SUPPLY CHAIN REPORT: Sunday morning at the supermarket

The wife wanted to shop really early to "social distance", so we were there at 6am when the huge Meijer's supermarket in Southfield, Michigan opened.   

I noticed the empty shelves were worse than ever. Slightly disguised by clerks spreading out available products in wide, shallow rows. Or displaying enormous quantities of whatever they did have, in unusual places.  Such as secondary displays of wine bottles, paper towels, etc., in addition to all the the wine bottles and paper towels in the rows where they are normally located.

Here's what we found this morning:

Kraft 8 oz. chunks of cheese 

= none available, where there are usually hundreds.

 

Phiadelphia 8 oz. cream cheese tubs 

= about 65 available, where there are usually hundreds

 

The soda pop row was decimated, like never before. I was thinking this must look like a supermarket in a communist nation.

= For example: 12 packs of 12oz. Diet Pepper cans were on sale at 3 for $11.  I wanted six 12 packs for the next month. There were only two. I bought both. There were also two Dr. Pepper Sugar Free 12 packs -- they taste almost the same, so i bought them too.  Six packs of 16.9 oz. Diet Pepper were on sale too, but there were none on the shelf. The next Diet Dr. Pepper fan will be disappointed

 

Kellog's Raisin Bran breakfast cereal 

= none available, in any size.

 

Packages of salami -

= There were four available, but they were not my favorite brand.  I bought all of them anyway -- I guess I'm a salami hoarder. 

 

Hillshire Farm 16 ounce package of sliced turkey

= On sale -- buy one, get the second at 50% off.  But there was only one 16 ounce package in the store, so we skipped that purchase.

 

With so many items not available, our total cost was less than $100, for the first time in a long time -- the only benefit of empty shelves.   

44 years of weekly food shopping in Michigan, and there was never anything of interest to report until a few months ago! 

Ye Editor