As temperatures dip and the risk of snow looms, people have been warned not to panic buy over the winter period.
Brits are being warned to think twice before they head out to stockpile essentials like milk, bread and loo roll this winter. This comes after the country saw its first batch of widespread snow earlier this month. But it’s no secret that as the snowflakes fall, shoppers dive into a frenzy, clearing out shelves to hoard staples such as bread, milk, and toilet paper. According to the wise words of retail gurus who chatted with CNN, these items always fly off the shelves when winter weather woes hit town. CNN shared the lowdown: “With every predicted blizzard, there’s a mad dash to load up on milk, bread, eggs and toilet paper.”
Plus don’t forget the odds and ends like booze, snacks and even ice cream, which also appear in people’s panic-buying sprees. But, it’s the household staples that vanish first at the very first whisper of the s-word. Casting our minds back to 2018 and the Beast from the East’s notorious snowfall, the Mirror reported how shoppers swept the stores clean of essentials like bread and milk. The snowy blizzards sent folk into a frenzy, with supermarket aisles left empty. Some people even went as far as to swipe goods directly from delivery vans amid the chaos.
One social media spectator tweeted out about the mayhem then on Twitter (now branded X): “Local Co-op out of milk and bread. Apparently there was a delivery this morning and people were literally taking it from the driver before he’d got it into the shop.” Another user took to social media, sharing: “It’s snowing here and I’ve just been out to watch the panic buying brigade 20 milk and 14 loaves battling it out in those trolleys like chariots and battering rams.”
They added, “I also noticed the price of the basics suddenly shot up 5p in some cases. Sheer profiteering as the snow has hardly settled.” As of now, there are no confirmed shortages of bread or milk at major supermarkets such as Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, or Sainsbury’s. However, the frenzy of panic buyers could potentially trigger a shortage.
So while it might be wise to pick up an extra bottle of milk if you’re already out shopping, hoarding 20 loaves and 16 pints of milk is unnecessary and could actually cause the very problem everyone is trying to avoid.
