Retail Watchers

Has anyone noticed food shortages in their areas? I primarily do my shopping at Aldi, and everyday common items have been missing for weeks, like certain varieties of salad dressing. I just went last night and almost no bottled juices/sodas/similar beverages on the shelves. I have heard other reports from across the country about restaurants having trouble getting supplies, so I wonder if it is now trickling down to the consumer level.

I am noticing shortages all over the place but I am not really sure if there is a food shortage, in the sense of not enough food, or just something else going on somewhere in the supply chain that is causing items to be out of stock. We know there are truck driver shortages in addition to the labor shortages at stores and warehouses. Up here around Sparks, NV last week the truck stops were rationing/limiting how much diesel a truck could buy (it was still like 60-80 gallons) for a day or two due to diesel supply issues.

With that said I am noticing generally when I see shortages of items in a given store, if I return to the same store a couple days later, the situation at least in that specific area of the store is resolved, but new product shortages then appear elsewhere in the store.

Probably more people shortages, be it those making the products at the various plants, those transporting the items from plant to warehouse to store or at the store itself with items not getting onto the shelves if they are short of help.

I think this might be specific to ALDI. I was in one of their stores twice last week and in-stock conditions were terrible. I was also in a Vons, Ralph’s and Costco during the same week and didn’t see any inventory issues.

This is due to Aldi's obsession with "just in time ordering." They believe in ordering items only when you need it. Having items sit in a warehouse increases costs. They only order items if it runs out. If there are any shortages or delays in delivery or manufacturing, it will result in empty shelves.

Other chains have plenty of warehouse space to store items, but Aldi does not want to do that. Aldi is all about saving every penny. When you have empty shelves, those are lost sales. The customers will go somewhere else and you lose out. Aldi does not care. They believe people will stay loyal to them even if the store has empty shelves and nothing to buy.

They seem to be quirky and idiocyncratic shortages---no one around me has half dozen containers of eggs (but plenty of dozen sized), mixers are in reasonable supply except for the premium FeverTree line, some pasta lines are stocking shapes/sizes that usually go to import stores because the regular lines are in short supply.

Retailers are reporting strong quarters in their sales/earnings across the board---even laggards are doing better. Probably a mix of supply chain glitches for individual product lines, greater than expected demand, and diminished supplies of some things. OTOH, I haven't seen really big, category-based gaps and the produce supply seems more normal this year.

If there are issues with logistics themselves, they may be regional and more pronounced at the outer ends of supply chains where there is less density to justify frequent restocking.

I don't know if there are true "shortages" as what one store is constantly out of is easily found at another store. Although I have seen random times at the local Fred Meyer when they were completely out of milk, and random times when one store had no gallons of drinking water where another had plenty on hand. For the most part, aside from occasionally having to visit another store to find something, I have not had issues finding what I need in groceries.

Didn't think too much of this until I read the restaurant thread in regards to supply issues there and what I saw at a local Hannaford yesterday afternoon. I wanted some chicken thighs and all they had were drumsticks so I had to settle for those and really the entire chicken section of the meat case was somewhat thinly stocked. They had some quarters and skinless thighs in addition to drumsticks and that was about it. On the other hand they had a special on chicken and yesterday was the last day but they also had bottom round roast for a really good price and there was plenty of beef of all kinds.

TW-Upstate NY wrote: ↑August 22nd, 2021, 9:34 am Didn't think too much of this until I read the restaurant thread in regards to supply issues there and what I saw at a local Hannaford yesterday afternoon. I wanted some chicken thighs and all they had were drumsticks so I had to settle for those and really the entire chicken section of the meat case was somewhat thinly stocked. They had some quarters and skinless thighs in addition to drumsticks and that was about it. On the other hand they had a special on chicken and yesterday was the last day but they also had bottom round roast for a really good price and there was plenty of beef of all kinds.

I think they have had $0.89/lb. chicken parts of some type for at least a couple months now (this week is leg quarters and split breast), plus Top Round @ $2.49/lb. for the beef side.

Keep thinking of that every time there is some type of post about how much the prices of chicken items have gone up - I guess it just depends on what parts you get!

They do run that chicken special a lot and I noticed on my last two trips there they now have store branded chicken in stock which hadn't been the case for a while and they were stocking Tyson instead. Mountainaire (sp?) is their normal supplier so maybe they were having issues.