Yeah, catalogue planning begins 12 months in advance.
Starting Thursday Woolies will have care packages of basics available for $30 from the service desk for those that can’t get into a store during the 7-8 am timeslot.
The daily longlife delivery my store gets was diverted interstate today.
All Coles and Woolies stores will also be closing at 8pm until further notice. Coles has also said it plans to hire an additional 5000 casual staff with expedited inductions to assist with the crisis.
Great from the big two.
What’s missing in all this is a reassurance those in self isolation will have reasonable access to groceries etc. Imagine coming home from OS to a bare pantry, “go home, go directly home, do not go to the shops on the way”.
For others the prospect of suddenly being informed you need to self isolate creates another pressure point. The worst would be an area lockdown. How much notice? Enough to be the last one to the supermarket?
It may be the lack of reassurance that no Aussie will be left to starve to death or live off the last packet of TimTams for a fortnight that is missing.
Both big grocery chains are under pressure to meet demand.
There are other solutions that can help including community based organisations. Aside from helping the more vulnerable, helping the everyday Aussies trapped through the self isolation would seem just as important. The alternative is some will ignore isolation and venture forth to find their supplies, check the PO Box for the mail, etc.
There may be a level of confidence the grocery supply chain will not run out of food. Little consolation if you can’t get the groceries from the store to home.
Indeed! I don’t normally do supermarket shopping online but I was planning to start with my next big shop which would be next Monday (my pension day)… Maybe I should just do what I have always done, and go at 6am.
I haven’t worked since last week (rostered days off), but my understanding is that with the temporary opening hours that no Woolies and Coles will open before 7am. I’m just going off media, so apologies if not true.
From news.com.au
The most radical action will be a temporary nationwide shutdown of all Woolworths’ 1000 stores nationwide at 8pm starting on Wednesday, several hours earlier than usual for most Woolies supermarkets. All stores will close at the earlier time of 8pm from then on.
The stores will then reopen no earlier than 7am on Thursday and every other day after that.
and from Coles website:
If you choose to shop in-store please note from Wednesday 18 March we’ll be temporarily reducing trading hours at all stores from 7am to 8pm to give our team members the time and space to extensively clean our stores and replenish the shelves for customers the next day.
Thanks for the headsup. 7am it will be, then. But not this week 
One aspect I think needs addressing is information on our domestic goods supplies, stocks and usage. Occasionally I hear a supermarket exec on the radio say things like “if everybody just buys their usual amount then we can maintain the stock on the shelves”. I think that is the key here, someone from ABS compiling some tables on our national normal consumption, stocks, and supplies and let us see if indeed we will be short for any lines. Until then the hysteria machine just means a lot more angst and agro, more wasted timed and more greenhouse gases for no gain.
My upstairs neighbor contacted me yesterday about helping with groceries,
and I did the same with the couple in the flat above mine. We can still help each other, even if we avoid close contact. We will need each other badly in the months to come, a bit of solidarity will bring some relief.
Tough times don’t last forever.
Also, seeing the absolute absence of flour, sugar, eggs, and yeast, from the shelves, made me think that people might be also stocking up for enough ingredients to make Passover and Easter traditional foods.
These festivities are a few weeks away.
I arrived at our local Woollies at 7:05 AM today and the queue of elderly and disabled people streched from the far side inside the store where the pallet of toilet roll packs were out through the temporary entrance to the the other side of the store outside.
There would have been over 100 persons in front of me and the pallet ran out when I was starting to get close whereupon the staff wheeled out another pallet by which time there would have been more than 100 persons in the queue behind me.
By the time I had got some sugar, flour, pasta and rice, the second pallet was empty and a third pallet was being wheeled out at around 7:20 AM.
When I went back to Woollies at 7:55 AM to buy some prawns for dinner, the staff were still checking for senior and disability cards, and I went to see how the toilet paper stocks were holding. It was completely gone so anyone who went into the store after 8:00 AM would have been greeted with the same scenario that the elderly and the disadvantaged have been subjected to for weeks.
I heard one elderly lady say to the staff member handing out the packs that she had been trying to buy some for the past 3 weeks and she was almost totally out.
And there was not a single brawl in the aisles or a fight at the checkouts.
What a shame the local TV stations did not turn up to record the constant procession of elederly and disadvantaged persons happily pushing their shopping trolleys filled with the items that they have not been able to buy recently, with many sitting down afterwards at the 2 coffe shops nearby in the centre.
WELL DONE WOOLLIES.
Same happened right across the Hunter this morning. Some of us are unable to stand in queues like that, so for us, more problems created than solved. I’m glad I did not bother. I’ll go next week, as planned, and probably still wonder how anybody has enough money and space to stock up to the extent they must be. I’ll try for a pack of dunny rolls but I reckon I’ll be buying from Amazon instead.
Some people were using their walkers instead of shopping trolleys so that they could either sit on them or put the pack of toilet rolls on them as I saw one person do.
Whilst Coles and Woollies don’t have the toilet rolls currently on their websites, Woollies were selling 24 packs of Kleenex for $11 so they must have been on special but that would probably finish today.
It only took some 15 minutes from when I arrived at Woollies to when I had everything I wanted.
Excellent idea. I usually use the shopping trolley as a walker (I have a stick but no walker, time to change that, perhaps.)
It is somewhat strange that there has not been any mention of stockpiling or panic buying of tobacco products or alcohol to date.
One would expect that heavy smokers would be freaking out if they were confined without any supplies of tobacco and no booze.
I wonder if it is just a case of not having thought about it as yet, and once it is in the media, the herd instinct will once again prevail.
The panic buying reminds me of the USSR and especially Eastern Europe in those times when people lined up for not enough stock on a daily basis.
Today Woolies was Very Poorly Stocked but compared to Coles it was going well. Coles had little produce, no milk, very few canned goods, no meat, no TP, and a seriously depleted frozen food section. When it hits the fan if my locals are anything to judge by, Woolies supply chain is superior to Coles even when it is struggling and not keeping up.
Just came back from Costco. Sign on the entry “No TP” but that was not why we went. Got what we went for but their usual well stocked meat section was depleted to near nothing. No wipes or sanitisers, similarly to Colesworths. FWIW Costco fuel was only $0.01 lower than the ‘prevailing local price’ - quite unusual.
One conclusion is the pipelines are empty back to the stations, farms, factories or importers, product dependent and it will be a while before equilibrium returns.
And another example of the low life, bottom feeding, selfish grubs at their finest.
For some products this may be spot on. Yesterday our local butcher who sources products direct was under pressure and running out before noon. Today which was quieter we had a brief chat. Eggs from his farm supplier are in short supply, chicken meat is unobtainable, a delivery of lamb and pork was just on the blocks, and beef rare! 
The best value was from the ‘weight watchers’ range display. IE the empty display cabinet that greeted each new customer. While the butcher has direct access to beef cattle with his monicker attached, these still need to join the processing queue.
Expect normal service to resume when all the local freezers are full.
P.S.
The local butcher usually runs service with 1+1. Exceptionally there were 3 on the knives and a fourth to help service.
I checked the local.
Wine - check 
Whiskey - Och aye
Beer, XXXX - ??? Lots of empty wall space. Perhaps not the best time to be too parochial.
Will all this massive boost to retail spending drive a record 3rd quarter and ensure positive GDP growth, opposite to many forecasts? One more miracle for ScoMo if it does?
Maybe we should start a rumour and then stand back and watch them leave the supermarkets alone.
Retail maybe, but would imagine overall it would be down with both Virgin and Qantas slashing flights by 90%. Would imagine other sectors like the arts, sports, dining etc have all slumped since everyone is using their disposable income to pay for groceries.
We actually produce so much food that about 2 thirds of it is exported Coronavirus is causing panic buying, but what does that mean for Australia's food security? - ABC News
According to a supermarket executive who was interviewed on ABC radio this morning, well over 90% of what people are panic-buying is produced in Australia. Shelves are bare, not through lack of supply, but because restockers can’t keep up.
this is from Yahoo News. I’ve had other supermarket workers I know express fear, and that is across chains. Had one co-worker today that is more than half my age tell me today that they are still trying to recover from the onslaught of customers on the weekend.
