Gone are the days where you could just breeze in and out of the supermarket to grab a couple of things. For those of us who don’t enjoy it, lockdown has made the task of grocery shopping even worse, with lines sometimes stretching right around supermarket car parks. 

If you're lucky, you can show up to find only a line of four people moving quickly, but at other times doing the shopping can take hours. Thankfully, some clever people have devised a few ways to let each other know when to shop and when to wait it out at home. 

The Facebook group ‘Warkworth Supermarket Traffic Report’ can come in extremely handy if you're planning your weekly food shop. It is constantly updated with live posts from locals who are waiting in line or have just come out the other side. 

People have also been providing tips on when to expect the longest queues. Opening time tends to be quite busy, as lots of people try to get in early while the stocks are fully shelved, but according to one supermarket worker, the best time to go to avoid long waits is around midday.

Another way of checking how long you may be waiting is with WWW.HOWLONGISTHELINE.ORG. Set up by Dunedin-based software developer Gareth Hayes, this site is in its infancy, but it has the potential to spare many people the pain of arriving to a line snaking down the street. The site automatically detects a user's location and lists nearby supermarkets, assigning them a status of ‘No lines’, ‘A wee wait’ or ‘Busy - stay at home’.

Users can add supermarkets to the site and update the status of a line when they arrive there.

Another thing to be mindful of is that many benefits get paid on Wednesdays and Thursdays; shopping days are often dictated by those payments. If you don't need to shop on Wednesday or Thursday, consider planning your trip for another day.

Helpful pages like the supermarket traffic group and handy app Howlongistheline can only work with contributions from you, so be sure to check in after your shop.