Prepping For a Grocery Shortage
What a great time to be a prepper. To be someone who took the time to give a little thought to what to do in a crisis situation. And if you are new to all this maybe you should take the time to educate yourself on how to prep for a Grocery Shortage brought about by different situations. In this post, we’ll explore essential prepping strategies and the shortages that occur in a crisis.
Make no mistake, a grocery shortage will come about very quickly when an emergency looms on the horizon.
Most people aren’t preppers. As a result, they are not equipped with the tools to handle most emergency situations. When one arises, they panic.
That panic generally translates into fleeing or shopping. Not leisurely shopping, of course, but intense, highly focused sprees with the intent to grab whatever might be needed to get through declining circumstances.
But regardless of what they do in the aftermath, non-preppers are exposing themselves to situations where they might be out of electricity, heat, or water, and they won’t be set up to handle that.
When the news breaks, they flood the supermarket aisles, leaving the shelves empty of anything that could possibly be useful to you and your family in the coming crisis.
Where does that leave you? On the very bad side of a grocery shortage.
Are you equipped to handle this type of emergency scenario, or will you be amongst those who feel the panic mounting as you find shelf after shelf bare?
If you think that you might be one of those unprepared persons, make a choice today to change.
Choose not to be part of the panicked masses.
Prepping is not just for people in tin foil hats and bunkers, hiding from the government, aliens, communists, and zombies.
Prepping is for everyone who doesn’t want to be left standing in an empty supermarket with no way to feed a family if the electricity goes out in the coming storm.
Learning how to prep is for everyone who wants to stay comfortable and in good spirits through five days of being snowed in.
Prepping is for everyone who doesn’t want to risk not getting their child or spouse to the hospital soon enough because of a sudden allergic reaction.
And, seeing as you’ve decided to check out this post, chances are that prepping seems right to you.
If You Were Learning How to Prepare
What would a crisis look like?
Instead of rushing to the supermarket to avoid that grocery shortage during that emergency scenario, you would be focusing on “bugging in,” a survivalist term meaning to shelter in place.
Instead of shopping, you would be breaking out your heat and light sources, your cooking equipment, your food, and your hygiene supplies, and you would be securing your property to minimize damage.
Or maybe you would have a dedicated plan in place, meaning that you weren’t forced to stay and weather the storm. Instead, you would “bug out,” meaning to shelter elsewhere.
Instead of shopping, you would grab your bug-out bag, put your family in the car, and drive to a safe location.
And if you had to stop on the way, it wouldn’t matter that all hotel rooms are already taken because you’d have a comfortable tent, a seasonal sleeping bag, and food to keep you going.
If You Aren’t Learning How to Prepare
How differently could this scenario play out?
I’m not here to make you feel bad, or scare you for no reason, but I want you to think about what would happen if you got to the supermarket to find a grocery shortage or find there was no food left at all.
You know that extreme weather is coming. You might be out of the heat of your own home. You might be out of electricity. Your gas supply will be cut off. The water mains may be polluted.
The supermarket has grocery shortages of bread, crackers, and canned foods. Everything available will have to be cooked somehow. The looters have taken everything down to the last package of hot dog buns.
The aisles are all out of the water, milk, juice, beer, and carbonated beverages. Even expired items are becoming a hot commodity.
There are no candles and no lamp oil. The flashlights are gone, but that doesn’t matter much since so are the last of the batteries.
If stores had once stocked blankets and camping gear, there is no sign of that now.
Where do you go from here? What about children? And pets?
When you prep, you ask these questions while life is still comfortable so that you never have to live through that panic and fear.
How to Get Started in Prepping
So, you want to be prepared, but you don’t know where to start? And grocery shortages may be only one crisis facing you.
There are many strategies for prepping. Stay with me, and I will help you out.
But if you are impatient to get started – and who wouldn’t be? – best begin with the basics. Start by making a list of who you are prepping for.
It’s such a simple thing, but many people overlook this step. Instead of making sure that they have supplies for all family members and pets, they wing it. Preppers never wing it; preppers consider all the details.
Now that you have a list of all the people, and pets, you will be prepping for, start with the easy everyday things.
Do you have a sufficient first-aid kit? Does it really cover all of your bases? Is there enough for the number of people in your household? Do you lack pet-specific health care items?
What about a brief heating failure on a cold day? Do you have enough extra blankets to keep all of your family members warm throughout the night?
What about your car? Is there a small but mighty first-aid kit in there? Are there warm clothes or rain ponchos for everyone in case of a breakdown in bad weather?
Sure, prepping is about the big stuff – when that stuff hits the fan (SHTF) and it’s the end of the world as we know it – but it’s also about these tiny precautions and learning how to prep.
Pre-Grocery Shortage Preparations
I hope your menu planning and calculations went well for you.
I did mention planning, right?
I realize it’s a pain to do all that, but you’re going to be better off with that work behind you. When a disaster comes and you have to live off of your food stocks, your family will be much better off.
We’ve been talking about how to get your food stockpile built on a budget and a couple of ideas on how to save money. I want to expand on that a little by sharing some sources with you, that you might not have thought of.
One thing to keep in mind when you’re looking for places to buy food is that you’re buying in bulk. Even though you don’t buy most items in bulk for your normal grocery shopping, you’ll be buying large enough quantities to buy in bulk, which can save you a lot of money.
Part of every dollar you spend on food is to pay for packaging. That packaging costs the manufacturer money, which they have to recoup somehow. They do it by passing the charges to customers like you and me. If you can buy food where you don’t have all that packaging, then you can save considerably on what you buy.
You’d be amazed how much the same items are if you don’t have all that fancy packaging with them.
Grocery Savings To Prep By
With those money-saving ideas in mind, here are the places to find food where you can get the best price before the grocery store shortage:
* Warehouse Clubs
Sam’s Club, Costco, and other such warehouse clubs are a
great source of food, especially dry goods like rice and
beans. These clubs are set up to sell in quantity so they
have 25- and 50-pound bags of these things you’d normally
buy one or two pounds at a time.
That’s not all, though. They have pasta in five-pound
bags, spices in one-pound bottles, and many other quantity
deals. By buying the largest packages, you save a bundle
on the packaging portion of the normal cost.
* Farmer’s Markets
Many preppers do their own canning because it’s a great way
to preserve fruits and vegetables while saving money. 
It
is possible to can foods cheaper and with better quality
than buying them already canned at retail.
If you are going to can food, then you want to buy the
food itself as cheaply as possible without sacrificing
quality. That’s where the farmer’s market comes in. The
vendors are often farmers who grow the food themselves.
Selling food at a farmer’s market is a great deal for the
farmer. He gets more than he would be selling it wholesale,
even though he’s giving you a discount. So, it ends up
being a great deal for you as well.
* Stores with Bulk Bins
Some grocery stores have an aisle of foods that they sell
in bulk. They will usually have barrels with dry goods,
and you scoop the items you want into plastic bags and pay
by the pound.
This food doesn’t have any of the packaging costs that I
mentioned earlier. Not only that, but the supermarket has
bought it in bulk, meaning that they also got a better
price. For things like dried fruit, you can’t beat the
cost you can get by buying bulk.
* Craigslist
Yes, you read that right. You can find almost anything on
Craig’s list, including food. I’ve found some amazing
deals on large quantities of specific food there.
Often, the food that is sold on Craig’s list is damaged
merchandise that needs to be disposed of. For example, a
trucking company damages a shipment of ketchup, breaking
several cases. They have to pay for the damaged goods and
are left with the broken boxes. Instead of throwing it
away, they try to recoup some of their loss by selling it.
* eBay
Just like Craig’s list, you can find pretty much anything
on eBay, including food. Often, the items are seasonal,
and people are trying to sell excess after that
season is over.
If you’re going to buy food on eBay, make sure you know
what it costs locally. You also have to figure in the
shipping cost to make sure that you know what you’re
really paying for it. Sometimes, the shipping makes it too
expensive to be worthwhile.
* Dollar Stores
Most of the dollar stores now sell food as well. While it
isn’t always the best place to buy food, there are times
when they have some spectacular deals.
Once again, you need to know how much the same thing will
cost in a normal supermarket. You’ll also find that there
are times when the cost of the food at the dollar store is
higher than the supermarket price. Just because it’s a
dollar doesn’t mean it’s cheap.
* After Holiday Sales
There are certain foods that are seasonal. Easter and
Halloween candy goes on sale for half price the day after
those holidays. But, that isn’t the only seasonal food
sales you can find.
I told you in one of the other letters about the 30 summer
sausages that my wife and I got such a good deal on. That
was a seasonal sale as well. Those fancy sausage and
cheese gift packages go on sale for a really good price
the day after Christmas.
Food Shortage Follow-Up
Now you’re ready to go shopping, armed with all my tricks for buying a bulk food stockpile at the best possible price. Just be patient. The one thing that will destroy any chance of getting a good deal is getting in a hurry.
So what type of disaster are you preparing for? Personally, I’m really concerned about our country’s financial situation. It seems like there’s a lot of manipulation going on, the kind that is done to keep a house of cards from falling down.
If our economy crashes, it will be bad; there’s no question about it. So whatever type of disaster you’re preparing for, you’d better include that in your prepping.
Something else to think about.
