How bad is the supply chain problem?

[ghostrunner]

Just curious about

1) How bad it is where you are? Is it causing problems for you?

2) Anyone think this is a permanent thing going forward? Not that it stays exactly like this, but that we don't ever get back to fully stocked shelves we were used to seeing a couple years ago.


For us, it's not so bad yet. I've had to make some extra grocery trips to other stores to track things down, but that was mostly for holiday meals. I do feel like this is also luck though, because the shelves are noticeably bare and that must seriously be affecting someone. People with special needs or diets. Maybe people with babies and little kids.

It's interesting that Costco doesn't seem to be having this issue the way grocery stores are. I know they have direct deals for some products and they'll actually get things first. In some cases they're the only customer for certain things. I read something about that before all this happened.

On the second thing, I wonder how much is US supply chain vs global supply chain. Has the US just always hoovered up a bunch of product at the expense of the rest of the world or certain parts of the world, and is that getting temporarily or permanently reshuffled now? I admittedly haven't done much reading on it, so this is all just speculation.

[cardinalkarp]

I haven’t seen it in person, as we typically have groceries delivered and haven’t had too many issues w/ not getting the items selected delivered.

But, we don’t buy meat from grocery stores (if that’s what’s been out?)

I encourage people to check out different farms to get their meats from. We go to a farm in St. Peters, MO that has beef, pork, and chicken and we also try to order from different regenerative farms from around the Midwest and just have it delivered. The meat is FAR superior, and yes it is more expensive but I would much rather pay extra and know exactly where the meat is coming from and their practices. [expletive] the factory farms and their practices.

[Arthur Dent]

I wanted to make manicotti the other day and had to substitute a different type of pasta to stuff. And I’ve had to buy off brand Topo Chico for months.

The flip side is that jobs are plentiful and companies are for once actually investing in capacity expansions with long term benefits. If we end up with sustained inflation, especially if that means falling real wages, that will be bad, but tentatively I’d say it’s basically been a good trade-off for me personally at this point.

[G. Keenan]

Can't report any shortages here. My local Target does seem to have less toilet paper than pre-pandemic, but it's always there, it's just that the shelves aren't full of it.

This is all related to the pandemic. Consumers have redirected the money spent on services pre-pandemic (travel, entertainment) to goods. So it's not that there is less "stuff" being produced than before, rather supply has not yet fully caught up to increased demand.

There are some specific things (semi-conductors?) being affected by factories in Asia, especially Vietnam and China, dealing with rolling closures for Covid outbreaks that are affecting production. Domestically there are industries like meatpacking getting hit by outbreaks affecting the labor supply.

I think companies are learning that they do need to stockpile inventory a bit more now to weather supply chain disruptions. The just-in-time model is more efficient and profitable, but in a world with pandemics, violent weather, and cyber attacks all occurring more frequently, it's probably not a bad idea to move away from that for certain industries.

[Popeye_Card]

I've yet to find a store that is completely out of beer, so not a problem as far as I am concerned.

I've found the bigger hassle to be restaurants, etc. that are extremely short-staffed, to the point where you have an hour wait for a table not because they don't have tables available (half the restaurant is empty), but because they only have 1-2 servers or only 1-2 people in the kitchen.

[haltz]

Lumber has been a big issue, but it's more of a price or quality problem, or both. It's better now than it was although prices went up again a bit after coming back down. I haven't run into a situation where it's unavailable.

[Arthur Dent]

I've yet to find a store that is completely out of beer, so not a problem as far as I am concerned.

I’ve never seen any hint of a beer supply problem despite the fact that the pandemic seems to have caused a big increase in drinking. I feel like this should be a bigger source of conspiracy theorizing. Or maybe it’s just that “quit your job to become a brewer” is a popular enough idea that there’s overcapacity, though even then you’d think the malted barley/hops inputs would be strained.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

I've yet to find a store that is completely out of beer, so not a problem as far as I am concerned.

I’ve never seen any hint of a beer supply problem despite the fact that the pandemic seems to have caused a big increase in drinking. I feel like this should be a bigger source of conspiracy theorizing. Or maybe it’s just that “quit your job to become a brewer” is a popular enough idea that there’s overcapacity, though even then you’d think the malted barley/hops inputs would be strained.

Yeah, the last thing 'they' would want to disturb is the social tranquilizers.

[G. Keenan]

I've yet to find a store that is completely out of beer, so not a problem as far as I am concerned.

I’ve never seen any hint of a beer supply problem despite the fact that the pandemic seems to have caused a big increase in drinking. I feel like this should be a bigger source of conspiracy theorizing. Or maybe it’s just that “quit your job to become a brewer” is a popular enough idea that there’s overcapacity, though even then you’d think the malted barley/hops inputs would be strained.

The appetite for $12 tallboy 4-packs of hazy IPA is apparently bottomless.

[Popeye_Card]

The mere mention of hazy IPA's makes me want to punch people. [expletive] I hate "craft beer" culture of the past 5 or so years.