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Anyone have any insight in to why people shifting to eat at home would lead to less overall food demand though? Presumably, if you have X food being produced b
by wtvanhest 6y ago
Anyone have any insight in to why people shifting to eat at home would lead to less overall food demand though?
Presumably, if you have X food being produced by farms across the country, and people eating it, but split between restaurants (Y) and home (Z)... I would expect X to roughly equal Y + Z.
I would also expect Y + Z = total food eaten and not see any change in the value of Y + Z regardless of how food shifts between the two.
So how can you take away Y, but not increase Z at the same proportion?
Guesses:
1) Restaurants use a lot more ingredients? Seems unlikely since margins are so low.
2) Consumers reduce waste because they are not balancing getting food from two sources and are more likely to eat everything in their fridge? (My wife, son and I experienced this after we found out our son has food allergies to more than nuts and we basically only eat home cooked food), but I don't know if that is big enough.
3) Something else?
My gut tells me we are seeing a reduction in food waste which is due to less supplies, people being more careful. IDK.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI'd say there's some slack in the system due to how incredibly wasteful the HoReCa sector is, in particular hotels and event catering. But to the extent people shifted from eating out to eating in, that amount of extra demand isn't met by the consumer-oriented sector, and must be eventually reflected somewhere. I'm honestly surprised the food prices haven't gone up just yet, given the stories I hear saying that processing plants supplying HoReCa have a problem adjusting to providing to grocery stores.
- wtvanhest 6y agoStores are locked in on pricing due to emergency order. I expect new stores to pop up with the ability to set new prices and pay more from suppliers.
- save_ferris 6y ago> Anyone have any insight in to why people shifting to eat at home would lead to less overall food demand though? If you're calculating demand based on ability to pay (which is how markets work), it might be helpful to take a look at the pictures of food bank lines across America[0]. Tens of millions of people have filed for unemployment in the last several weeks, and demand at the food banks have skyrocketed. But since food banks don't operate as typical market, we don't pay attention to them. With so many millions at risk of starvation, we need to rethink how we understand demand in the context of food consumption, because millions of people waiting for several hours in order to get a bag of food tells me that the demand is there. 0: https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/04/these-photos-show-the-staggering-food-bank-lines-across-america/ https://www.motherjones.com/food/2020/04/these-photos-show-t...
- vonmoltke 6y ago> Anyone have any insight in to why people shifting to eat at home would lead to less overall food demand though? Based on the emptyness of my local store shelves over the past couple months, demand isn't the problem. Supply chain capacity is.