An in-depth impact review of the UK Government’s “Be Ready” campaign and what it means for food and drink supply chains.
At a Glance
UK retailers are now beginning to see material increases across key, staple ambient categories as a result of the Government’s Be Ready campaign. Below outlines the key risks that retailers, manufacturers and their logisticians need to consider;
Availability risks on target products compounded by recent storms Austen and Boelo
Logistics capacity risks due to increased volume on high-cube products such as bottled water
Bottled water, canned soups, meats, fish and vegetables, baby and pet products as well as essential non-food SKUs all are seeing material uplifts in the market.
A balancing act is needed, demand increases will be temporary but the length of the increased demand period is not yet clear.
What is Be Ready and why has it launched now?
The UK Government's Be Ready campaign, launched on 22 October 2026, asks households to be prepared for three days of disruption to services including power, water, phones and the internet. It recommends stocking non-perishable food, bottled water, medicines and other essentials. Consumers are explicitly encouraged to build additional supplies of ambient, long-life products to cover 3 days of consumption gradually through normal shopping rather than make a large one-off purchases.
The campaign follows more recent severe weather and forms part of a wider government focus on resilience. The National Audit Office identifies extreme weather, cyber-attacks and energy disruption among the acute risks facing UK food supply. It also notes that UK food self-sufficiency was around 60% by value in 2025, with domestic production itself dependent on imported inputs.
For supply chains, the immediate issue is pre-empting and reacting to unforecasted demand increases across what are mostly stable product categories. This also needs to be considered alongside existing constraints within each product's supply chain.
Manufacturers should review their product portfolios against incoming demand signals to identify exposed products and the capacity, ingredient or packaging constraints behind each.
Retailers need to distinguish genuine uplift due to the Be Ready campaign from shifted buying patterns due to adverse storm conditions, which is a more common phenomenon in retailer forecasting. As stockpile purchasing doesn’t change consumption levels, merely customer’s own inventory, an ongoing challenge for retailers will be predicting when to ease forecasted uplifts for Be Ready vs reacting to the increased demand now.
Logistics operators should focus on products where the additional volume quickly translates into additional pallets, vehicles or depot capacity. A standout example will be bottled water due to its sheer size and volume ratio when transporting.
What are UK retailers seeing and which categories are impacted?
Retailers are now beginning to report more consistent forecasted uplifts across targeted product categories. The most extreme case comes from Non-Food, where Torches, a product cited in the “Be Ready” campaign saw a 284% uplift in Maplin Electronics, similarly Power Banks saw a 106% increase too at the same retailer.
However, there are other essential categories where demand increases are evident.
Bottled water presents the greatest physical supply risk
The UK Government recommends three litres per person per day for drinking, or nine litres over three days, higher than the NHS’s guidelines of 2 litres for adults per day. Water is heavy and bulky relative to its value. Higher demand can consume retail space, depot capacity and vehicle cube quickly. Retailers should monitor cases and pallets, not just sales value. Opportunities to create immediate volume relief through direct pallet movements to stores will become a popular option where volume allows.
Canned food could see the broadest grocery effect
Tinned soups, meat, fish and vegetables are specifically included in the guidance with retailers reporting up to a 50% increase in these category areas. The main risk is likely to sit in high-volume, familiar lines rather than the whole ambient category. Manufacturers should examine end-to-end production capacity constraints to ensure demand uplift can be accounted for while normal seasonal demand increases alongside.
Dry and long-life grocery requires more selective monitoring
Dried fruit and nuts are named by government, while the broader requirement is food with a long shelf life that does not depend on refrigeration or cooking. Shelf life of dried fruits and nuts makes these products easier to hold, but additional household inventory may bring future purchases forward rather than increase annual consumption, this times well as an opportunity for retailers who have launched their seasonal nut ranges already for Christmas trading but may impact total season performance. An essential staple in this category is also Long-life Milk which carries similar challenges to water but from a much lower base volume.
Baby and pet products have lower volumes but greater sensitivity to availability
The guidance includes pet food and baby formula, recommending ready-to-feed formula where households may be unable to boil water safely. Retailers should give these lines separate availability thresholds rather than manage them alongside mainstream ambient grocery to protect the customer experience. In these cases, it is likely that constrained supply chains may consolidate production away from powdered victim lines to prioritise ready-to-feed purchases.
The result is a relatively narrow list of SKUs requiring closer attention and deeper collaboration between retailer and manufacturer teams to ensure alignment and smooth product flow. Tracking these at store, depot and geographic level will tell businesses considerably more than movements in total grocery sales.
The campaign is intended to run for three years, so the first effect is likely to be gradual household stock building albeit initially compounded by adverse weather. That can lift sales temporarily without increasing underlying consumption. Six extra tins entering a cupboard today may mean six fewer purchases later. Forecasting teams should be cautious about putting launch-period increases into the baseline although inventory will become a more balanced lever to protect customer availability.
The more significant issue is what happens during an actual disruption. A storm, flood, water outage or cyber incident could increase demand for the same products while also making them harder to manufacture or distribute. The National Audit Office specifically identifies extreme weather, cyber-attacks and energy disruption as risks to food supply, and notes that different risks can interact.
That has different consequences by category.
Water can consume transport and depot capacity quickly.
Cans and ambient staples can expose packaging or production bottlenecks.
Baby products have lower tolerance with shoppers for poor availability.
Pet food competes for the same household preparedness spend while carrying meaningful weight and cube.
For retailers, the key measure is rate of sale and stock cover on a defined group of exposed SKUs.
Manufacturers should establish where constraints appear if those lines move 10%, 25% or 50% above normal demand and keep an open dialogue with their retailer counterparts.
Logistics teams should plan for increased volumes where impacted products are known within their network. Through having focused collaboration with retailers on expected volumes and modelling the same scenarios in pallets, vehicle capacity and depot throughput will create meaningful plans which can in turn maintain service level.
The current evidence does not support a broad, long-term increase in safety stock. It supports more precise planning around a small number of products where demand can rise faster than supply can respond in the near-term.