Horrible day shopping, the shops seem to have run out of food!

I'm not sure that the lack of choice is about price, as they always have the really expensive fake meat stuff, its the cheaper options they no longer seem to stock. I think it's about control when I worked in a whole food shop people from sainsbury's would come in with clip boards and note down what we sold and what we sold and much for. Often they couldn't compete with us, but as that sort of thing became more popular and they started stocking more and putting smaller independent shops and companies out of busines, they've now greatly restricted what they sell and they're doing fewer ingedients and more ready meals. They have huge profit margins on ready meals and not on ingredients, especially fresh produce.

My husband does the shop, but was saying the same thing -there's a lot of stuff that just isn't there anymore, a lot of reduced choice. He couldn't see any dairy free ice-cream, where as they've had loads of choice in recent years. My son also liked the curry ketchup, and it's no longer available. They also did a store rearrange with new chiller units, so the change to less choice isn't as obvious.

It's a shame, there was so much better choice for veggy/vegan but it's shrunk back down with prices of food increasing. 

We don't do online shopping for the same reasons of getting bad/no substitutions or things that were going off too quickly. 

You can get a lot of good spices and other stuff online, often a better range than shops have, I always buy larger bags of bayleaves, they cost about the same as one of those little supermarket jars and have loads in them, I can use a supermarket jar of many spices in a week.

No ethnic grocers within walking distance.

I have

1. Waitrose 8 minutes.
2. Aldi 10 minutes
3. Sainsbury's 15 minutes 
4. Morrisons daily 20 minutes

And a couple of dodgy combined European/Asian/Middle east food and vape shops with very limited stock.

I always buy my spices from ethnic grocers and I buy big bags of them as I use so much

I've noticed a shortage of my favorite spices.  I shopped yesterday at Aldi and they were out of Harrisa, Peri Peri and Piri Piri combinations.   Single spices such as Chili and Paprika and Peppers were available. 

Enjoy the comfort of your new shoes.

I don't think anyone likes it when they change the layout, including staff. They may do because they believe people will browse more and discover different things to buy, but that assumes everybody has the time and inclination to wander about and the money to take a punt on something new.

There are a couple of aisles I always try and avoid, the one selling laundry and othe smelly products usually, but now they've stinky laundry products opposite foods like cereals and although I don't eat cereals, I'd be cocerned about my cornflakes tasting of fabric conditioner.

One good thing that happened today, was my new shoes arrived and they fit really well and are comfy.

I did try the local butcher when we moved here, but was not impressed and their mince was also small. I do eat a fair amount of vegetarian food and fish too. I guess you are correct regarding where you live and fitting what others like to make the maximum profit.

We only occasionally buy ready meals. That also seems to be more challenging. The last time we looked for something almost all meat dishes had cheese on top and the casserole had the dumplings spoiled by the addition of cheese. Back to making my own dumplings. 

Homebird said:

I used to hate it when they changed the layout, as I went with a list and expected to be in and out as quickly as possible. 

I find this a big problem too, as I make my list in the same order I expect to find things in the store - I expect a lot of old people do this, not only autistics.

I don't think they're catering for holiday makers, the only thing they're catering or is profit margins, if they can somehow make us all eat ready meals, they can make huge profits from very poor ingredients. We're literally at the end of the line here, but there dies seem to be an invisible line somewhere just north of Birmingham where deliveries are less frequent. Apparently supermarkets respond to regional demands, I think it's more like they cater for regional stereotypes. There's a bad habit of introducing an ingredient and when it reaches a certain level of popularity, they withdraw it only for it to return as part of a kit at three times the price in a yukky sauce that nobody seems to like then they get rid of that and never bring back the ingredient that everyone was buying.Our supermarkets are the main ones, they only one we lack is sainsbury's, it's not like I'm buying everything from spar.

I only eat "junk food" once a week, everything else I make from scratch and batch cook a lot of stuff, I have to or I wouldn't be able to eat at all. One fo the things I've noticed is that all the usual veggie stuff is being replaced with stuff that tastes like and has a similar texture to meat. I can just about cope with veggie mince and some quorn products, but these new ones are too "meaty" for me, I've been veggie or 25 years and most of the time before that too with a few short periods of eating meat and fish, since I was 16.

If you have one I think a proper butchers is the best place to get meat, the mince might be a bit dearer, but at least when you buy a pound of mince you get a poind of mince rather than gristle in fatty water. The last time I bought supermarket mince to cook for someone else this was what I had a pan of, what was supposed to meat looked like an horrible old string mop head just taken out of a dirty bucket.

That sounds a nightmare. Are they mostly catering for holidaymakers who want quick meals I wonder. I used to hate it when they changed the layout, as I went with a list and expected to be in and out as quickly as possible. 

I now shop online due to circumstances and have had some nightmares with replacements, even something totally different, but with some loose link. I haven't yet had pet food as a replacement, but find when I search for things pet food appears in the options. They have also replaced something similar with a smaller quantity. That has improved since I complained and had a long survey to complete. 

I have had a similar experience to your chip experience with the online shopping. They seem to have reduced the choice considerably. I was recently searching for beef and there were endless versions of steaks, but limited for cooking from scratch. I used to cook various dishes from mince and selected the lower fat versions. Now all they do is mince in minute pieces that goes to nothing. Perhaps I need to go back to my childhood days where we had a mincer and could select the size.

If I cook vegetarian I tend to cook from scratch, but I am wondering if your 'convenience' type supermarkets are limited there.

Iain said:

for most people being vegetarian is a form of virtue signalling

Really?

Proof?

That sounds like a real shopping nightmare to me.  I'm sorry that you had to go through all that.  Shopping's a real pain to begin with.

TheCatWoman said:

Ginger beer was really popular, they sold loads of it, so why stop? It makes no sense.

Ths is most likely because there was not enough profit margin in it to keep ginger beer on the shelves when they have higher profit items that they can sell just as well.

They don't care about the customer as they know the vast majority will buy the alternatives they offer instead - it is all about profit for them.

TheCatWoman said:

Our tesco have revamped their store and are still fafing about with the layout and what goes where, all the customers are complaing that they can't find anything. But even worse is that they've cut down the range of things they sell they just give the other stuff more space.

I worked in a supermarket for 4 years and lived with a girl who was a manager there so can explain their logic behind the reshuffles.

The moving around of products is to make you have to look for the items you want - in other words to break your routine and in doing so to make you see other products you normally wouldn't even see. It is well established that this leads to impulse purchases and hence increased sales.

This is also a good chance to re-design the shel layouts to acommodate the changes in product package sizes (mosty from shinkflation) so that the shelves are filled to capacity more effectively. It is done every few years in most supermarkets and the reduction in packet sizes is going to make it happen more often.

TheCatWoman said:

They're out of stock on nearly all their veggie stuff and have been for weeks.

I think they have noticed that more people are moving away from the higher priced vegetarioan options through the need to eat more cheaply. Food inflation is terrible at the moment and for most people being vegetarian is a form of virtue signalling that they realise is expensive and they are moving back to their old omnivore habits because it costs less.

The impacts the suppliers and they stop making the products which makes is harder to find vegetariam options and compounds the retreat of consumer from the choice.

I suspect you will need to batch prepare and freeze meal options for some time still as I don't see this market change reversing until people feel affluent again and that looks a long way off.

I’m wondering if the shortage of food items on the shelves is being exacerbated by Trump’s war and Brexit, although being in N. Ireland we get many food products through the EU. 

Yesterday I couldn’t get loose green peppers, a fresh basil pot, sweet potatoes, aubergines or tinned sardines. I tried two different supermarkets before giving up for the day.