There’s been something about searching for items at the grocery store that’s been bothering me, lately, and it took me several months to figure out exactly what’s changed. I haven’t had any specific catastrophic experiences or anything, but it’s just been harder to find some items at the grocery store, lately.
But in the last couple weeks, the answer has completely solidified. It seems that in the interest of attractive, well-faced product aisles, it has become standard practice to incorrectly stock items to fill the “gaps” created by missing product. While I do agree that “full” aisles of food are much more attractive and welcoming, it’s adding up to a lot of wasted time for my wife and I when we go shopping.
Our “user story” for grocery shopping is pretty simple. We pick out some recipes to have during the week and build a list, then we shop for that list and toss in quite a bit of impulse buying while we’re there. The impulse buys could be anything that sounds neat, new, or convenient. (Pretty aisles certainly help there.) But our recipes are largely pulled from “healthy” cookbooks with pre-calculated nutritional values that need specific products. This is where this “overstocking” problem starts to waste time.
One starts the product search in phase one, “Where is it?” Typically, we find the likely aisle and visually sweep the labels for the desired product. We give it quite a few seconds to pop up, maybe up to a minute or two. If there’s another probable location for the food, maybe we’ll go check another aisle, and perhaps even return to previously visited aisles to see if somehow we missed it. After spending a minute or two, we start to get the indication that the product isn’t there. Then we hit phase two, “Does this store even carry this product?” The standard procedure here is to look at the gaps in the aisle and read the shelf labels to see if it’s typically carried but just temporarily out.
I had been assuming that maybe our preferred grocer (Hy-Vee, here in Manhattan) just didn’t carry some of the products that we wanted and we’d just have to make periodic trips to Dillion’s to pick them up. But then when we had products show up intermittently, I started to pay closer attention. Sure enough, the “gaps” on the aisle are routinely filled with similar products overstocked past their assigned shelf space.
Knowing this, now the only way to confirm if a product is actually out is to tediously interpret the shelf-label short hand for every similar product. Often, I find myself searching for mis-stocking patterns as hints that missing products are being hidden.
It’s frustrating that this sort of deceptive stocking generally adds about ten minutes to any given trip to the grocer. And for such a superficial reason, it’s putting the casual appearance of the store above it’s usability.
Sadly, I’ve seen the same practice now at Dillion’s, now that I know to look for it. (In fact, until I had confirmed the practice at Dillion’s, I thought maybe it was just some lame Hy-Vee thing and was ready to switch back to using Dillion’s exclusively.)
To make matters worse, I think that this mis-stocking is also occasionally duping the ordering managers and resulting in products (like the No Fat Sour Cream we like) that sell out quick and then remain sold out for longer periods than other products. (Dillion’s dairy manager seems to be much more on top of things.)
Anyway, it’s a minor slice of daily life, but I wanted to document the phenomena as it took quite a bit of time before I noticed what was going on. If I think about it, I’ll snap some pictures of the practice in action. I’m also curious if anyone else is noticing this stocking practice, especially at grocery stores outside of Manhattan. Have you noticed it at your preferred grocery store?
