Grocery store shortages are back | Hacker News Reader

Grocery store shortages are back

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132 pointsnimbius133 comments

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> "We're really seeing the perfect storm,"

If these "perfect storms" happen six times a year maybe it's not the storm but their own logistics to blame?

Nobody exists in a vacuum when it comes to supply chains.

It's a supply chain, not a supply pipe.

There's only so much that can be done. Their logistics didn't suddenly get incompetent between 2019 and now.

The assertion is that they were always incompetent, but it wasn't broadly apparent until now.

Nah, they just optimize for lower capital tied up in inventory (and stocking space) which the CFO watches, versus lower service levels which an operations person watches which has a less concrete/direct/measurable financial impact.

(Perhaps I am equally as cynical as you but just from a different angle?)

Maybe, but I think CFO-types should (and often do) consider supply chain risks in their cash flow estimates. I'd also hope (wish) that people in general pay more attention their exposure to disruptive events at the local, regional, and global levels going forward.

"There are some issues with out-of-stocks, but it tends to be a situation where if you go to a store on a Tuesday night, maybe something's out of stock, but by Wednesday sometime it's back in store," Rose told NPR.

This describes about the “worst” i’ve seen, in new england. I had no trouble getting some fairly fussy ingredients for holiday cooking or my annual winter anti-depression baking spasms.

Still, march 2020 did make the point that maybe having a pantry of staples in rotation at home is a real smart idea.

Yeah I did the pantry thing after March 2020 (in the basement, the kitchen doesn't have a proper pantry) and wasn't careful enough about protecting it. It was fine for a year, but this winter we got mice in the house and now we have to toss what wasn't in cans or plastic containers already.

We set some live traps and I've caught and released (several miles away) four mice already.

Still a good idea, we just can't have anything mice could possibly get into next time.

it’s advertised as a kibble container but we all know it holds 25 pounds of flour juuust fine. (and we use it quickly enough, which is kind of shocking but also, pie crust is easy!)

pie crust is easy

So is pizza dough!

I make it about once a week, and every time I'm reminded of my younger generation boss who didn't know that pizza dough is just flour, water, salt, and yeast. She though it was some kind of magic plastic or something and refused to eat pizza because of it.

People really are getting too far away from their food sources.

Wha? How?! Plastic?? That's bizarre.

People think american cheese is literal plastic

Sure, but that’s understandable since American cheese is closer to literal plastic than literal cheese.

Flour is sugar, sugar is unhealthy!

>She though it was some kind of magic plastic

This is a first for me.

Pizza dough is one of those things I make regularly, and boy does it freeze well. Make one batch, then eat it over a few weeks. Hell, I'd do daily, but my scale would never forgive me for that.

> She though it was some kind of magic plastic

If all she's had is "dollar slice" pizza, I can see how she came to that conclusion.

Really? I can't. Why would pizza dough be made of plastic when it appears so bread-like? It's called dough.

The most important thing to know about making pizza dough, or really any bread dough, is you want stir in water just enough to get it all wet, and then let it soak for at least 40 minutes before you work it. Second is, refrigerate for at least a day if you care about flavor.

Had a mice infestation myself a few years ago. Glue traps worked great. Also, consider getting a cat.

Def seal all your food with plastic or glass containers.

Amazon sells galvanized steel garbage cans of various sizes. They have a lid that naturally seals tightly. They're varmint proof for anything up to a bear. Perfect for mouse-proofing your food.

My experience with mice is that they travel in 6 packs. If you catch one, there are probably 5 more.

One of my enduring memories was in my school years visiting a friend whose family had recently moved to Australia from Asia. At the end of their kitchen bench, they had a food-grade plastic bin larger than the stereotypical Oscar-the-grouch trash can, full of rice. We buy rice in 5-10kg bags but maybe I should be trying to find larger.

Should you proceed with your plan, be sure to check the bin for the presence of tiny insects every now and then. One of the problems with storing rice in quantity is the profusion of insects (bugs, moth larvae, et cetera) that like to make the rice bin their home.

We deep freeze anything of that nature for a month or so before drying off to root cellar. There's a small brown moth that hitches in on dog kibble, bird seed, brown rice, and more that can establish a reproductive cycle most places with organics. So hard to get rid of.

I would advice against it, unless you want to be visited by rice weevils

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice_weevil

Small packs of rice are the way to go imo.

Flour beetles can chew their way through plastic bags. I don't know if rice weevils can too, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Better use a metal trash can, and have a reliable way to seal the lid, if you don't want to germinate bugs in it.

49ers bought coffee, sugar, and flour in 50-100 lb bags, and lard in multi-gallon cans. Those were the important supplies.

I have one and it's working perfectly. I use it to store bags of bird seed in my shed, where there are most definitely mice present. So far this winter there's been no sign of them getting in and having a feast.

The mice aren't getting in unless they figure out how to use an angle grinder :-)

The city supplies me with a garbage toter (that fits their garbage truck mechanism). The squirrels bore a hole through it and raid it constantly. Replace the toter, and another hole in it a day or two later. I'd open the lid to throw in more trash and they'd hide inside, but I could usually see their twitching whiskers. I didn't really mind it so much, until the raccoons started in on the fun and would strew the garbage all over the driveway. I finally resorted to storing the garbage in a steel can, and dump it in the toter only on trash pickup day.

Not sourced from Amazon, but I keep animal feed in one, only way to keep mice out of it.

House mice and rodents that have lived in buildings for their entire lives will have a slim chance of surviving outdoors. If possible, relocate mice to an outbuilding like a shed or garage.

https://www.humanesociety.org/resources/what-do-about-wild-m...

Mice carry disease, and the hantavirus is extremely deadly.

I know, I've had it.

>50% fatality by some counts.

As mice in my area have it, I cannot in good conscience do anything but kill mice I catch. The risks are too high.

FWIW, hantavirus is spread via mouse urine, not by the mice themselves, so the most important way to avoid it is to sanitize places where mice have peed.

Also droppings, apparently. You're not supposed to vaccuum because it could stir up dust from the droppings. I've just been reading up on it from the CDC:

https://www.cdc.gov/hantavirus/pdf/HantavirusBrochure-508.pd...

Oh man, I looked up hantavirus, scary stuff. Sorry you had to go through that.

Thankfully there's only been 4 known cases in my state since at least as far back as 1996, but still.

Now I'm starting to rethink the live traps. Also I'm going to be extra careful in the basement, and might throw out more stuff than I was going to before. Great.

Also not going to do what I was planning to do and clean everything up slowly over weeks, even while recently capturing the mice.

For the last 20 hours or so, during the worst, I stayed awake and coughed up golfball sized chunks of phlegm every 15 minutes or so.

Apparently, many deaths occur by people literally drowning in their own phlegm. Had I not stayed awake, had I gone to sleep, I suspect it would have built up and I'd have woken choking, without time to cough up the accumulation before death.

I had a large set of lungs, and good stamina fortunately.

One of my biggest fears is COVID (which is in mice now) mixing genes with this.

I think this is one of the best mouse traps:

https://www.automatictrap.com/

Electric traps work too, but are a pain to clean.

Snap tracks are effective, but when I had both mice and rats I found that a mouse trap could break a rats leg but let it walk away, and a mouse could eat from a rat trap without triggering it. Neither of those were good outcomes.

On those snap traps, you can bend the wire that holds back the spring downward in slight increments until the trap is so sensitive you can almost set off by blowing on it. This is the only way I was able to clear an infestation of juvenile mice years ago. Before this modification, the small mice were eating the bait without triggering the traps.

Did you bait them with peanut butter? That has always worked for me.

I've also heard of people gluing an almond to the trap. The mouse will tug on it and snap!goodbye.

I set mine with grapes, cut in half, with the grape skin in the trigger. The grape skin seems to be strong enough to prevent removal without triggering.

I use bread, or nothing. I've caught a lot of mice in unbaited traps. Mice are super curious creatures, and if the trap is in their path they often poke at it out of curiosity.

Bread works great; I moisten it and smoosh it into the trap platform where it hardens and must be chewed to consume it. I avoid oily and stick stuff because I reuse my traps. No sense throwing out perfectly good traps IMO.

I hate killing mice BTW. I have a couple of giant mice in my back yard who have completely annihilated the infestation of earwigs that plagued us for years. I see those mice out there nearly every day, and I tell them thank you, and I beg them not to enter my house. So far they seem to be listening.

I have no issues with mice as long as they are not in my house. But I don't mind killing them, I dump the corpse outside and it's always gone in less than a day, so some other critter is getting a meal.

There's also the flip bucket traps which are pretty good. If you want to keep them alive you can otherwise you can put some water in it.

Good on you for the live traps! I've found that the green plastic live traps on homedepot.com work well (though quite annoying to clean).

Since my last winter with mice I went and got a ton of big thick plastic containers of all shapes and sizes. Helps organize, and keeps out other pests like moths, weevils, ants.

Mice can get into a lot of plastic containers, can't they?

They will chew through plastic.

Easily. They can chew their way into plastic jars and even five gallon buckets if given the time.

We use a lot of tubs with seals because panty moths came in woth the bird food a couple of years ago. I HATE pantry moths.

I bought a vacuum sealer, that was the only way to get rid of them.

Need a cat! It is truly interesting how valuable they are, when you need them.

What do you like to bake? I have never attempted. I would like to surprise my wife one of these cold winter evenings.

Start with something easy like cookies.

Or brownies, which seem even easier.

I shall attempt!

Pan cookies are a nice compromise - I get the chocolate chip flavor without having to form individual cookie shapes :)

https://www.verybestbaking.com/toll-house/recipes/original-n...

Brownies, and banana bread are pretty easy (especially if one does not have allergies to chocolate and nuts as add-ins). Bread and pizza crust might require a bit of experimentation for perfect texture with your flour/water/yeast mix, kitchen temperature, humidity affecting outcome ( if you have central a/c or heat probably not as big a concern but I do not).

Awesome. Thanks for the recommendations. Making my own pizza would feel amazing I bet.

Bread machines are easy to find at the thrift store for $10-$15 - that's what I use for pizza dough and it makes it so easy! And if you end up never using the machine, you can just redonate.

I do recommend using bread flour - it has more gluten so it will make for a chewier dough. Though all-purpose will also be yummy - it's hard to go wrong!

It is so satisfying. Not having to rely on frozen or delivery and controlling the ingredients is great. Even the kneading is interesting tactile experience. When you make imperfect pizza, just making your own mediocre crust as a topping delivery system feels like an accomplishment.

knowing too much about GBBO meant malt loaf, recently: https://thegreatbritishbakeoff.co.uk/recipes/all/prue-leith-...

Oooh, this looks like a nice challenge and novel enough to be a real surprise. Thank you!

go by mass, not volume; don’t use blackstrap molasses use regular molasses; it does need a day to rest before eating.

I live in the Seattle-area where we've been hit with some serious winter weather in the mountain passes, to the point that for a period of a few hours, there was practically no route to drive to a neighboring state, and the passes were closed for the better part of 72+ hours.

Even with that, and the rest of the aforementioned issues, I have had virtually no problem shopping for what I needed with some small changes, like buying a different brand of eggs or getting organic bananas. This was even after 2-3 days of mountain closures and the panic shopping that goes with that.

This seems to mainly be an issue with convenience - decades of excellent logistics have trained us to basically expect a store to always be in stock of a wide variety of perishables. It's no surprise that when something disrupts that finely-tuned machine, we have to deal with some small setbacks.

You live in a major metropolitan area full of warehouses and featuring a major west coast port. You weren't cut off from anything. Other states were cut off from you.

I mean, we also have a major deepwater port. It's not like inland Alaska here where shut down roads mean you're totally isolated.

In fact, just yesterday a new terminal came online with cranes that match the reach of Long Beach: https://www.nwseaportalliance.com/newsroom/ssa-marine-and-no... (This project was started in 2016, which is one answer to "why don't we just add more capacity to solve port traffic jams")

I live to the west of you out on the peninsula and we couldn't get milk for the past week and a half. As in there wasn't a single carton of milk anywhere in multiple stores. Curious if it's just smaller towns relying on distribution from the city, and getting cut off first or what. I figured Seattle would have had similar issues.

Aldi's distribution has been hit particularly badly. A couple of weeks ago, my local Aldi had run out of salt. I never would have imagined a grocery store could run out of salt.

Nor a post office to run out of stamps in their stamp vending machine, but it happened to the one near me.

My experience with the USPS stamp vending machines since long before the pandemic is that they are out of stock about half the time.

I had never seen it happen myself.

Swiss Mail raised the prices for 1st class mail from CHF1.00 to CHF1.10 on January 1st...

...and ran out of CHF0.10 stamps in vending machines, within the week.

You really have to wonder what they expected.

If there is snow or significant freezing rain, there may be a run on salt when people buy it to apply to steps and sidewalks to melt the ice.

Weird, here Aldi and Walmart have seemed pretty unaffected but Publix has had a lot of empty shelves.

I haven't seen any, myself. And my anecdote is as good as theirs. It'd be nice if they actually pointed to, you know, data, for these kinds of stories.

My pizza place was closed though. Everyone out with covid. And it wasn't the usual cashiers over at the grocery; I think they may have been temps, because they didn't know how to do anything.

I certainly have.

We literally LOST a place to buy groceries, as a good part of a town just burnt to the ground after (it seems to be coming to light[0]), a local cult decided to burn a railroad tie and left it smoldering while 100mph+ winds were being recorded.

My King Soopers closed for renovations because of a domestic terrorist shot and killed a few people last year[1],

And today, workers at King Soopers are starting their strike (which I support!).

Given I also live in a unique enough geographic area where the land west of me for a few hundred miles includes mostly mountains, no groceries stores exist there - so the stores that are left are getting (to put lightly) hammered.

And also Covid, shipping logistical problems, shortages with delivery drivers - pile it on.

Affording to eat is getting more and more difficult.

[0] I want to make clear that these are allegations, and no arrests have been made, but it's not looking great for the cult.

https://kdvr.com/news/local/twelve-tribes-property-history-o...

[1] https://kdvr.com/news/boulder-grocery-store-shooting/records...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/workers-nearly-8...

I used to live in that area, right near that King Soopers—I hadn't heard about the cause of that fire, thank you for pointing out the investigation into it.

Regarding stores, this may seem a bit out of touch, as I assume their prices are probably more expensive and I also don't know what their stock is like, but a friend of mine recently opened a new (small) grocery store[0] downtown[1]. I'm no longer in the area so I've never been there, but perhaps they will have some better in stock or better in price than some other options.

Anyway, just wanted to pass along in case it may help you.

[0]: https://nudefoodsmarket.com/ [1]: https://g.page/nudefoodsmarket

Thanks for the tip, I'll check it out - doesn't hurt to wander by and say hello!

Want to stress that the fire investigation is ongoing, but there's a lot of evidence pointing the start of the fire being on the Twelve Tribe's property. But I don't want things to become a witch hunt.

Oh for sure!

> But I don't want things to become a witch hunt.

And i appreciate the qualification on this...I'll just try to follow it more closely than I had been before.

> Affording to eat is getting more and more difficult.

Boulder was never exactly a cheap place to eat, but you do have other choices: several Whole Foods, Safeways Lucky's and a Trader Joe's etc... I'm told Alfalfas went under during covid.

Also, the Farmer's Markets Downtown when in season.

Personally speaking, food costs have been artificially suppressed for far too long in the US; it has led to a situation in which food waste is abhorrently common. If this is what creates a paradigm shift, then so be it.

Moreover, Boulder's community garden space is always an option if you can get in--right now you'd be limited on options with anything other than brassicas outside of a greenhouse.

This is a much needed reset for Boulder in my opinion. It should live up to the values it supposedly promotes.

Sidenote: I used to shop at that King Soopers in Table Mesa when visiting, too. Scary stuff...

And that cult owns the Yellow Deli on Pearl street mall, right?

What do you mean by food prices have been artificially surpressed in the US? Most food waste I am aware of is to do with stores throwing out almost expired products, which bothers me but wouldn’t be helped by making things more expensive.

It's a squeeze - and I'm getting pretty close to making me feel bad for myself. But conventional grocery stores themselves are getting pretty expensive for very normal things. A Whole Foods is not a sustainable place to shop for me. I do live within spitting distance of the currently closed Kings Soopers, so that convenience is gone - as a cyclist, there's just so much cargo I can haul at one time so having a store close is a nicety.

Safeway relinquished their ownership of Lucky's to the original owners!

https://www.dailycamera.com/2021/06/09/lolitas-market-and-de...

The Yellow Deli is indeed owned by the Twelve Tribes. It's currently closed.

A week ago I bought the last package of chicken in a supermarket. Someone had been to three stores and couldn't find milk.

Your anecdote is as good as mine.

Investigative journalism with many samples is worth more than either anecdote.

Ok, but checking in on twitter photos of empty shelves isn't investigative journalism, and the few people who might be in the position to know are saying its not like March 2020, e.g. "There are some issues with out-of-stocks, but it tends to be a situation where if you go to a store on a Tuesday night, maybe something's out of stock, but by Wednesday sometime it's back in store," Rose told NPR."

The point is, the article would be less sensational and more informative if it could point to some kind of systematic data source--even one they collected themselves. But they don't.

my anecdote is as good as theirs

They actually talked to the California Grocers Association, and quoted the CEOs of Albertson's, the nation's largest supermarket company; and Conagra, one of the largest food companies on the planet. Not exactly anecdotes. These are people with access to real data.

I haven't seen any, myself.

I've seen it.

I have a regular bi-weekly list, and a lot of the items are getting harder and harder to find.

I have to try two or three stores, and even supplementing with Amazon Fresh, I still can't get everything.

Two of the chain supermarkets near me have signs up apologizing for the empty shelves, saying they're stocking them as quickly as they can. Which tells me this is a staffing issue, not a supply issue.

Would a Grocers Association or supermarket chain have any financial, political or legal reason to overemphasize that unusual or substantive shortages might be happening?

Yes. (Though that doesn’t mean they are wrong or misleading in this case.)

Which is why it is wise to look at actual objective nationwide data first. Anecdotes are useful in suggesting where to check real data (or gather real data if missing).

Whoever is gathering supermarket pricing data on a nationwide basis (secret shoppers) would objectively know what’s happening, if anything, and if it is local or regional or nationwide. An actual news agency would have contacted them and paid for the general non-proprietary regional/national info.

I agree with your take on this being a staffing issue where you are, if they are posting those sorts of signs and actively hiring.

Would a Grocers Association or supermarket chain have any financial, political or legal reason to overemphasize that unusual or substantive shortages might be happening?

Contrary to what Hollywood and the internet would have you believe, not everything is a conspiracy. Inventing conspiracies any time something doesn't meet your worldview is just plain lazy.

As for providing the hard data, if that's what you're after, subscribe to the Wall Street Journal.

This is NPR. It's a radio network. It produces radio-sized reports. It just happens to also put those reports in text form on the web as a convenience.

It's great that you're interested in the data. Go find it. It's out there. NPR isn't going to hand it to you on a silver platter. That's not what NPR is for. That's not what radio is for.

Whoever is gathering supermarket pricing data on a nationwide basis

The federal government does this every month. The data is available. Go nuts.

The USDA Agricultural marketing service has an incredible amount of frequently updated data and reports about the movement and price of agricultural commodities through the supply chain.

https://www.ams.usda.gov/market-news

Want to know about truck rates and availabilities?

https://mymarketnews.ams.usda.gov/filerepo/sites/default/fil...

Want to know about fruit pricing at retail in the northeast?

https://marketnews.usda.gov/mnp/fv-report-retail?repType=wiz...

Advertised consumer prices by commodity for the current week?

https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/wa_lo100.txt

Where are bell peppers on the US market coming from, how are they getting there, and what do they cost?

https://www.marketnews.usda.gov/mnp/fv-report?commAbr=PEP&ro...

How is this year's shipping volume compared to last years?

https://www.marketnews.usda.gov/dmr/DMR20220112FV.pdf

What's available at the Boston Produce Market?

https://www.marketnews.usda.gov/mnp/fv-report-top-filters?st...

A writer at NR pointed out that most national papers haven't picked it up yet (this was on Tuesday), but many local ones had: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/empty-shelve...

We have seen it too. And they did point to data: a rise of posts about it on social media. They also interviewed experts about the issue and why it's happening.

You may not have seen it yet but you will. I'm on the east coast and I see it at every store, even Dollar General.

Weird, I'm on the east coast, too. And haven't seen any empty shelves in the grocery store.

VONS normally sells Open Nature "hormone+antibiotics free" rotisserie chickens on the daily. It's been coming up on a month now that they've been unable to get any of these according to the deli clerk. "We keep ordering them, but they don't show up" in her words.

Starbucks has been completely out of espresso beans on multiple occasions this past month too. It's unclear to me how a Starbucks even stays open without espresso beans, but apparently not all their beverages actually contain freshly pulled espresso... I've only ever gotten shots of espresso.

Walmart has been out of some multivitamins for over a month now too.

I don't buy much stuff from these vendors, this actually amounts to a large portion of crap I consume that isn't just organic produce and canned sardines which I've fortunately not had trouble acquiring. The above is kind of the luxury junk I can do without, but there's clearly problems.

Starbucks has been completely out of espresso beans on multiple occasions this past month too.

The Starbucks down the block hasn't been able to get the flavor syrup I like since before Christmas. Like with your chicken, the manager says they just can't get it.

The Starbucks store actually closed for a week not very long ago. I thought it was because of the 'rona. The manager said it was just that they didn't have enough staff and had to cover other stores.

The only store in my area which doesn't seem to be affected by massive shortages is Whole Foods. Guess the Amazon supply chain is fairly robust.

When did they go away? We've got toilet paper labeled in English again here in VT/NH (Spanish is not widely spoken in this region, to put it mildly), but there's certainly been shortages of a wide assortment of things. At the grocery stores, they've been the limited to reduced brand choices and workaroundable sorts of problems.

Elsewhere, things have been weird. Target opened a new site recently and the clothing selection was slim. At various points I the last year it has been hard to buy all of the following:

1) a dish pan 2) car wax 3) shellac (now back in stock) 4) .22LR ammunition (ongoing) 5) cabinet grade plywood (recent development) 6) a roof rake (for removing snow from your roof, obvs. This was new for me too) 7) EN 417 fuel canisters for backpacking stoves (severe and ongoing)

The hiccups have been here all along, it's just that they're hitting things everybody buys.

.22LR has been ongoing so long that it’s on its third presidential administration, isn’t it? 2013 start?

Prices have been high since 2013ish on .22LR, but you could generally still buy some. It wasn't until the 2020 summer of covid and George Floyd protests that it became almost entirely unavailable, regardless of price. That is just starting to open up a bit in the midwest as I occasionally see it available now but it sells out quickly.

Meat shelves have been cleaned out at the supermarkets in Australia the last couple of visits. Hopefully encourages people to try their local butcher instead.

Freezing meat when it's available is an option too.

Haven't checked this time, but last time the shelves cleared, the chest freezers were all sold out or expensive in second hand marketplaces. The used market went from people struggling to sell cheap to 4-5x the price and virtually none on offer.

The fresh seafood was completely empty at my local grocery today

California mostly seems to be doing OK on its supplies. I have noticed that fresh milk in single-serving quantities(which I'll pick up on walks) has basically disappeared though.

Seeing the same in PA, quarts of many brands are out of stock at various stores, but half gallon and up are available.

According to Chase my grocery spending is up 40% since two years ago.

I buy so little beef these days. Chicken and pork (except for bacon which has doubled) haven't went up as much.

The weirdest things are out of stock these days. Those canned cinnamon rolls are nowhere to be seen. They were out of carrots the other day. Certain breads...

I really feel for lower or fixed income shoppers. Everything else has went up in price as well so they're making cuts somehow

Pepperoni pizza rolls were out at all 3 of the grocery stores in my town (pop. ~20,000) as well as the cheapo Totino's frozen pizzas, and the pasta section was heavily picked over. Ramen noodles were also picked clean, it's super bizarre what does and doesn't get snapped up.

Chicken thighs can be a great replacement for chicken breast. You may have to cook it a little differently, but if it's in a soup or other dish where it's mixed in, you can hardly tell any difference. I haven't done this myself but have seen great deals on whole chickens if you consume or freeze enough during the week for it to be worth it.

After a long time - Yesterday, I noticed a lot of empty shelves in poultry and produce at Whole foods. Although no similar sight was to see at Trader Joe’s

The QFC (Kroger owned grocery stores in the PNW) by me had to close early this past Sunday because it ran out of people to run the store. I had been there earlier in the afternoon and the site of bare shelves and lines as long as the entire length of the store was actually unnerving.

Wow, do you know if it's because people quit or were sick at home with Covid? I remember the week after New Year's going into a grocery store (Ballard Market here in Seattle) and there were probably around 50% of the employees normally working there. I assumed it was due to people being at home sick, but didn't ask.

I would guess it is due to labor supply going down at the price grocery stores are used to and willing to pay.

I am seeing the same story play out at many other in person businesses used to paying low wages for in person work, especially at undesirable times of the day and week.

Daycares, hotels, restaurants, car rentals, healthcare, etc.

I've also heard that parking-lot delivery orders are causing labor issues. If you order a bunch of stuff from the store for curbside delivery, an employee has to spend a significant amount of time doing the shopping for you, likely in addition to their other duties. This is apparently VERY disruptive.

It ran out of people willing to work for poverty wages.

Sounds like there's going to be a glut of over-production in March.

In line with what a few other people here have said, I should mention that where I am (Austin, TX, USA), I literally just came from the grocery store before reading this, and everything seemed to be in stock. I'm not saying there were zero issues, but nothing we were looking for, and certainly no bare shelves. Maybe it's more weather-related? We certainly have no shortage of Omicron in Texas, but the grocery stores (and the supply chains that provide them) seem to be doing fine.

San Antonio here. Things seem to be fine. I went to the store on a Sunday morning and it wasn't very busy, nothing was sold out. I had been worried because I saw lines outside of a store closer to me, presumably due to capacity restrictions.

The other day, my husband went, and they were out of frozen potatoes. That can happen either from shortages or a freezer malfunction, though, so it was relatively normal. I am actually pleasantly surprised at how well the supply chain is holding up during this wave.

God bless HEB.

I was at a local Trader Joes on the 3rd of January, the store was much more barren than normal, and when I went up to the counter I asked if the truck was delayed, it wasn't. They had a larger rush on Jan 2nd and 3rd than they had leading up to Christmas and New Years. It was very odd to see.

the TJ's near me (greater Seattle area) was pretty bare, but they did miss their daily delivery (due to landslide blocking a highway). almost all cold dairy & vegetables were out of stock

"Out of Stock" is the Authentic Trader Joe's Experience.

It goes along with everything being a long, long way from its "sell-by" date. (Except walnuts, oddly: only ever buy organic walnuts from TJ.)

We just went shopping after being out for a while. The prices were incredible. The availability was scarce. We’re stocking up on cat food since it’s harder to come by. Meat prices mean buying chubs and vacuum and sealing. Costco hot dogs for lunch is becoming an increasing thing for me.

It’s interesting that things differ so much from one region to the next. I’m in the Midwest and everything is abundant, the shelves are full, and you can get pork for $1-2 per pound, usually on the lower end of that range, and chicken at moderate prices. Is shipping the bottleneck here?

I understand there are probably a lot of startups trying to solve this from the supplier side but are there any startups working at solving this from the customer side?

Amazon, UberEats, Fresh Direct. All sorts of grocery delivery services

I have not been inside a grocery store for over a year...

But I have not seen any major changes in my curbside pickup order, no major out of stocks, no major substitution.

Same thing here. I suspect that's due to the fact that

a) curbside services charge a nifty premium, and stores revenue share with them. I'd be surprised if that doesn't lead to prioritization.

b) this is demand usually known well in advance, which helps the stores deal with planning.

c) In many stores, it's strictly a shelving issue. If the curbside service has in-store pickers, there's a chance they can skip shelving and the need for shelving staff.

d) The curbside delivery workforce is a bit more elastic, so Covid shortages don't necessarily manifest the same way.

Don't forget:

e) Curbside usually doesn't offer everything in store. It only offers the most popular or plentiful items.

For example, if I go to my local mega-chain supermarket, I can choose from six or eight different brands of white bread. If I do the order online, there's only three.

A. The store I shop at provides their own Curb Side services, for free. i.e Kroger, Walmart, Meijer, all have these services, free right now. Kroger used to charge a $5 fee but they have suspended that for last couple of years at least

B. I think that is giving them too much credit, I normally use Kroger, and even if I place my order a few days in advance I can edit it (and normally do) up to midnight before my pickup day.

C. this is likely true.

Which store chain is this?

With Walmart and HEB curbside in the Austin area it's been very common for subs/out of stocks.

Going into the HEB over the last week has shown rapidly fluctuating stocks in many items. For example diet drinks of almost any kind were sparse in the store. Meat and cheese was well stocked, but bread was half stocked. Then I may go another time and the items that are missing are in stock and something new is missing. Very hit and miss.

Midwest, Mainly Kroger but I have also known to shop Walmart and Meijer

Also Midwest (Ohio) and I don't recall seeing a shortage on anything other than maybe during one of the first snows, which always happens because people are dumb.

I see empty shelves in our local Targets here in SoCal quite frequently. Pasta has been hard to get, and dairy items are sparse.

That's puppies compared with Cuba and North Korea, where grocery store shortages have been the norm for many decades.

It has been very hard to buy Friskies canned cat food in California for a long, long time. But not at all in New York.

I find it interesting that Gatorade has been short for months. Costco puts a limit and I've seen them bare on shelves for a while (and the other day). Not sure why...A quick google shows that PepsiCo dropping the ball no supply chain, workers etc...so it's interesting that much of this blame is put on Biden (#BareShelvesBiden) when really it's the free market and management that should be blamed.

I have recently seen certain shelves bare of cereal and what not. So what do I do? Just buy a different kind of cereal and move on with life.

"Omicron-driven absenteeism."

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