OK, this is driving me crazy.
Well, not really, but it bugs me.
My kids have an expression for what we find at the supermarket when we look for a product that we really like, and it’s sold out. They call it the “supermarket tunnel”. You can picture the hole in the shelves where the popular stuff used to be, until everyone grabbed it.
What bugs me is that it’s surrounded by stuff that obviously doesn’t sell. So - help me out here - why the hell don’t they STOCK MORE OF THE STUFF THAT’S OBVIOUSLY SELLING??? WHY???WHY??? WHY???
OK, I get carried away. But, for God’s sake, this has been going on for years. How hard is this? Seriously?
And another thing… .what is it with food producers? They take a popular product, make a bunch of variations, then when the variations don’t sell, keep producing them? As an example: we used to eat a lot of rice cakes, for various reasons. They stocked a lot in the local supermarket, so we could always find them. Then the manufacturer (I think it was Quaker) came out with about seven different flavors/varieties, which nobody bought. But, given that the usual stocking space was about the same, there were only about one eighth the original rice cakes stocked on the shelves. They would always sell out, and given that we actually couldn’t buy the damn things anymore, stopped eating them. The space was full of Flavored Rice Cakes that NOBODY would buy, but the originals were always sold out. This was about five years ago, and it’s still the same. I’ve seen similar things happen with other foods.
Is there some Harvard Business School type somewhere perpetuating this madness???
The big chains have contracts as to how much shelf space for a manufacturer’s products.
Some products sell well in a particular location but not sell elsewhere yet the contract prevents moving something else in that space.
Try a local market, they have more flexibility in product placement.
Those products that don’t sell are there because the manufacturer pays a slotting feeto the supermarket to keep them there:
You can ask the manager when they get the items you want and try to shop on that day.
Also try shopping online.
to Fear Itself:
OK, thanks, I didn’t know about stocking and other fees. It explains why the supermarket does what it does.
But what about the manufacturers? I mean, after years of lagging sales, don’t then eventually pick up on the fact that overstocking unpopular variations of a popular brand leads to an overall reduction in sales, because the variations don’t sell and they’re not stocking enough of the stuff that does?
The variations don’t sell in your area. They undoubtedly sell quite well somewhere else. Manufacturers don’t produce products they can’t sell, period. If a manufacturer has been producing a product for more than a year, the product is selling enough somewhere to make a profit of some sort for that manufacturer.
Tylenol. It’s been on the shelves forever. Then the Tylenol bad-smell woes started, and no Tylenol to be found. Then it came back, but apparently not enough, because you see it on the shelf one day, and the next - just an empty space. (I know, because I’m charged with seeking out and buying it for someone who just can’t do without it.) So there’s a dreary store-to-store search, finding mostly empty tunnels or store brands. I’ve had luck finding those disolvable tabs behind the counter at the local cruddy bodega, but they aren’t the same as plain old pills…Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a plot by the manufacturers to drive up demand.
A few more possibilities:
-
The product you’re looking for is featured somewhere else in the store; since the inventory system sees 288 of an item out on the floor (though it happens to be on a stackbase far away from the home position), it’s not kicking more out from the backroom; I just dealt with this at my own store when I was looking for a certain brand of pasta & cheese. The home was empty, but there was a half-stack filled with it by the soda. This is usually a problem due to short-staffing or not having associates responsible for specific departments; people familiar with a department will know to fill sidecounters from displays, but few chains have department-specific stockers any more).
-
The product you’re looking for is on recall/pull-and-hold. Most recalls don’t go to consumer-level recalls, and most recalls are not publicized. It’s usually minor stuff like a box omitting information about an artificial color, or having an incorrect UPC or something. It’s not likely that floor associates will know about it, either; the area manager gets the recall notice, pulls the item, then for the next few days, the guys who stock or zone the area have no clue why it’s gone.
-
A coupon or special has caused a run on a specific item; sampling in a supermarket can cause a run on specific flavors/varieties (had an Abbott rep giving samples of Boost last weekend, and she only gave out the strawberry varieties… sure enough, that was the flavor that we sold out of, despite having a pallet of chocolate, vanilla, dark chocolate, and butter pecan to sell, and it sucked for our customers for a week before Abbott could catch up in their shipments); similarly, certain times cause runs on specific items (first of the month Medicaid disbursements cause runs on incontinence products, pain relievers, and vitamins/herbs; snow days cause runs on eggs, bread, and other basics; good luck to you if you need driveway salt during an ice storm, or a sump pump during a storm).
-
Vendors aren’t stocking properly. Soda, non-store-brand bread, chips/crackers, snack cakes, frozen pizzas, beer/wine, and more are stocked by vendors, not store associates. You’re not going to get Tab stocked in your store by talking to the store manager (it’s a decision made by the Coca-Cola distributor in the area), and there’s no backstock of DiGiorno pizzas to replenish the missing variety that you’d like to buy. The best bet to get a certain product is to contact three levels: store management (who can apply pressure if an item is stocked in-store), vendor/manufacturer (who can apply pressure to get an item stocked), and corporate level of the store (to reinforce the store-level pressure, as well as encourage discussion with the vendor).
-Manufacturers can’t keep up with demand. This is a serious problem, and makes some chains look worse than others. An example: Johnson & Johnson has been having huge problems for over a year due to recalls and such; Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec, Benadryl, Band-Aid, Neosporin, and more have been difficult to source reliably. A low-priced chain can get 288 in of an item, then sell it out over a month. A high-priced chain will get 48 in of the same item, then sell very few… after a while, customers notice that the low-priced chain doesn’t have the given item, while the higher-price chain still has it in stock, then assumes that the low-price chain isn’t maintaining their stock properly, when it’s actually a problem at the manufacturer’s level. I’d wager 80% of outs in my store are due to “outs” that cannot be corrected at store level.
- Regional sales variety or oddness. Very few people seem to understand that sales vary dramatically from store to store, and few manufacturers/vendors account for it. A single customer can cause a major anomaly in a sales area. Coca-Cola isn’t set up to deal with the fact that a store could sell 3 cases more of lime-flavored Diet Coke than it does lemon-flavor Diet Coke at a single location; they’re given a single facing for each flavor, and each happens to hold 24, so they’re going to jam 24 cases of each in every morning, and the lime customer’s gonna be scorned 20 hours later when lime is sold out, and the lemon has two cases left. The next morning, the vendor’s gonna stick 24 lime in the empty slot, pull the 2 lemon forward and stock 22 behind it, and the books will reflect the greater lime-flavor sales by a case per store… despite the fact that they’re losing a case a day in sales for lime. Multiply across locations, and multiply across brands to imagine the impact.
Most of the chains give a lot of power to major vendors; Proctor & Gamble, Mars, Bayer, J&J etc. decide what products and quantities to ship to stores, not the chains; the chains provide detailed selling info to the companies, who decide what to ship based on what they’re provided. Very few chains can control quantities of product from big companies… they’ve traded off that ability in order to get lower prices. If P&G isn’t picking up that a specific variety of Pringles is selling well at a single location, they’re not going to ship extra to that location, which will cause them to run out more quickly. Cherry NyQuil routinely runs out at my store, and P&G tells us that we’re basically screwed because they have to maintain shipments to our local area and can’t toss in some extra cases of one product for one locale. Nothing the chain can do, since the vendor is responsible for replenishment. Similarly, vendors will force poor-selling items to a store because other stores need the item-- 7 stores need a case of Bayer Heart Health, and they only ship in units of 12, so they’ll force 5 cases out to these other stores that don’t actually need the item-- so eventually stores end up with overstock that they need to sell off, taking up sales space that would seemingly be more useful for other items.
Anyway. Can you tell I have too much time on the retail front lines?
Student Driver:
OK, thanks! That was actually pretty cool, I like reading that sort of stuff: the real problems that happen on the front lines, that aren’t so easy to solve. Thanks for taking the time to post.
I’m not sure the “holes” are that consistently the same item. As observed, because the supermarkets stock a large variety, there isn’t that big a stock of any one particular item. And one person who wants several of something can create a “run” all by themselves. For example, I regularly buy Safeway house brand grapefruit soda. Not an item that’s a big seller, and there is usually some on the shelves. On more than one occasion though, I’ve found a big hole where the grapefruit soda was, surrounded by other flavors like strawberry (in a can too close in color to the grapefruit, and strawberry flavored soda is horrible). My reaction isn’t usually to wonder why Safeway didn’t stock more of it, but “Alright, WHO snarfed up all the grapefruit soda?”. I see this phenomenon with other items I might buy a specific brand and variety of - usually, it’s there, occasionally there’s a hole. Hard to attribute it to anything but some random clown wanting to buy a dozen packages of the variety of pasta I wanted, or a dozen random clowns all deciding to buy spaghetti on the same day at the same supermarket.
As a former 12-year Safeway veteran I can address this specific comment: ask an employee for more from the back. If memory serves “Safeway Select” sodas are almost always on sale and are dirt cheap to start, so the stores typically always have a bunch on hand in the back, if only to restock the soda machine. Grapefruit may or may not be one of the ones they keep on hand (usually not), but you can always ask them to keep a few trays around for you; it’s no trouble at all for them to order a couple of extra ones and keep them in the back, and it’s not like it costs *them *anything.
I live in a city of 350,000 and we have no local markets anymore. 
<hijack>They’ve changed the packaging, and are calling their house brands “refreshe” now. But yeah, they’re cheap, and the grapefruit is good enough that I’ll buy their cheap grapefruit instead of Squirt, a long term favorite of mine. In general, I’ve noted that about Safeway, as opposed to the other major chains - their house brands are often pretty decent.</hijack>
I could ask, but it’s not worth it. I’ll just grab some on the next trip. I don’t always go to the same Safeway, so I’m not going to ask for them to make ordering changes for me. It might be different if I didn’t live within a few miles of 3 Safeways. If I lived where I had to travel a great distance to the grocery store rather than cruising through frequently and picking up a few items at a time, it might be different.
About fifteen to twenty years ago, my mother got obsessed with eating lychee fruit. She would go to the local supermarket (Stop & Shop in Connecticut) and buy up all that was in the produce department. (A couple of times, she would see another customer next to her with a sad expression on their face, evidently someone else who also want to buy them, so she’d give them half.) Eventually, she got the number for the Stop & Shop distribution center in North Haven, Connecticut, and spoke with the guy responsible for sending produce to the stores. So from then on he’d call her to let her know which store was receiving more.
In other words, ask the store employees if you want something in particular, and they may accommodate you.
Perhaps it’s a listed special on a popular item. Listed in flyers to get you into the store. But, as it’s a deal, and on a popular item, it sells out quickly. But you’re still in the store, see how that works?
That’s how it works where I live. If you don’t go shopping first thing, when the store opens, you’re probably not going to find any left. They purposely don’t put out more, once what’s on the shelf is gone, the sales over. This is why it’s rarely worth driving around, hitting the specials, unless you’re prepared to get up early. And why they switch up what’s on special from one week to the next.
I am guessing here… but there are “loss leaders” - advertised and sold at a price so low the store makes no profit, or even incurs a loss. Loss leaders are intended to get you in the store - if you pick up your weekly groceries or even a few other items the loss leader strategy has worked for the store.
So, for loss leaders, there is no benefit to stock properly. Ideally, the store has exactly one item on the shelf at the start of the promotion. Note that loss leaders always have the weasel words “While supplies last” or “Subject to availability”, etc.
I’ve worked in retail- including supermarkets- for many years and the simple answer is “They can’t get the stock”. Apple iPods and iPhones are notorious on the electronics retail industry here for perpetually being in short supply. Sure, they’re available, but there never seems to be quite enough for all the people who want one.
In the supermarkets, there’d often be a (generic) popular item that the grocery manager would order three boxes of (for example), and only two would show up.
Sometimes there are also issues with ordering systems- the min/max levels might be set incorrectly and so the stock re-order might not kick in until there’s no stock, at which point they have to wait for the next delivery which might be in a week’s time (again, as an example).
In short, businesses know perfectly well what does and doesn’t sell, and if they’re out of stock, it’s usually because they’ve sold all of what they can get and are waiting for more to come in, at least IME.
Seriously, the answer is: COST
Stores respond to consumer demands to control costs. Consumers want the stores that can do everything cheaper – and I mean everything. Oh, to counter this point, make a financial case against WalMart.
Now, believe it or not, it increases operating costs to do virtually anything extra, whether it’s stock more often, work with vendors more diligently, etc. Anything the store/chain does costs them money. So, since the business model for everything (virtually everything) is “as cheap as possible”, you are lucky they give you lighting to shop.
So, while this has the makings of a great debate, and experts can chime in about this or that cause (all might be legit) the root cause is cost: keeping it down. Since every vendor is working from that model, many issues – including stocking/inventory control – go right back to controlling costs.
WalMart has driven the mindset that it’s about being the cheapest, and they’ve conquered others in the cost arena, and once they were so far ahead only then did they have the resources to keep costs low and simultaneously create an amazing inventory system.
To keep store shelves stocked with any precision drives up costs, therefore, don’t expect stores/vendors/etc to make any progress on a number of fronts any time soon.
.
One reason, but not the only one, may be the store is poor about checking shelves for restock. It’s not a high priority for them.
I once lived near a Gelson’s in Los Angeles, and they were the opposite – obsessed with filling up not only tunnels but small holes in the stock line. They had extra-small stock carts they would wheel out during the open hours just to restock shelves without blocking the aisles like the big pallets would do.
It shows a concern for customers, and some stores don’t have as finely tuned a customer sense.
Must be wherever you are… in my local CVS, there were something like 7 varieties of Tylenol, and as many house brand varieties of acetaminophen.
What was difficult was finding “regular strength”, since that’s what the doctor told my wife to take.