There have definitely been gaps on the shelf all year. Nothing major near me at least, however you cannot not notice them every time you go in. It’s far from the Soviet Union but it’s not something you ever really saw outside of the beginning of the pandemic. We’re still in the beginning stages of Brexit but there is a good chance it will get worse before it gets better.
It’s been a few months since I last went to the supermarket and couldn’t buy everything I wanted
We’re hardly starving, the headline makes you think people here are queuing for rations.
It seems to be improving slowly, on the flip side I go to the supermarket every 3 days and at least 2 items on my list will have gone up in price since my last visit.
Food shortages are not a story in Europe. Like, at all.
I no longer live in the UK. I travel for business, I have *never* encountered food shortages in the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium. I have never read or heard about shortages in local media.
At one point, there was a shortage of toiletpaper at the beginning of corona. Otherwise, I’ve *never* not been able to buy what I want to.
If anything, stores seem to be more full than ever, and often you’ll find cheap deals for products which were likely destined for the UK market. (Eg. English sweets with a sticker translating the English labeling.)
The whole ‘food shortages in the EU’ story is almost entirely a fabrication by the UK press. The only reason they’re able to get away with it, is because people aren’t easily able to travel right now.
As far as I know from my friends on the continent, there haven’t been any food shortages what so ever – at least in France, Spain and Germany.
What ever shortages there are are limited to the UK, although I guess Ireland might have had issues until they started to avoid us by changing their import route.
Shortage in Lidl, Asda and Tescos… so much so they reorganised the shelving to hide the losses in Lidl and Tesco’s so no gaps (but big empty floor spacing).
And food prices are definitely rising, the old special offers 2 for 1 etc are becoming much less commonplace and I’d say +10% on last year at the very least.
I left the UK a while back, but since the start of lockdown I’ve been ordering food deliveries for my Father who is still in the UK. Last year at the hight of the Pandemic it was fairly smooth, but this year theres allways a decent percentage of what he wants not available with no substitutions. In the Summer it was common for him to be getting less than half of what was ordered and I had to do a second order from a different supermarket to make up.
I was really impressed with his local Iceland, I emailed thier coporate team to ask them to thank the local staff who have been really helpful and kind towards my father. and since I’ve spoken to the manager a few times now, he tells me that sometimes they just dont get stuff they expected, and sometimes it turns up days late and while the back of the shop is full of stock they dont have staff to put it out, or they have far too much of the same thing to put out.
It does sound like the logistics side of things is tending towards choas, with things getting worse as time goes on, rather than improving.
Long term tho I think the eventual end result is this going to be less choice over all for higher prices.
meanwhile my local Wallmart looks more and more like a warehouse with stuff pilied up like its being run by a doomsday prepper.
The gov gift of brexit tightens the throat hold on the UK population. Raise food prices to limit expendable income, restrict travel to control the news agenda, increase fuel prices to further restrict movement. Increase utility costs. What a wonderful place the UK has become.
Guardian journos unhappy some luxury goods are in short supply in Marks and Sparks.
So you’re telling me to rush out and buy what food i can i guess?
I was in a big Sainsbury’s yesterday and they didn’t have any frozen garlic mushrooms. It’s a minor thing of course, but I just fancied some and they had none. Sainsburys usually have basically everything and this is a fairly common product. Normally I’d just take it for granted that they have them all year round. I had to go without.
Its a shame that none of the supermarkets will admit to any supply problems, because obviously it would put them at a disadvantage to competitors. So we have to see the little signs ourselves.
Really? Could of fooled me, just been into M&S and Sainsburys this morning and I’ve never seen so much food in the stores ever, yes I get that is Christmas but you should of seen it, it was utterly mental.
Well I wonder whatever the reason for that could be.
All this seems to point out is that the UK and US for food stuffs rely more than other nations on globalised supply chains given the UK produces around 55% of food it consumed with the rest being imports and EU making up 26% of that, in comparison France only imports about 9% food stuffs abs is a net exporter,similar with Germany abs Spain imports around 11% of food stuffs meaning you wouldn’t expect any impact on just in time supply chains to seriously effect what is essentially domestic production (and within this EU member states make up majority of these imports), also bare in mind this doesn’t include breakdown of the goods themselves (in face the headline is very poor in general on this, because it makes it sound like general shortages rather than specific stock shortages which is all I’ve seen in data so far) which then led to good replacements in early days of covid as supply shocks hit in short run.
This seems in line with previous covid data, one could also point to HGV driver shortages and whether differences of the scale of that impact has also been a major factor here (less severe in Germany and France so less impact compared to UK and US).
I found it strange in boots. Not somewhere you expect to see the supply chain issues affecting. Basically every shelf was down to the last one or two of each product. But every shelf is dressed in such a way to cover the fact they’re virtually empty.
It’s almost like we’re a tiny little island at the arse end of a land supply chain, and we’ve artificially isolated ourselves even further to make importing foodstuffs more difficult.
who’d have thought shortages would have been the end result of that?
I haven’t noticed any shortages recently. But then this is the guardian…
Iv been able to buy everything i normally do, all the time.
Where does this bs come from?
Woaaah who could have predicted this strange turn of events?
Not in our orders. My wife was scared of not getting the christmas dinner, so ordered two fresh and put one in the freezer in october.
Now both Morrisons and Ocado have dleivered pretty much evreything yesterday and today (odered in Novemver) so we are now like the Vicar of Dibley with 3 Christmas dinners, so donating some to a food bank scheme.
I work in a supermarket, we have empty shelves because everything is in the stock room fridge, it’s rammed and we don’t have enough staff to move it from there to the shelves : )
Having said that there are lots of lines missing.
Lol, what shortages?
Haven’t seen a single empty shelf all year.
Its not a bad thing we’re all fat and keep voting on a conservative government that is hell bent on returning us to the Victorian age!
Iv not been In one supermarket that seems to be experiencing empty shelves.
Went shopping yesterday and no gaps on shelves, had absolutely everything I needed. This was in morrisons near Manchester I haven’t had any problems all year.
The only thing missing on shelves on the continent are PS5’s. There’s no shortage in food whatsoever.
Oh the Guardian, what a surprise. I live in London and for my own part i’ve seen zero food shortages, then again i’m not middle class, so if the gold-plated avocadoes are no longer available i wouldn’t know.
28 comments
There have definitely been gaps on the shelf all year. Nothing major near me at least, however you cannot not notice them every time you go in. It’s far from the Soviet Union but it’s not something you ever really saw outside of the beginning of the pandemic. We’re still in the beginning stages of Brexit but there is a good chance it will get worse before it gets better.
It’s been a few months since I last went to the supermarket and couldn’t buy everything I wanted
We’re hardly starving, the headline makes you think people here are queuing for rations.
It seems to be improving slowly, on the flip side I go to the supermarket every 3 days and at least 2 items on my list will have gone up in price since my last visit.
Food shortages are not a story in Europe. Like, at all.
I no longer live in the UK. I travel for business, I have *never* encountered food shortages in the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium. I have never read or heard about shortages in local media.
At one point, there was a shortage of toiletpaper at the beginning of corona. Otherwise, I’ve *never* not been able to buy what I want to.
If anything, stores seem to be more full than ever, and often you’ll find cheap deals for products which were likely destined for the UK market. (Eg. English sweets with a sticker translating the English labeling.)
The whole ‘food shortages in the EU’ story is almost entirely a fabrication by the UK press. The only reason they’re able to get away with it, is because people aren’t easily able to travel right now.
As far as I know from my friends on the continent, there haven’t been any food shortages what so ever – at least in France, Spain and Germany.
What ever shortages there are are limited to the UK, although I guess Ireland might have had issues until they started to avoid us by changing their import route.
Shortage in Lidl, Asda and Tescos… so much so they reorganised the shelving to hide the losses in Lidl and Tesco’s so no gaps (but big empty floor spacing).
And food prices are definitely rising, the old special offers 2 for 1 etc are becoming much less commonplace and I’d say +10% on last year at the very least.
I left the UK a while back, but since the start of lockdown I’ve been ordering food deliveries for my Father who is still in the UK. Last year at the hight of the Pandemic it was fairly smooth, but this year theres allways a decent percentage of what he wants not available with no substitutions. In the Summer it was common for him to be getting less than half of what was ordered and I had to do a second order from a different supermarket to make up.
I was really impressed with his local Iceland, I emailed thier coporate team to ask them to thank the local staff who have been really helpful and kind towards my father. and since I’ve spoken to the manager a few times now, he tells me that sometimes they just dont get stuff they expected, and sometimes it turns up days late and while the back of the shop is full of stock they dont have staff to put it out, or they have far too much of the same thing to put out.
It does sound like the logistics side of things is tending towards choas, with things getting worse as time goes on, rather than improving.
Long term tho I think the eventual end result is this going to be less choice over all for higher prices.
meanwhile my local Wallmart looks more and more like a warehouse with stuff pilied up like its being run by a doomsday prepper.
The gov gift of brexit tightens the throat hold on the UK population. Raise food prices to limit expendable income, restrict travel to control the news agenda, increase fuel prices to further restrict movement. Increase utility costs. What a wonderful place the UK has become.
Guardian journos unhappy some luxury goods are in short supply in Marks and Sparks.
So you’re telling me to rush out and buy what food i can i guess?
I was in a big Sainsbury’s yesterday and they didn’t have any frozen garlic mushrooms. It’s a minor thing of course, but I just fancied some and they had none. Sainsburys usually have basically everything and this is a fairly common product. Normally I’d just take it for granted that they have them all year round. I had to go without.
Its a shame that none of the supermarkets will admit to any supply problems, because obviously it would put them at a disadvantage to competitors. So we have to see the little signs ourselves.
Really? Could of fooled me, just been into M&S and Sainsburys this morning and I’ve never seen so much food in the stores ever, yes I get that is Christmas but you should of seen it, it was utterly mental.
Well I wonder whatever the reason for that could be.
All this seems to point out is that the UK and US for food stuffs rely more than other nations on globalised supply chains given the UK produces around 55% of food it consumed with the rest being imports and EU making up 26% of that, in comparison France only imports about 9% food stuffs abs is a net exporter,similar with Germany abs Spain imports around 11% of food stuffs meaning you wouldn’t expect any impact on just in time supply chains to seriously effect what is essentially domestic production (and within this EU member states make up majority of these imports), also bare in mind this doesn’t include breakdown of the goods themselves (in face the headline is very poor in general on this, because it makes it sound like general shortages rather than specific stock shortages which is all I’ve seen in data so far) which then led to good replacements in early days of covid as supply shocks hit in short run.
This seems in line with previous covid data, one could also point to HGV driver shortages and whether differences of the scale of that impact has also been a major factor here (less severe in Germany and France so less impact compared to UK and US).
I found it strange in boots. Not somewhere you expect to see the supply chain issues affecting. Basically every shelf was down to the last one or two of each product. But every shelf is dressed in such a way to cover the fact they’re virtually empty.
It’s almost like we’re a tiny little island at the arse end of a land supply chain, and we’ve artificially isolated ourselves even further to make importing foodstuffs more difficult.
who’d have thought shortages would have been the end result of that?
I haven’t noticed any shortages recently. But then this is the guardian…
Iv been able to buy everything i normally do, all the time.
Where does this bs come from?
Woaaah who could have predicted this strange turn of events?
Not in our orders. My wife was scared of not getting the christmas dinner, so ordered two fresh and put one in the freezer in october.
Now both Morrisons and Ocado have dleivered pretty much evreything yesterday and today (odered in Novemver) so we are now like the Vicar of Dibley with 3 Christmas dinners, so donating some to a food bank scheme.
I work in a supermarket, we have empty shelves because everything is in the stock room fridge, it’s rammed and we don’t have enough staff to move it from there to the shelves : )
Having said that there are lots of lines missing.
Lol, what shortages?
Haven’t seen a single empty shelf all year.
Its not a bad thing we’re all fat and keep voting on a conservative government that is hell bent on returning us to the Victorian age!
Iv not been In one supermarket that seems to be experiencing empty shelves.
Went shopping yesterday and no gaps on shelves, had absolutely everything I needed. This was in morrisons near Manchester I haven’t had any problems all year.
The only thing missing on shelves on the continent are PS5’s. There’s no shortage in food whatsoever.
Oh the Guardian, what a surprise. I live in London and for my own part i’ve seen zero food shortages, then again i’m not middle class, so if the gold-plated avocadoes are no longer available i wouldn’t know.