Retail packaging is less sturdy than food service packing. But the problem is that the food service lines are maxed out and they can’t produce more packaging. Instead they have excess food service packaging with greatly diminished demand for it.
I didnt know that that food service packaging is more sturdy. I've seen bags of milk and looked easier to break then a retail gallon and based it off that. Probably shouldnt have. If it's not the packaging, do you know why the consumers couldnt just buy it like we can with retail packaging?
You're talking about the inner pack. Inner pack could be anything. Generally speaking food service outer packing (case packing for example) is sturdier. Commercial kitchens have a lot more movement than home kitchens.
What the fuck? I live in Minnesota, and just yesterday my wife went to Target to buy eggs - and there wasn't a single carton!
So, the demand is there. Why is Cargill destroying the supply?
Taking a haircut like 45+% of all American workers.
Welcome to sucksville.
It probably costs more to kill than to just give away free food for the needy. For all the free market banter that many GOP supporters have, seems as though they are fundamentally unaware of the importance of charity. If we are to maintain America as a nation built upon the basic Christian interpretations of inalienable rights, we have to admit that this contains in itself a protection for the basic ability of man to make its materiality functionable within the society. This translates to the Republican platform's inherent protection of labor, as opposed to its creation, through guarantee of free ethical competition and encouragement of charity. We have won America already. Our challenge for this term is to guarantee the protection of America's Generation Scarlet from being infected by Communism. Capitalism contains in itself the prescription for social safetynets. We don't need failed systems to define our future.
At HEB they are limiting you to two cartons of eggs currently.
"They" claim the eggs/milk/pork/vegetables/fish/etc., normally sold in bulk to the now-shut down restaurants, can't be sold in groceries, since there's a shortage of adequate "consumer" packaging (1-dozen egg cartons, 1 gallon milk jugs, and so on).
Apparently we forgot to teach our millenials how to reuse egg cartons or fill their own milk containers?
So, lets dump it all and raise the prices!
Do you want to buy a 5 gallon bag of prescrambled egg?