SUPPLY CHAIN SURVEY -- Saturday morning at the local supermarket

BOTTOM  LINE:

After two weeks with no obvious change, the quantity of empty shelves suddenly reached a shocking new peak. Perhaps worsened by Omicron related labor shortages? Omicron can cause a lot of people to miss work for a few days. I have no other explanation. I've shopped for food in Michigan since moving here from New York in 1977. Shopped at this store every week for decades. These empty shelves are disturbing. Especially because the problem is still getting worse. Other than the excellent weekly sales at this chain, prices are up significantly in the past year.

 
Overall, the store had a shocking amount of empty shelves. Clerks try to hide empty shelves with wide displays of whatever they do have. For example, there were 23 rows of Kraft ranch salad dressing. But only one bottle in each row! Even with those visual display tricks all over the store, there were still a huge amount of empty shelves. 

And we find ourselves hoarding products, not knowing if we will see them again next week, or the next month. It started with Charmin toilet paper a few months ago -- the wife bough enough for a year. Now it is everything we can store for long periods. Example, I bought 10 bottles of Meijers sugar free bread and butter pickles, when I only needed one or two. Might not see them for another month -- had not seen them for the past month. The total grocery bill ends up being huge relative to what we could eat in the next week.

DETAILS:

My first hand survey of specific items adds a few minutes to our food shopping trip every week, at Meijer's supermarket in Southfield, Michigan, usually at 7am Sunday morning. Meijer's is a large chain, and this store used to be the busiest Meijer's store in the state, pre-Covid. We shopped at 6am Saturday this week, hoping to get some sale items that were not available last Sunday at 7am. That strategy was only partially successful. Saturday is the last day of the weekly sales.

Laundry Detergent:

No Meijer's scent-free detergent. We'll soon have to pay up to 50% more for a "name brand". Out of stock for over a month.

Philadelphia Cream Cheese

Fewer than 50 eight ounce tubs of soft cream cheese for $3.69 each, where there are usually 200. Meijer's 8 ounce blocks of cream cheese were still on sale for only $1 -- but there were still none available, just like last Sunday morning.  Some sale!  But there were also no $2 Phildelphia eight ounce blocks of cream cheese available.  So we didn't buy any cream cheese. The soft Cheese tubs are a rip off.

Breakfast Cereals

A lot of empty shelves again. We had previously stocked up on Kellog's Raisin Bran when it finally showed up. I forgot to check the shelves this time. It had been a problem in the past month, sometimes with no raisin bran cereal of any brand in the store.

Hillsdale Farm packaged cold cuts

Great deal on all sizes. Especially the buy one 16 ounce package, and get 50% off the next package. But not a great deal if you wanted ham, like we did - none in the store,  Not even in the 8 ounce size. So we bought sliced turkey breast instead -- not on sale -- who knows what will be there next week?

Soda Pop:

Two liter bottles of Diet Doctor Pepper were still on sale for $1 each. I wanted three, but bought six. Because the soda pop row had an alarming amount of empty shelves -- they might be missing that flavor next week, even if not on sale.

Ace Bread from Canada

Buy one loaf for $3.69 and get the next one at 50% off. But they only had one loaf of the Harvest Grain we wanted. So the wife bought a loaf of their white bread for 50% off.  White bread is boring -- I consider it to be bird food!

Of the 5 items above that I checked, 

the store had +1.5 out of 5 in stock. 

-- They had the soda pop I wanted (+1)

-- For the bread, we wanted two loaves, 

of a specific flavor -- there was only one (+0.5)