G’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
Why 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.
Today 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.
I 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.
The 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?
> 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.
Wow, 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?
Because 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.
>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?
Raising 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.
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.
Not 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.
Probably 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.
In 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.
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?
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.
If 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.
Just “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?
Why 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.
Raising the price doesn’t “solve” shortage and no one in economics makes that claim.
Instead, the claim is more limited - that even in times of shortage if you want to make sure that the item in question is still available, raising the price will accomplish two things: it will encourage marginal production and discouraged marginal consumption.
Without prices, the only mechanism you would have to accomplish the same effect, would be a political decision about who did or not deserve to have hard bread, while you work out the production issue.
In both systems, you’re doing rationing, just by different means.
Whether under capitalism or collectivism the way you solve a shortage is always the same - you produce enough for everyone who wants the thing.
The difference is the presence for absence of the feedback mechanisms like prices. The problem with collectivism is that once you get rid of prices, there is no explicit feedback mechanism. There may be implicit mechanisms such as a waitlist, but ultimately the decision to increase production is turned into a political decision. I doubt many people care if production decisions about hard bread are made by politicians or business people, but in more consequential areas, such as housing, we have a century of experience of what happens in production decisions are collectivized and politicized. (it is illegal to increase the national stock of interior residential floor space by even one square foot without prior political approval, I.e. rezoning, variances, etc.)
G’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
Why 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.
> Proper hard bread couldn’t be home baked.
In the 1700s.
> 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.
Today 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.
I 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.
In the US, hard bread is often called hardtack. The National Park Service publishes a simple recipe: https://www.nps.gov/mana/learn/kidsyouth/hardtack-during-the... . Here's another one from Australia: https://herreshoff.org/2020/04/a-recipe-for-hardtack/ .
The only real question is which kind of flour to use. I'm sure it ought to be whole wheat or a blend of whole wheat and white.
The 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?
Yeah basically all of the above, especially fish and brewis, soups/stews, etc. Usually you soften it in some way before eating it.
Without fish and brewis Newfoundland is just... a big rock.
> 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.
They love fish and brewis these days, too.
Wow, 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?
Because 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.
>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?
Raising 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.
That implies that everything with a price is always out of stock.
No, it implies that everything with a price and a supply issue will likely still face that supply issue even with a higher price.
Everything with a price has a supply issue.
No, it doesn't.
Oh, OK.
I'm really glad we sorted this out.
It implies no such thing.
The presence of a price "selects who can access it", hence there's not enough stock to give it away for free. (Sometimes deliberately.)
Wut? That makes no sense.
There’s plenty of stuff you couldn’t get rid of if you gave it away for free. You seem to be ignoring demand.
I 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.
Of course it helps, pricing increases make it more attractive to build more supply.
Not 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.
A higher margin increases the incentive for people to make more, though.
Would you make a hard bread factory if the price was higher? How high?
I'm not a hard bread expert but at high enough prices, I know plenty of enterprising people with kitchens.
Cool are they licensed for commercial use?
Probably 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.
In 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.
It doesn't increase supply, but it slows down how fast the supply sells out. This allows there to always be supply available for purchase.
> 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?
>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.
You 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)
How 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.
If 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.
Just “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?
Why 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.
"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.
Well 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.
Raising the price doesn’t “solve” shortage and no one in economics makes that claim.
Instead, the claim is more limited - that even in times of shortage if you want to make sure that the item in question is still available, raising the price will accomplish two things: it will encourage marginal production and discouraged marginal consumption.
Without prices, the only mechanism you would have to accomplish the same effect, would be a political decision about who did or not deserve to have hard bread, while you work out the production issue.
In both systems, you’re doing rationing, just by different means.
Whether under capitalism or collectivism the way you solve a shortage is always the same - you produce enough for everyone who wants the thing.
The difference is the presence for absence of the feedback mechanisms like prices. The problem with collectivism is that once you get rid of prices, there is no explicit feedback mechanism. There may be implicit mechanisms such as a waitlist, but ultimately the decision to increase production is turned into a political decision. I doubt many people care if production decisions about hard bread are made by politicians or business people, but in more consequential areas, such as housing, we have a century of experience of what happens in production decisions are collectivized and politicized. (it is illegal to increase the national stock of interior residential floor space by even one square foot without prior political approval, I.e. rezoning, variances, etc.)
The problem with the capitalist mechanism here is
- the producer has already repaired the factory that will restore supply shortly, so the signal is effectively useless
- your customers are going to remember that you gouged the shortage situation
The GP provided a great example for why metrics are often shit.
Raising the price fixes the metric (is it in stock?) but doesn't fix the actual problem.
This has nothing to do with this board's subject matter.
This board is for the discussion of "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If this article generates substantial discussion and doesn't veer off into pointless arguing, it qualifies.