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Kristen Walters

2022 is off to a rough start for the food industry and shoppers across the country are feeling the effects more and more each day.

If you’ve been to your local supermarket recently, you may have started to notice that more items are missing from grocery store shelves than usual. Not only that, but the price of food nationwide has skyrocketed in the past year, with the latest food price index report showing that food prices are currently at all-time highs.

According to the TXB store chain CEO, Kevin Smartt, it is normal for grocery and convenience stores to see about 1.5% of products out of stock or at low stock at any given time. However, currently, he reported that he is seeing an average of 12% to 13% of food products out of stock across his chain of stores.

According to Smartt, this amounts to approximately 6,500 to 8,000 different products being out of stock at stores each week, with many additional food products such as produce, meat, pet food, bread, pasta, and milk products facing low stock at many stores throughout the United States.

Local grocery stores and supermarkets are doing their best to substitute products when they can, but even that has proven to be difficult in many areas as supply chain issues, raw material sourcing, labor shortages, and bad weather continue to create difficulties for manufacturers, shipping companies, and eventually your local grocery stores which are at the very end of the consumer supply chain.