I’ve come to a theory on why it was so hard to find Red Bull. It was perhaps exacerbated by the pandemic, but it may have been that Prime bought space in the energy drink section that displaced Red Bull, regardless of actual consumer demand. Publixes around here only have 1 shelf-section of energy drinks, and 12 packs of Sugar Free Red Bull’s slice of that was one row worth, placed sideways, which only fit 1 or 2 12 packs.
Now that Prime is no longer being pushed, they have since reclaimed the real estate and now place them the long ways on the shelf which can now fit 2-4 or more.
This could also explain why they were hard to come by at Target and often low even at Wal*Mart, even though they didn’t have as much of a real estate problem: Since you couldn’t get them reliably at Publix, the demand transferred to the other stores.