There has been a recent shift in the food storage industry that has created a noticeable rise in demand. If you take a minute and observe some of the shipping and estimated delivery times on long term food storage, you’ll notice a much longer than expected wait time for food. Below I’ve outlined the type of statements being made in regards to shipping emergency food storage and pay attention to some of these lead times.
- Expect 3 – 4 weeks before before product ships.
- Demand for freeze dried food has increased and delivery now is at 6-8 weeks so don’t wait, order now. Also, we see this demand only increasing. As soon as you get your order in the sooner you will get the product.
- Extremely high industry demand and not enough supply has pushed shipping our products out to 11-12 weeks.
These are just a few statements that I’ve re-worded food survival kits but are intended to illustrate the growing demand for survival food. The actual shipping times are real shipping times. The soonest I could find in the marketplace was 3-4 weeks. The largest manufacturer in the space has told consumers visiting their website that they can’t ship their product to the consumer because they are working on keeping up with the demand from their distributors. So with this particular manufacturer they aren’t even shipping product directly to the consumer.
Recent events most likely are drivers behind the rush for emergency food storage but people are also starting to realize the importance of this precious commodity. All in all, things don’t seem to be getting better in regards to the survival food supply. I followed one company’s website that was shipping within a week. A couple weeks later this grew to two weeks, stating that shipping times were going to get better. Today they are shipping at 8 weeks. Some companies have gone from 2 months to 6 months and even more extreme to no longer shipping their product directly to the consumer.
Another factor outside of the recent events is that this type of long term food storage has gotten much better tasting. Some people are using this survival food as a regular part of their meal plan. It’s a quick and easy way to make breakfast or dinner. Additionally I noticed a handful of these companies are also providing monthly shipping options where you can take a chunk of food storage a month at a time. This is a plan that has been designed for the budget minded individual still looking at ways to build his or her food storage. Basically you can pick the type of food you’d like to build up on and every month a new order will be placed and shipped to your door.
So what does this mean to me? If you are planning on buying emergency food storage or are interested and are discouraged by the wait times, keep in mind that most of these companies are still shipping product. And even if the wait times are longer, product is still shipping. From what I could gather in the marketplace, the sentiment is that it won’t be changing anytime soon. Something that is consistent across the different food storage companies is that when you order, you get your place in line. This just means if they are saying 6 weeks and you decide to order then it will be 6 weeks even if shipping gets worse in weeks to come.
The shift in the industry serves as a good reminder of the delicate balance of supply and demand. There is no reason to wait if you are planning on purchasing survival food. All indicators show the supply shortage could last a while. Ultimately, purchasing your long term food storage is more important than trying to wait for shipping times to improve.