SUPPLY CHAIN SURVEY: Sunday morning at the supermarket

We shop at 6am on Sunday morning when the huge Meijer's supermarket in Southfield, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit, opens for business -- the first hour of their weekly sale. We live in Bingham Farms, about one mile north of the store, and about seven miles from the Northwest Detroit border. We've shopped at this high volume store for decades.  The prices are good, and weekly sales are exceptional.  They also have many non-food products, from clothing to furnace filters, sort of like a Walmart, but with a much larger and better selection of food. The display tricks to fill empty shelves are getting ridiculous -- 24 rows of Wishbone ranch salad dressing with one bottle in each row!  There are enormous displays of whatever they do have, such as enough five pound bags of sugar for an army.

 

BOTTOM LINE

Still a record amount of items out of stock, or in unusually small quantities. But today we were surprised that most of the items we wanted to buy were available. Maybe the shortages will not be getting worse? Shopping is not so bad when many items you don't want are out of stock!  

 

It helps to stock up on products that are not going to spoil, especially if they are on sale. The price will be higher the next time you shop.  And you have to be flexible -- the brand on sale will be the first to run out. So try a new brand, when your favorite brand is out of stock. Our "batting average" is about 50% on new brands. 

 

The weekly sales are getting much less attractive. Not only smaller discounts than in the past few decades, but also fewer sales on popular items we want to buy, probably because they are in short supply. 

Meijer's Scent Free Laundry Detergent

Finally in stock -- just in time -- after months of empty shelves. We bought enough for six months! The name brands cost about 50% more, but don't clean any better.

 

Phiadlphia Cream Cheese

There were 32 8oz. tubs of soft cream cheese for $3.69 each, where there are usually about 200. No flavors other than plain.  We wanted an 8 ounce block of plain cream cheese, usually $2.  There were six blocks, but all of them were 1/3 less fat. There was only one Meijer's 8oz. block, also 1/3 less fat -- we bought it for $1.19.  Less fat probably means less tasty. We'll see.

 

Breakfast Cereals

Lots of empty shelves again, but there were a small number of Kellogs' Raisin Bran boxes. We bought enough for a month or two -- in past weeks there were sometimes no raisin bran cereal, of any brand, in any size.

 

Hillsdale Farms packaged cold cuts:

Very few packages in the store, but the nearby Oscar Mayer brand sliced ham was on sale for 15% off, so I bought enough for a month. Not much was left for other shoppers. Hillsdale Farms sliced ham had a 25% off sale last week, but there were none available to buy.  Some sale.

 

ACE Harvest Grain bread from Canada

None available in that flavor. There was a $3.69 La Brea Bakery Whole Grain bread from California in its place, that we'd never seen before. 18 ounces for the same price as the ACE 16 ounces. I thought it tasted just as good -- the wife disagreed. 

 

Meat Section

We don't buy a lot of meats, and never had a supply problem. But today the wife wanted to buy skinless chicken breasts. We got the last package in the store at 6:30am.  That was surprising. 

Hoarding  Confession:

It's already tough waking up at 5:30am to shop at 6am when the store opens. That's the first hour of the weekly sale.  I've always practiced stocking up on sale items as a good "investment", assuming they did not need refrigeration. But now we stock up regardless of prices, because the shelves may be empty next week, or for the next month.  There are a few foods we don't bother looking for anymore -- after frustrating empty shelves for months, we just stopped looking for them.