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Newfoundland has a hard bread shortage, but why do they eat it?
- charcircuit 2mo ago>Grocery stores across Newfoundland and Labrador have been struggling to keep hard bread in stock since a fire at the Purity factory in March put a crimp in the company’s baking operations. Is it really that hard to raise the price to keep it in stock?
- close04 2mo agoRaising the price doesn't increase the supply, it just selects who can access it. Most of the people will still not get it, just for a different reason.
- card_zero 2mo agoThat implies that everything with a price is always out of stock.
- squigz 2mo agoNo, it implies that everything with a price and a supply issue will likely still face that supply issue even with a higher price.
- bluecheese452 2mo agoIt implies no such thing.
- card_zero 2mo agoThe presence of a price "selects who can access it", hence there's not enough stock to give it away for free. (Sometimes deliberately.)
- watwut 2mo agoWut? That makes no sense.
- card_zero 2mo agoWhich part? You see this depends on your prior assumptions about how much stock there should be, and those are based on the state of affairs that you're used to and that you consider to be the natural order of things. But if you imagine that the proper natural order of things is for everybody to have as much of everything as they like, to squander profligately, then there's always a shortage of everything, relative to that state. On the other hand, if you consider the natural order of things to be that hard bread is very expensive, then raising the price (to stop it being too cheap) would indeed remove the shortage. You see? I'm saying that declaring a shortage is a kind of mild Chauvinism, an assumption that what you're used to having is proper and correct. But of course that might be true, in a way.
- wvbdmp 2mo agoThere’s plenty of stuff you couldn’t get rid of if you gave it away for free. You seem to be ignoring demand.
- card_zero 2mo agoI considered that. It's a fair point, there are things that you couldn't give away, but almost always somebody would want them, if the price was zero. Hard bread, for example, would become like a natural resource, full of calories, to be turned into nicer bread.
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- close04 2mo agoI don't know where you got that honestly. The situation here is that there is a temporary supply shortage. If you raise the prices to drop sales and guarantee you have stock it means you priced out most of the people. You narrowed your market only to the few who can afford it and those few are slowly going through that stock. How does that help the situation? At the end of the day some people will have the bread (because they were in the store early, or because they have money) and other won't. Raising prices in this situation only helps make more profit, extract more from the existing market. It does nothing to solve the problem of people having bread.
- urcturpurs 2mo agoOf course it helps, pricing increases make it more attractive to build more supply.
- close04 2mo agoNot in this case. You're citing Economics 101 without addressing the situation from the article. The current primary supplier had a temporary setback caused by a fire in mid-March and operated at reduced capacity, before going back to full capacity in July. Whatever flexibility competitors had to increase capacity with little to no investment was probably captured. A few months of marginally improved prices won't incentivize any competitor to invest. Hard bread isn't the kind of product that can command a big price before customers lose interest.
- mhluongo 2mo agoA higher margin increases the incentive for people to make more, though.
- inigyou 2mo agoWould you make a hard bread factory if the price was higher? How high?
- wvbdmp 2mo agoProbably not, right? Demand is already there. The factory is already incentivized, it’s just damaged and needed time to get back to full capacity. A contender isn’t just going to spring up because prices are temporarily high. Even if you already had a factory that could easily be converted to this product, you’d have to factor in the switching cost, opportunity cost, shipping, marketing and regulatory stuff. This likely offsets the consumer’s willingness to pay extra during the shortage, and as soon as the original factory is back, they’re going to price you back out. They’re already operational, as per the article.
- rcxdude 2mo agoIn the longer run, maybe, but if the factory is already working to rebuild then arguably that incentive is already met and it's more just the time it takes to get capacity back up, which is not as flexible with spending money on it as people would like.
- charcircuit 2mo agoIt doesn't increase supply, but it slows down how fast the supply sells out. This allows there to always be supply available for purchase.
- close04 2mo ago> it slows down how fast the supply sells out This is not the goal. The only mitigation that could make sense is to impose limits per person or household to avoid someone hugging all the supply. > This allows there to always be supply available for purchase By the very few who can afford it, by definition of raising the prices until the products barely sell. If you have 100 items and 1000 people you guarantee that at least 90% of people won't get an item. It doesn't matter if it's because there is none left, or because it's too expensive. If you're hungry because the shelf is empty, or the shelf is full but you can't afford it, what's the practical difference for your stomach?
- charcircuit 2mo ago>This is not the goal. It is what the stores are having a hard time accomplishing. >the shelf is full but you can't afford it From the store's perspective it is still in stock and supply is available. How much people eat of it is separate from what the article is discussing.
- close04 2mo ago> It is what the stores are having a hard time accomplishing. It's a proxy for what the stores have a hard time accomplishing. The goal is to fulfill demand. Do you genuinely need the explanation why a store's goal is to sell not "have on shelf"? > From the store's perspective it is still in stock and supply is available I guess I do need to explain. Now I'm starting to think this is intentional hard headedness :). If the goal was just "have X on the shelf" they'd put one item and price it like gold. Or put it really high on the shelf. Goal achieved. When the authors of these articles say "have on shelf" they assume the reader is reasonable and intuitively makes the connection to "fulfilling demand, people able to buy". > How much people eat of it is separate from what the article is discussing. You're right. What the article is discussing is how much people can buy. If there is no supply then people aren't buying. But make no mistake, the buying is important, not the being on the shelf. Maybe some stores put the breads in a basket ;).
- pjc50 2mo agoYou know what's really oversupplied in this subthread? One sentence contrarianism. (not that I haven't done it myself occasionally, but guys you really are not helping anyone here including yourselves)
- inigyou 2mo agoHow does that solve the problem? I love how in economics, a shortage can be solved by increasing the price instead of by increasing the quantity. It really makes you understand that the field of economics uses stupid definitions of words.
- charcircuit 2mo agoIf you are trying to slow down sales to the point that you are able to consistently replenish stock before the last batch sells out, raising the price will reduce the volume of hard bread being sold. At some point the volume should be low enough that it stops going out of stock.
- wvbdmp 2mo agoJust “having hard tack in stock” isn’t the objective to solve for, though. I’m actually skeptical this shortage affects people too badly, since the stuff lasts forever. Probably enthusiasts have enough in their pantries to last them through a temporary factory downtime?
- brazzy 2mo agoWhy would they stockpile it when they're used to just buying it in the supermarket? It's not bought for its long-shelflife property anymore, it's basically just an ingredient in some popular traditional local recipes. Sure, those recipes emerged because the shelflife used to make hard-tack a reliably available source of calories, but that's basically gastronomical skeumorphism.
- charcircuit 2mo ago"struggling to keep hard bread in stock" the article says it is what the stores are struggling to do. It is the objective they are failing at.
- inigyou 2mo agoWell if the goal is to never be out of stock, just keep one more packet in the back room and never sell it. That clearly isn't the goal.
- Simulacra 2mo agoWow, this is actually interesting, I had not heard of people eating hard attack since the American Civil War. But looking at a map, it doesn't look that difficult to get to, so I'm curious why not just fly it in?
- chocochunks 2mo agoBecause no one else really eats it or makes it. AFAIK that Purity factory is the only one in Canada making it and outside of Newfoundland it's hard to find on a normal day even in the rest of Atlantic Canada. And when you do, it's the Purity version shipped over. It's very much a Newfoundland food.
- rob74 2mo agoThe article gives an interesting overview of the history of hard bread, but doesn't mention how Newfoundlanders eat it today. In a fish soup? With tea? Pure? Or all of the above?
- grovesNL 2mo agoYeah basically all of the above, especially fish and brewis, soups/stews, etc. Usually you soften it in some way before eating it.
- bregma 2mo agoWithout fish and brewis Newfoundland is just... a big rock.
- 5555624 2mo agoWhy not just make it yourself? It's just flour, water, and salt. It's far easier than yeast-based breads and easier than most quick breads, too. Two ingredient (self-rising flour and heavy cream) biscuits are about the only thing that's easier.
- samirillian 2mo ago> Proper hard bread couldn’t be home baked.
- ceejayoz 2mo agoIn the 1700s.
- criddell 2mo ago> It was made from a special winter wheat flour and slowly dried in a kiln or an evaporation loft Maybe the flour is difficult to buy or most people don't have a way to dry the bread? Being on the ocean, St. John's is a pretty humid place.
- brazzy 2mo agoToday as well. You need special equipment and a lot of time to remove all the moisture without burning it. Sure, you can probably find a way to achieve a "good enough" result with normal household appliances, especially when it doesn't actually need to be stored for years and you're just going to soak it again for some tranditional recipe. But it's a lot more effort than most people want to invest when they just want to replicate that recipe.
- buu709 2mo agoI live in the same city as the factory mentioned in the article. It's hard enough to even make croutons this time of year due to the humidity. My wife is a fairly experienced/talented home cook and over cooked two batches last week trying to get them right.
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- lurk2 2mo agoThis has nothing to do with this board's subject matter.
- criddell 2mo agoThis board is for the discussion of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity". https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If this article generates substantial discussion and doesn't veer off into pointless arguing, it qualifies.
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- Mistletoe 2mo ago> A large portion of those biscuits would have gone into the traditional dish fish and brewis. Pronounced “brews,” brewis is made by soaking hard bread in water overnight then boiling it to soften it before serving it with salt cod. I don’t think we realize how good we have it these days.
- Hugsbox 2mo agoThey love fish and brewis these days, too.
- GavinAnderegg 2mo agoG’day b’y! Who’s yer fadder? Newfoundland is a very special place. Here’s an example of that “right some t’ick” accent if you haven’t heard it before: https://www.dialectsarchive.com/newfoundland-5 https://www.dialectsarchive.com/newfoundland-5