Local Meijer last week was completely out of canned cat food, except for some multi-can boxes of Meow Mix crap.
It was kinda creepy looking.
Canned clams have been out for weeks at Meijer, Walmart, and my local stores.
Is this still going on? I’ve been hearing about the aluminum can shortage for months now, and it has never affected my life. I drink Coke (regular) and various flavored seltzers, usually one 12-ounch can of each per day, and have never not been able to procure more supplies, nor have prices risen. This is the least effective shortage ever!
This is the first I’ve ever seen it. It’s not a shortage per se, but for years the store has had a threefer for 12-packs, and that’s just ended with the explanatory aluminum shortage sign.
Finally found green pot scrubbers. Have been looking for them for a month. And there were only a few left on the shelf in the store.
Do those of you struggling to find toilet bowl cleaner use a lot of it? You can order lime away toilet bowl cleaner for pick up in your local Dollar Tree store, but you need to buy 12 bottles. There’s a lot of iron in my water so that’s a trivial amount to me but…
I’m still seeing some soda shortages. Haven’t seen Fresca in many months, and other Diet varieties.
I talked to the guy stocking produce when I was shopping this morning. He said that the store’s orders would often not come, and when some came they got 1/4 of what they asked for.
There seems to be a couscous shortage around here - none of the stores I go to have the type I buy.
But it is far better than last March.
Walmart is still the only place I can reliably get 12 packs of Sugar Free Red Bull. Publix would always occasionally run out of them but over half the time they’ve been totally gone over the past year, forcing me to go to Walmart and thus make one extra trip indoors with all its attendant danger.
Frustratingly, even when they do have them they only have one or 2 12 packs, and even more frustratingly, multiple times they’ve had a “sale” on 12 packs of Red Bull , sale in quotations because when that happens there is never and product available. WTF man? If this happens again I’m going to speak to the manager and ask them why they keep running sales when there isn’t any product available, not because I want a rain check but because I’d rather not go to Walmart! I’d gladly pay an extra few bucks for that.
Shortages seem to vary by store here…for example, the local Target is almost always low on toilet paper but overstocked on paper towels, while the opposite is true at Publix. Canned goods don’t seem to be much of a problem at the moment; in fact, some unique items (Southwestern corn!) have started to reappear.
"Boss makes a dollar
I make a dime
that’s why I poop on company time."
– unknown
Meat baby food! I’m not buying for a human infant, but instead for my cat who has recently coughed up a few hairballs; I’ll mix fish oil in it and give it to her. I had to go to 3 stores before I found some!
I won’t give her commercial canned food because the last time I did that, she and her “brother” (RIP) projectile-vomited all over the house. As unpleasant as it was for me, it was 1,000 times worse for them.
Oddly, Coke Zero in 16.9oz/.5l bottles, at least at Walmart.
Today they had 2 12 packs, (2 being the most they’ve ever had since the plague started), and I bought both of them. They were still on sale.
However, this same phenomenon of “sales” on products that are already in short supply happened to Atkins Frozen Meals: last week they were out of Chili Con Carne, and today not only were they still out of it, but Atkins were on “sale” and half the remaining product were gone. Although I guess it’s possible that Chili Con Carne is running into some other sort of supply bottleneck, which can’t be true for 12 packs of Sugar Free Red Bull since they’re always available at WalMart.
In Austria you’re required to wear mouth and nose coverings in shops and on public transit, but exactly how you want to cover your mouth and nose is up to you—surgical masks, home-made cloth masks, bandanas, and even lifting your shirt up over your nose are all fine. But yesterday it was announced that as of 25 January, only FFP2 masks will be permitted. Naturally, as of today, every shop in Vienna is sold out of FFP2 masks. 
I assume that the government wouldn’t have mandated this kind of mask without first having consulted with suppliers and retail outlets to ensure that enough would be available by the 25 January deadline. (Back when face coverings became mandatory in March 2020, the government did coordinate this with supermarkets to make sure that disposable masks were distributed for free, and the supply of free masks did indeed remain available for several months.)
This time around the FFP2 masks will be free only for those who can’t afford them. We’re told that everyone else will need to buy them for around €1 each.
Those sales are likely coming from Red Bull, not Walmart per se. Pricing can be responsive to the product provider.
Also, perhaps the difference between finding a couple of 12 packs and no 12 packs is the “sale” has made them go before you get there. shrug
I still feel like the pandemic is being used as an excuse by soda companies to kill off their least popular brands - like caffeine-free versions of regular (not diet) sodas. With the full capacity supply of regular sodas overrunning the shelves, how can there be any shortages? With Dr Pepper rolling out their new line of Creme Sodas, but they can’t keep existing products on the shelves?
Yes, that’s the entire point. If they didn’t have the sale despite always being low in stock, there would more consistently be product there for me to buy.
However, I take your point about vendor incentives. Their 12 packs are normally significantly higher than WalMart’s prices and so they might jump at the opportunity to lower them even below the point at which people want to buy all of it. However, I’d pay full retail price for not having to go several miles out of the way to WalMart and expose myself to more potential virus in the bargain.
At the local supermarket there was a good size empty space where the Alfredo Sauce was located. The missus had pregnancy cravings for spaghetti shrimp Alfredo. The only thing left were a few jars of the generic brand with a 4 cheese variety.
Good news was that it was surprisingly good. It seems that more people are cooking that type of meal instead of going to the local Italian or pseudo-Italian restaurant.
Target was out of a lot of spices last week
I was at Target yesterday and the shelf containing the various varieties of Colgate toothpaste (there are many) had a lot of holes. They had plenty of tubs of Clorox disinfecting wipes, but these were 35-wipe containers, while the old ones that used to be commonly available had 80 or so wipes.
Toilet bowl cleaner was back!
– well, sort of. There was an entire top shelf, when I looked at the tags, that was supposed to be various brands etc. of toilet bowl cleaner. In one corner of that shelf were about six bottles of one kind. Rest of the shelf entirely empty.
It claimed to be relatively nontoxic. I bought one bottle. The label doesn’t say “septic safe”; I’ve asked the company (Full Circle) through their website if it is. Haven’t heard back yet; but I only just sent the question yesterday, and it’s the weekend.