If I want it, it's gone

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

This is happening a lot lately - or maybe it’s just that I’m noticing it more. It seems that the chance of an item disappearing from a store’s stock is directly proportional to my interest in it.

Take the local grocery store, and dates: I love dates. I used to indulge myself with medjool dates - expensive, but just wonderful. They stopped carrying these about 3 months ago. I switched to standard pitted dates - about half the price, and still not bad. They are now gone - only chopped dates remain. I haven’t stooped to these yet, partly in fear that there will then soon be no dates.

Sardines: I like sardines in mustard sauce, which used to be abundant - I’d buy a couple of cans a week. We went through a period of shortage (only of that kind of sardine) but this seemed to be over about 2 months ago. Now the sardine display has been rearranged, and sauce options are spring water, oil and hot sauce - no mustard sauce, nor even a shelf label reserving space.

Bread: The options here are never much, but they used to have a sourdough baguette that was more than acceptable. I bought these eagerly, which I now see as a mistake. The sourdough option disappeared 6 months ago; regular baguettes were still available - not nearly as good, but still edible. Now those are gone, and none of the remaining bread is respectable.

Smoked salmon: gone. Vita herring in wine sauce: gone. Good & Plenty candy: gone. Roquefort cheese: gone. The store seems full of food and people eagerly buying it - why are they trying to drive me away (and how do they happen to be so good at it)?

2

Supposedly, Wal Mart stores stock up on Strawberry Pop Tarts when hurricanes seem imminent.

Point being, retailers have so much computer power trained on UPC codes that they can track what sells and when, how much to have, all that. I think shelf space has become a closely-monitored commodity…if X amount of a product doesn’t yield the profit they want in a certain amount of time, it’s removed to make way for something else.

3

If you’re sure you’re not getting there after the store has sold out, I’d ask the manager if they know of any other store in town that stocks them. That way you kill two birds with one stone: the manager knows that someone wants to buy it in his/her store but has to go somewhere else (might get them to start carrying it again) and you have a new place to shop.

Good luck!

4

Ha! I got the last can of bean soup they had at the supermarket this weekend.
It was tasty. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Try the Medjools from these folks, and you’ll never go back to grocery store dates again. The date crystals are wonderful, too.

6

Hmmm - I can definitely see them getting some of my money.

7

Ever ask the manager? My Publix has a shelf of items other people have requested. (I have never tried it myself.)

8

Like the others have said, talk to the manager. I worked at a grocery store all through college and if there was something that someone really wanted and was willing to buy a case of it, we would special order it for them.

9

Right - but what I really want is for the items I like and buy regularly to be regularly in stock. (Not to mention that things like bread won’t work via special order.)

And I hate this feeling that once I start buying something it will soon be viewed as a strange item, no longer worth space on a shelf.

10

This has happened to me several times in the last few years!

I like one particular kind of potato chips. For most of last year, you couldn’t get a bag of them at any store, even though they stocked the company’s other brands. Within the last few months, they’re back.

Last year, someone introduced me to Twinings Four Fruits tea bags, which were hands down, the best hot drink I’d ever tasted. Within a month, they were taken off the shelves at all stores. I bought the last eight boxes I could find. Now they’ve seemingly disappeared from the face of the earth.

We’d tried all the brands of spaghetti sauce in a jar, and found only one that we liked - Ragu Rich & Meaty (or somesuch, it’s been awhile). We bought it regularly for several years. Last summer, it disappeared from every grocery store for miles. Even the website advertised on the jar is gone.

The only place you could buy a box of 50 CD jewel cases was CompUSA. They just went out of business. Now I have to order them online, from a thousand miles away, by the hundred. The prices are about half of what I used to pay, but the UPS shipping fee is atrocious, so it ends up costing a lot more to buy them than ever before.

The same goes for all kinds of computer accessories that CompUSA stocked regularly. Now, by default, the business has gone to BestBuy. They don’t stock an eighth of the things you could get from the ex-competition. They haven’t even heard of some of them. (IDE to USB adapter, anyone?)

And when we want to buy Coke on sale, Pepsi is on sale. I refuse, on principle, to pay $4.69 for 12 cans of Coke, when I could wait and get 36 cans for $9, or 60 cans for $11, and to believe the signs that say that $4.69 for 12 is a “great price.”

Grumble, grumble…

11

Xema, I too am a date fiend. Especially medjool! And I live in sunny California. I understand that you want to be able to get them right down at the corner, but if you simply must have some, let me know. They have them at our farmers’ market. :cool: :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

12

Same thing happened to us. We discovered that Bob Evans Special Seasonings roll sausage was great for making meatloaf.

Poof it is gone. We can not find it anywhere and even asked the meat manager about it. We were told it was discontinued even though it still appears in their website.

If by some miracle we find it again we are going to buy it all up and freeze it for eternity.

13

Well, it seems I can help someone else in this thread. Fishbicycle, you can order direct from Twinings. I order tea from them several times a year. If you are a big tea drinker (like me), you’ll find that even with shipping added you save money by buying in bulk.

14

The grocery store near my house does this to me all the time. I’ve had my favorite bread disappear, ice cream and cheese…and we won’t even begin to discuss their no longer handling cake donuts. I think it’s a conspiracy!

15

Yup, this happened to me too. I used to eat a half bag of Quaker Soy Crisps (the White Cheddar kind) a day as a snack. I loved, LOVED them. Then one day about a year and a half ago they just disappeared from all store shelves. I still look for them.

I have a friend in the US who is willing to send me some, as they still have them in stores there, but she’s been so busy she hasn’t gotten around to it.

16

Why did the banana go out with the prune?

Because he couldn’t get a date!

17

This happens to me ALL the time. The answer is simple: “They found out we like that.”

For this reason, nobody else order any Pickle Sickles, ok? I want to be able to have them for a couple of months before the company realizes everyone loves them and pulls them from the market. Thank you for your cooperation.

18

There’s some kind of weird stock thing going on. My local Giant has stoped carrying Crisco Oil, Ovaltine and Peter Pan Peanut Butter (no sex party tonight!)

Anyway, those are pretty major brands just gone. Something weird going on with Giant, definitely.

19

I think I personally killed Worthington Foods in Madison. They make (or made, they may have stopped after Kellogg bought them) some delightfully vile vegetarian products, including Salisbury steaks with the most horrific-looking congealed sauce and cans simply called BURGER. I’d find a grocery with a few dusty cans on a bottom shelf and eagerly snap them up and they’d never be restocked.

But I can understand why. They were pretty gross to look at and I imagine not to everyone’s taste, but I loved them.

20

I bought I think 25 at Target a couple of months ago. They were kind of expensive, but they did carry them. Try looking near the black CDs/DVDs.