<p>How is the inventory at your supermarket? Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but mine keeps saying it’s having trouble getting some of our favorite items. </p>
<p>Golden delicious apples were nowhere to be found in Sept. Finally showed up this week. </p>
<p>Individual 4-packs of cottage cheese have been unavailable for weeks. </p>
<p>Peanut butter variety of Luna bars. No sign of them for weeks. </p>
<p>Is it just me? Anybody else experiencing this? 
</p>
<p>Peanut harvest was low because of droughts in Southern states. Now pb is getting hard to obtain in some supply chains. The apples might have been slow to be ready to harvest. Switch to another kind.</p>
<p>Supermarkets run on a low profit margin. They’ve probably reduced inventory to the point they run out on a continual basis.</p>
<p>I suppose harvest and dought could be the problem on those items. But, the mgr of the Dairy dept says cottage cheese 4-packs just don’t arrive. They order them everyday, he says. </p>
<p>Oh, well.</p>
<p>My biggest gripe is that stores are eliminating a lot of items, in favor of their store brands.</p>
<p>Here it seems to depend on the individual store. The Vons closest to my house has a terrible selection and I just pick up milk and odds and ends here. To do my heavy duty shopping I will drive farther to a Ralphs (not the closest Ralphs) where the selection is much better</p>
<p>It also varies from store to store here. My closest supermarket is near a lot of student apartments and with that captive audience (many students don’t have cars) they can get away with relatively poor selection and quality. I once complained about the how crummy the produce was and the manager’s response was “People tell us that.” If I am willing to get in the car and drive a couple miles to another store in the same chain the quality is much better.</p>
<p>What sort of store is it - chain or independent? If an independent, they are at the bottom of the barrel. </p>
<p>My local ShopRite is hostage to what its warehouse stocks, which I’m sure makes decisions based on slow movers and profit margins. For example, they recently stopped carrying the Old El Paso salsa we like. We tried the store & another name brand and dislike them, so I will need to go to the (nasty) Pathmark near us to look for it.</p>
<p>We shop mostly at a small local chain. About 7 years ago, they quit carrying some of the smaller brands which was frustrating because they were the only ones who did carry them at all.
The store brand is western family which is often very good but they carry a lot of speciality items like ghee & lingonberries, & their chain which is in the suburbs & much larger carries even more- it even has live seafood tanks.</p>
<p>I have not noticed any shortage of food items. What I have noticed is an insane increase in pricing! I do not know how lower income families that do not qualify for food stamps are paying for groceries. Here are a couple of examples: </p>
<p>I looked for bottled salad dressing in two different grocery stores (the type on shelves that is not kept cold in the store). The best sale price for a 16 oz. or larger bottle was over $3.00. Many that were not on sale were now over $5/bottle! I will qualify this by saying that lower quality bottles (corn syrup added, and frankly the type that I would not put in a salad) could be purchased for about $1.99.</p>
<p>The price of butter has also soared through the roof. When not on sale, the stores in my area are now charging 5.49 for the 4 stick packages. On sale I have seen them for 3.49 within the last week (nothing cheaper). Two weeks ago the sale price was $2.49.</p>
<p>I was just complaining that yesterday at Costco, they had no Kirkland brand bacon. How do they run out of their own store brand?</p>
<p>Our large Kroger here has fewer items than a smaller store just a couple of miles away. On the other hand, they had Land O’Lakes butter on sale for $2.99. I stocked up.</p>
<p>I haven’t noticed any lack of inventory at any of the markets I shop. What I have noticed is that Walmart’s prices on non perishables and dairy (which are the only items I buy there) are considerably less than my regular markets - sometimes even more than $1 less. I save at least $25-30 by shopping there - which makes it less painful to spend more on the local organic fruits & veggies I buy at my farm stand in summer and other market in winter.</p>
<p>I frequently shop at A&P, and last year the chain was on the brink of bankruptcy. The manager of my local store told me that many vendors refused to give them credit, so there were multiple gaps in the merchandise (no Snapple, for instance). Perhaps OP’s store is having financial difficulties. Or it may just be poor management. We own a retail store, and keeping inventory at the right levels is probably the most challenging aspect of running the place–you don’t want to ever completely run out of anything, but you don’t want excess inventory taking up your cash. Dealing with perishable items would make things even more challenging.</p>
<p>I too have noticed how the in-house brand increasingly seems to have supplanted some national products. Only the better independents and big boy upscale stores like Stew Leonard seem to maintain a wide variety these days.</p>
<p>[Obama</a> order averts freight railroad strike - Forbes.com](<a href=“http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/10/06/general-industrials-us-railroad-strike-averted_8721942.html]Obama”>http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2011/10/06/general-industrials-us-railroad-strike-averted_8721942.html)</p>
<p>I heard about this strike that was averted a couple of days ago, so it this is not the cause of shortages, it may be in the future.</p>
<p>I was going to bring weisswurst to our Oktoberfest, but there wasn’t any. This is our very local supermarket - the big guys never had it in the first place.</p>