Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

This showed up in snail mail today:

This is an update on Oregon Freeze Dry’s #10 can situation. Because sales remain high, we continue to be unable to meet all #10 can needs. OFD is allocating as much of our Production Capacity as possible to this market segment, while still allowing us to meet requirements in other markets.

Unfortunately, we cannot open sales to all previous dealers, nor are we accepting new dealers. We continue to sell allocated quantities to our long-time, largest customers/distributors.

We expect this situation to remain through most of 2009. At this point, we are not able to predict when we can open up sales to all dealers.

In addition, we feel as a company we have not been strict enough on dealer requirements, and it is important dealers are only established Preparedness Market and/or Camping related Businesses. We also intend to have a stronger Suggested retail Pricing Program to eliminate ongoing discounts. Due to these concerns, OFD will implement two new programs:

• Wholesale Delaer Requirements
• Minimum Retail pricing Program

Prior to re-activating each account, new and Current Dealers will be required to re-qualify based on the new program requirements.

Read into this what you will, folks. Some people say this is because .gov has ordered a huge purchase of food from these guys. That seems awful unlikely since .gov already has long-term food ordering programs in place for their MRE contracts. What this is is OFD seeing the opportunity to make some big bucks in a hurry by eliminating some discounts and getting rid of the nickle-n-dime dealers that made small orders. Nothing wrong with that, its just good business to them. What it means to you is that the natives are restless and if you havent gotten your needs squared away in this department you better do something about it soon before this stuff is unavailable at any price.