HEB, which dominates the grocery business in Central Texas, is stocking out of off-the-wall items. Yesterday, the store I frequent was out of sugar - any type of sugar. Brown sugar, white granulated sugar, powdered sugar. A few weeks ago they had no canned pears. These stockouts are temporary and the items are replenished in a day or so but the frequency and the randomness are a new phenemonon.
Ooh, you haven’t seen the posts over so many years I’ve made about our local HEB. Venezuela has nothing on this HEB. I dumped them at the beginning of covid and never went back. I shop once every 6 weeks so if something isn’t stocked, we’re out of luck for a while. The only other option in the county is driving over to Walmart.
The local HEB hasn’t stocked fresh cauliflower or pork ‘n beans (and dozens of other common foods) for decades. Forget celery for holiday stuffing and forget Karo syrup for that Christmas pecan pie. The same brand of holiday turkey will be 3 different prices per pound so they were obviously leftovers or shortages from other orders around the state. Regular bagged shelf bread comes in frozen. Milk will be stolen out of your cart because the dairy section is empty. Produce is 3 hours from rotting and growing fuzz. The meat section is poorly stocked and may only have 2 packages of whatever cut. I once begged for the only beef loin steak they had hidden in the back.
Had to do something similar to an illegal back door drug deal to get some frozen fish and had the cashier and bag boy going all bug eyed saying they didn’t know they had frozen fish. They hollered over to another cashier to come look.
They actually pulled any item that had a national coupon and then stopped taking coupons around 10 years ago.
They never have half of what’s advertised. They don’t even put out a weekly circular in with the newspaper since covid.
It’s always Venezuelan empty shelves or the entire aisle of nothing but Whataburger brand mustard.
The typical excuse is “the truck didn’t bring any”. Once, when they had no tortillas, well, the truck was supposed to bring some the next day. I knew to clarify that pat answer so asked how many, one case or one 8 count package that was advertised. It was one 8 count package. Yep, saw the electronic order. IOW, it would be an opened package that another store didn’t toss in the garbage.
The downside of "just in time" delivery is that it presupposes that suppliers and transporters have enough slack to immediately get you what you need, when you need it.
Then you get your shipment of sugar or canned peaches sitting in a warehouse 200 miles away because there's not enough truckers, and a missed shipment of canning supplies at the factory causes an upstream shutdown which cascades across the country.
I’ve noticed more Mexican brands and dollar store brands in the store.