Empty Shelves | Your stories | Discussion forum

Kidd said
I have never in my life, seen grocery store shelves this empty. The frozen food section looks like Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboards, completely bare. Is this how the federal government plans to deal with inflation… give us nothing to buy and we'll all save money?

This is scary, this is serious. Covid has been with us for 2 years. Why is this happening now?

The frozen food section is mostly locally prepared goods, prepared and packaged in Ontario, in my case. We are not talking about a slow boat from China. And I’m NOT talking extravagant food items, just frozen prepared meals and the like.  

even when its produced local, the truckers are too busy in Ottawa protesting.

There is certainly a tight meat supply esp chicken, as witness by Walmart not able to refill its shelves.

.
Wrong forum, but I'll chime in with these anyway . . .

CTV News vid ➡ https://www.ctvnews.ca/video?clipId=2369981
CBC News vid ➡ https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-cheat-sheet-1.6331185

Basically, its all over the news these days.

Dean

P.S.
And 'No', the Karen Truckers protesting in Ottawa
have contributed little to no supply chain issues,
as 95+% of our Truckers are still on the job.

Loonie said
My understanding is that about 90% of truckers are vaccinated and able to work , and as far as I know, they are working if there is something to truck and they are not off sick.
I have also heard that the problem is with short supply of staff working in the stores due to covid exposure and getting better-paying jobs elsewhere. WalMart is not known for high wages, nor is any grocery store chain.
Today is Tuesday. I've often been told by grocery store employees, when looking for something that is out of stock, that I should check again on Tuesday as that is when they re-stock so, a shortage of employees will mean today's work not getting done.  

yes thats usually the case. But it seems like with logistic issue, lack of staff, and whatever other covid related issue, the stores are no longer guarantee to have any stocks replenished from the normal schedule time.

Not me either!
I don't even shop in grocery stores at all these days - just order online.

Part of it is also the trend of everything getting worse. When I worked in a grocery store we had night shifts which solely stocked the shelves and organized the stock in the back so that people could put a little out as items sold, to keep shelves full during the day shifts.

Now there's no night shift and the stocking of shelves is done during opening hours, plus the job isn't being done as well for various reasons. The amount of times I see perishable items sitting on palettes on the floor with no one around, ice cream melting, milk going bad.... it's just crazy.

The other day we looked through over a dozen cartons of eggs before we gave up because the guy throwing them into the end display was breaking them all... he was actually tossing them in and just didn't care.

So now you not only have bad work ethic, but staff shortages, continued cost cutting and a less reliable supply chain. I've peaked in the back on more than one occasion and seen palettes of food sitting there. IMO, most of the food is there it's just the employees aren't motivated to do a good job these days and that's making things look much worse than they are. Shelves are so disorganized and not rotated or managed to keep things looking proper.

I feel like I'm shopping in 3rd world country sometimes during this pandemic, but not enjoying my vacation.

Kidd said
I eat oatmeal for breakfast. I buy the big 2.25 kg bag. It was paying ballpark $5.50 a bag. The bag i bought on monday was something like $7.50. Tuesday, there were no bags left on the shelf.  

Well I definitely see the cereal aisles being very empty due to the Kellogg's strike in the USA. Lots of "adult" cereals have been sold out for weeks. Is is possible that some customers are switching over to oatmeal as an alternate?

I went to No Frills a couple of weeks ago and they had ZERO chicken. The entire poultry section was covered with tarps. When I asked if there was a shortage, I was told it was due to the recent snow storm and trucks not getting through. When I returned yesterday, there was definitely lots of fresh chicken. I found empty sections in the baking aisle and of course cereal aisle.

MG said

Wow, just wow! You would think the manager or owner might be interested in knowing about this. Would you feel comfortable taking a photo and sending it up the proverbial "food chain"?  

Besides the fact I don't carry a phone around with me often, the last time I tried to get a managers attention at this particular store, the manager was too busy discussing an iPad purchase on their cell phone. lol!

Needless to say, we have started to only shop at this store when we are driving by anyways and are feeling like lucky punks. Last week they had eggs on sale, but we didn't bother going there even though we were driving by and instead paid regular price somewhere else. That's something I wouldn't have considered a couple years back.

Loonie said
My understanding is that about 90% of truckers are vaccinated and able to work , and as far as I know, they are working if there is something to truck and they are not off sick.
I have also heard that the problem is with short supply of staff working in the stores due to covid exposure and getting better-paying jobs elsewhere. WalMart is not known for high wages, nor is any grocery store chain.
Today is Tuesday. I've often been told by grocery store employees, when looking for something that is out of stock, that I should check again on Tuesday as that is when they re-stock so, a shortage of employees will mean today's work not getting done.  

Any light hiccup like a 5-10% reduction in truckers, couple of even minor disruptions at the source etc is enough to have a big impact to just-in-time delivery and results in inventory shortage, etc. Just in time delivery methodology worked almost flawlessly when things are normal.

What phrank and Alexandre indicate about staff echoes my experience these days. Even if management cares enough to put down the phone and stop talking about their iPad purchase for minute they're hamstrung due to the quantity and quality of the workforce available. The problem (aside from the logistical supply chain issues), as usual, is "us".

True, but not totally as corporations are aware that cuts will at some point erode their customer base so they do a balancing act, it's not just a race to the bottom as that's counter-productive at some point.

And maybe some of the decreased emphasis on in-store service, etc might be to encourage the already-growing shift to (for them, cheaper) their online shopping model.