Coronavirus Fears and Empty Supermarkets

[CalItalian]

Ralphs, in my view, is still doing a very poor job of recovering.
I have been in multiple Ralphs locations, no to virtually no paper products still. Haven't seen toilet paper or paper towels in Ralphs in over a month. Did see some facial tissue in one Ralphs earlier in the week.
I switched my time of shopping from early eve to morning and still seeing the same.

I was in the Murrieta (Riverside County) Ralphs on Sunday morning. This is a recently remodeled Marketplace location. They had very little frozen food, no paper products, no hand soap whatsoever, no baby products, very little soup or rice, dairy and eggs were limited. Meat was in decent shape. Plenty of water. Bakery, produce were in great shape.

They have gone back to restocking somewhat during the day. This location closed the door on one side of the store and has everyone go in and out on the other side. They have someone servicing & handing out carts but they weren't counting customers in and out (which they were doing at a 99 Cents Only location in Lake Elsinore on Sunday).

Was also in an Aldi in Lake Elsinore and they were pretty well stocked with just one item that I was looking for that they were out of. I would have bought their 7.5 oz. hand soap if they had it. It's only .69 cents which beats every store. Aldi also has someone stationed at the front door of all locations I've been in. Giving out carts (no quarter required) and cleaning them.

[storewanderer]

Ralphs, in my view, is still doing a very poor job of recovering.
I have been in multiple Ralphs locations, no to virtually no paper products still. Haven't seen toilet paper or paper towels in Ralphs in over a month. Did see some facial tissue in one Ralphs earlier in the week.
I switched my time of shopping from early eve to morning and still seeing the same.

I was in the Murrieta (Riverside County) Ralphs on Sunday morning. This is a recently remodeled Marketplace location. They had very little frozen food, no paper products, no hand soap whatsoever, no baby products, very little soup or rice, dairy and eggs were limited. Meat was in decent shape. Plenty of water. Bakery, produce were in great shape.

I wonder if Ralphs is prioritizing stocking the higher volume stores closer to Los Angeles and leaving these fringe stores which are lower volume as a lower priority?

Smiths in Reno when I went in last weekend (at night) had everything you could want in dairy. Produce was in bad shape, bakery was light but not empty (I don't think bakery is selling). Some outs in lunchmeat but not many. Paper towels and kleenex were present, but no toilet paper. Frozen foods did not have any out of stocks outside the pizza category which had a few out of stocks (not many). Center store was light on rice/beans but they still had a good enough amount. I noticed Smiths restocked hand soap a couple weeks ago with most Kroger brand soaps coming back and a few Dial. This past weekend the only hand soap left was some "Cedar" Dial (looks like a Christmas item). Baby at Smiths was pretty much stocked; there is a hand sanitizer SKU in that baby HBA set, it was out of stock and some other item stuck in its slot. Still no rubbing alcohol or peroxide.

[klkla]

Ralphs, in my view, is still doing a very poor job of recovering.
I have been in multiple Ralphs locations, no to virtually no paper products still. Haven't seen toilet paper or paper towels in Ralphs in over a month. Did see some facial tissue in one Ralphs earlier in the week.
I switched my time of shopping from early eve to morning and still seeing the same.

I was in the Murrieta (Riverside County) Ralphs on Sunday morning. This is a recently remodeled Marketplace location. They had very little frozen food, no paper products, no hand soap whatsoever, no baby products, very little soup or rice, dairy and eggs were limited. Meat was in decent shape. Plenty of water. Bakery, produce were in great shape.

I wonder if Ralphs is prioritizing stocking the higher volume stores closer to Los Angeles and leaving these fringe stores which are lower volume as a lower priority?

I was in the Studio City Ralphs last week and it was pretty much what he described.

[storewanderer]

I was in the Studio City Ralphs last week and it was pretty much what he described.

So who is stocked properly and getting the sales they are losing from not being stocked on so many items?

[storewanderer]

Safeway still having problems with getting stock on the shelves in these stores in Nevada. There was evidence of some restocking happening in frozen tonight. They did have milk, juice was probably 90% out of stock though. Meat was in pretty good shape too, some items missing but may have just sold down during the day vs. out of stock. Produce was in real sorry shape, again refrigerated items seem to be the problem just like 4 days ago with very empty cases and numerous refrigerated produce items not present especially bagged salad.

Center store continues to be full of out of stocks as well but slowly it seems to be getting better. There is more soup than I've seen in weeks. Forget rice/beans, still nothing. Really really light stock on canned fruits/vegetables but few items actually out of stock. They finally had some paper towels, kleenex, and one lone pack of bath tissue on the shelf so there is definitely some restocking happening the past couple of days as I haven't seen anything on that paper aisle until tonight since this started.

Why can't they supply some of these stores from the warehouses of other divisions, especially on fringe stores like Nevada?

Went to Raleys after and it looks normal in there aside from the lack of paper products.

[storewanderer]

[klkla]

I was in the Studio City Ralphs last week and it was pretty much what he described.

So who is stocked properly and getting the sales they are losing from not being stocked on so many items?

I think Ralphs is the busiest of the conventional stores in LA and has the most traffic. That's probably why they are struggling.

[steps]

I haven't been in a Ralph's in over a month now. Last time I went in March on a wednesday, they were fully stocked except for paper products and cleaning supplies.

My recent trips have been to Aldi where they are probably the best stores Ive been to during this time. They usually have everything, even paper products but cleaning supplies are always out. Eggs, milk and meat are stocked very good.

I go to the Vons in Montebello and they are fairly stocked. Service Deli has cut back alot, only filling half the salad case and hot food area. Service Deli has been having some great sales lately. I grabbed 2 bags of their survice soup for $5.99 each and 8pcs of chicken for $2.99. That area of the store is struggling and I feel bad so I always try to get large quantities from Service Deli of things I like. They are also closing earlier than usual.

Vons is now doing the 1 way aisles and 1 line checkout. There is a person standing at the front of checkout directing customers which lines to go to.

Overall I feel "cleaner" in Aldi though. Everyone is spaced apart quiet well and not nearly as busy as other stores, forget about Walmart, there's ZERO point in going there for anything food related.

It seems the Vons shoppers don't take things seriously, I've seen people cough without covering their mouths or having a mask and a few people using produce bags as mouth covering. I don't go to that Vons often right now because of that. There is also the issue of homeless people in your face which I doubt they could care less if they were to be sick and pass it on.

[storewanderer]

I was in the Studio City Ralphs last week and it was pretty much what he described.

So who is stocked properly and getting the sales they are losing from not being stocked on so many items?

I think Ralphs is the busiest of the conventional stores in LA and has the most traffic. That's probably why they are struggling.

I have found the busier stores have recovered from this the best. It seems they had the staff to recover and were used to doing a lot of business. The low volume stores, while they were better early on, once they got hit and shelves cleared, restocking was really difficult because they were not staffed to handle what happened and recover from it. The higher volume stores in my area like Smiths, WinCo, and Wal Mart recovered much faster (there have still been some ups and downs since) than the lower volume ones did. Some of the lower volume stores still haven't recovered.

[storewanderer]

Cub Foods seems to be bucking the trend of reducing hours and operating additional stores 24 hours to "promote social distancing."

https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-li ... ning-hours

Also adding 2 24 hour pharmacies.

This is a curious move as most competitors cut hours and way fewer people seem to be out at night.

But it makes total sense to me. If you allow the customers to shop at any time, ideally, it will be less crowded. I know in my area Wal Mart is an absolute food fight (literally) at 8 PM to 8:30 PM with their closing time as people literally pack into the store at 8 PM and try to shop. It looks like Supermarket Sweep in there. I have to think if they were to stay open later, the customers would likely spread out and that closing time crowd would not be happening.

I try to shop as late as possible and these short hours have really impacted how often I shop at Smiths and Wal Mart, since other competitors still stay open later and you can slip into a nearly empty store after 9 PM.

Not sure how it impacts the "increased cleaning" most competitors are supposedly doing while closed. Also the issue of customers wiping the stores out during stocking hours so nothing is left for the next day in key categories...