UK - Resources for help getting food during quarantine and other supermarket related problems

yep. all the essentials/basics, just a little extra on my order every week. I tend to always have a stock anyway, in case i'm too ill to manage & carer off sick or something, but whereas i had a couple of wks worth of food, now i aiming for roughly a month's worth in the cupboard, not there yet because as @Wonko says it costs a lot. I am only buying survival necessities though not treats or anything.

second wave?... brexit?.... social unrest???

 

Oh yeah, there’s that as well...
Honestly I stopped watching the news and reading news past few weeks / month as just couldn’t cope with everything else going on with my surgery. I think that’s the way I’ll be dealing with it for the next few months as every time I look up what’s happening I feel a sinking feeling inside.

 

Unfortunately Cole and Abel don't deliver this far South! Riverford has a much more restricted product line, which is why I decided to start getting my organic milk from Milk and More, who can at least supply me with yogurt, cream, bread and individual fruit and veg items.

 

yeah

 

There's still difficulty getting eggs, particularly if you want them in sixes rather than dozens, or 15s ... I mean, the eggs are available, so can't they just put them in some different-sized boxes? Is it that hard? In my local Sainsbury's, there are 12-packs galore, but barely any 6-packs, and the 6-packs they do have seem to be brought in either from elsewhere in the EU or from "local" suppliers elsewhere in the country, and have very short use-by dates. I don't understand it.

 

From The Guardian, a comparison of the online delivery services provided by the UK supermarkets:

http://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...and-choice/ar-BB18JjDd?li=BBoPWjQ&ocid=ASUDHP

 

The article doesn't discuss the problem of the supermarket only offering a restricted range of items, compared to what is available in store. Maybe it's different in London, but for a lot of other areas this is a big issue. Neither does the article discuss the problem of half your order not turning up, or unsuitable substitutions being made.

Ocado sent an electronic receipt showing all the substitutions (none in my first order) and all the Best Before dates that were less than a week. This means you can think ahead about which items to reject (although the Best Before dates were also good for all the items in my first order). The other thing I appreciated about Ocado is that it offers a far larger range of items (including organic) than I could get in any of the stores in Taunton (which has a population of about 60,000).

 

I've just checked my ASDA account and they have extended my priority delivery pass with free deliveries until March 2021 which is a big relief for me as it was due to expire on 4th October considering how things are going They also seem to allow priority customers a weeks extra worth of slots to book.

I still seem to have priority access with Tesco and possibly Sainsbury's even though I've not shopped with either of them for months - I've been using ASDA and Ocado.

I've just checked them all and in my area it looks like it's getting that bit harder to book a slot - surprise, surprise!
Might be worth booking slots ahead.

 

No press coverage but many, many items, that were 'difficult' to get during lockdown are now 'difficult' to get - as in out of stock or unavailable.

Most of the usual candidates, pasta, rice, eggs, tinned meat, flour and tinned fruit - half my next Asda order is now unavailable - the 'useful' half.

Basically if it's a finished item it's still available, for the most part, but if it's an ingredient.......

...and my next delivery is over a week away so things are likely to be worse then.

Tesco seems to be suffering from the same thing, but I've only checked pasta, rice, flour and tinned meat there. Eggs seem to also have eggratic stock levels as well.

It seems like it would be back to placing orders with different supermarkets and hoping enough of the core items are available somewhere, or it would be if I could afford to do that again, as it at least triples my shopping bill to do so.

Despite my Asda delivery pass having been extended into next year I got an email from them today which states that the conditions are changing. The only useful feature remaining the same is the ability to maintain a recurring delivery slot, but they are removing this feature next March. Delivery charges will apply from November, as will the minimum basket charge (which as they won't let me checkout with less than £40 in the trolley then this can only be applied in the event that they don't have the stock to fill an accepted order).

 

Oh, I've seen a bit of press coverage - including the largely empty shelves where toilet rolls used to be. Waitrose and Morrisons at least are already rationing things in an attempt to be pre-emptive. (Why are various fancy oils so much in demand?) The only thing missing from my Sainsbury's order last week was the multipack of tuna I'd ordered.

 

I found the same, although I probably order a smaller range of foods than you (can't eat potatoes or pasta, for instance).

I had to visit the store from which my deliveries come yesterday, to pick up my prescription meds. The stock levels of all the things that were unavailable to order online were absolutely fine! For instance, that morning I'd tried to add my usual nine-pack of loo roll to the order, but the website said 'out of stock'. When I arrived 90 minutes later, there was half a bloody aisle of it in the store.

The van's due with my big delivery in the next hour, so I'll have to see what they're pretending is unavailable today...


ETA: Okay, so they've only run out of bathroom bin liners, then. Better than I expected!

 

Riverford are now back to offering a greater range of products, including a greater range of organic meats, eggs, milk, cheese, butter, yogurt, cream, humus, bread and individually available 'in season' fruit and veg options. The minimum spend is £15 and you don't need to include a veg or fruit box in your orders to become a customer. However, you can set up fortnightly or 4 weekly deliveries if once a week is too regular and can opt to 'miss a week' if you can't make up the minimum spend any week.

I find I only need to do an occasional online supermarket slot since using Riverford and overall I've been pleased with the quality. They have also refunded me when items went mouldy before I would have expected that particular fruit to have 'turned'. Having built up my stocks of none perishable items and toiletries, I feel much less stressed about the possibly future difficulty with getting an online supermarket slot as winter takes hold:

https://www.riverford.co.uk/

I think for the London and Southern areas of England, Cole and Able are the alternative organic fresh fruit and veg suppliers.

Milk and More also seem to be increasing the range of items they have on offer, presumably because some new customers have returned to shopping in store, which admittedly is the cheaper option for many people.

 

Farm to Fork has just re-started deliveries on Merseyside. We got our first delivery tonight since their shut down over summer.

Looks good! Though some of it will be going in freezer (meat especially) as since my tooth extraction am limited to what I can chew still.



Food box from Farm to Fork

 

Slight change in ASDAs charges for priority customers.

I was informed of this when I went to amend an order today, that had been been booked over a week ago.

Prior to today, on this existing, booked, order, for the 5th of November, there was no delivery charge, but today, there is now a £2 delivery charge.

The last couple of days I have been getting a popup saying that as my order was below the minimum order value for my delivery pass I 'may' incur a small order charge - I checked and the small order charge doesn't apply to orders with a value over £40. As my order was around £70, and 70 is normally considered to be more than 40, I assumed it was a glitch, they have a lot of them.

But today, I got charged the £2, on the basis that I hadn't met the minimum order value to qualify for free delivery.

Which is a completely different thing from what the popup said.

Minimum order value incurring a small order charge is not the same thing as a minimum order value to qualify for free delivery.

It's even a different charge amount.

So, after a fair amount of digging I found out what the minimum order value for a priority delivery pass, to qualify for free delivery, is

Now I live on the second (top) floor of a block of flats, with no lift. Drivers typically don't like it much if I order more than £60 or so, as it means multiple trips up the stairs, no matter how strong, or fit, they are - there are only so many crates a person can see over the top of.

I can't help but wonder how they would feel about carrying £1000 worth up the stairs, so that I could get free delivery.

It looks to me like asda do not in fact amend an order when I click on the amend order button, but that they start a whole new order and transfer my existing order into it - otherwise I should not have been charged for a delivery, the very same delivery as was free yesterday, just with a few less bits in (I reduced the order from £72 down to £63 as I realised that my freezer probably wasn't going to have enough free space after I filled it with portions of chilli tonight, so I regretfully took some frozen stuff out of my order).

It's only £2, but the charge is only supposed to apply to new delivery bookings after the 1st of November, at least according to the email they sent, not to an existing booking that has had the contents altered.

 

I just got an email from the govt saying - basically - you need to be shielding, but it’s not going to be *formally called* shielding (ie there’s not going to be the food parcels for you anymore), but shield and don’t go out anyway. (Except for exercise & health appts)

 

(From the department of health and social care, email for clinically extremely vulnerable people).

 

This is at variance from a letter I received from my towns mayor this morning.

"The council understands that government will be writing to people classed as clinically extremely vulnerable detailing the support that will be available with shopping and other basic needs. This will be via the National Shielding Service System.

Our records indicate that you fall into this category, so we are writing to inform you that we have re-opened our Community Hub to support residents in these difficult times.

If you are unable to access support through the national scheme, please contact the Council by phone or email"

Which 'suggests' that they think 'help' should be available via the shielding service.

Of course, if no one is shielding, which no one will be as no one has reinstated it, then absolutely no help will be available, from the shielding service - so what my local mayor is going on about I don't know - it seems likely he is misinformed, ......