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Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

businessinsider.com

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Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#181

Post by overgard »

sudosteph wrote: post #174

Spoilage due to overstocking isn't just problematic because they have too much stuff sitting in the backroom that will never get sold. It also means they spent too much money buying and shipping that food, with shipping sometimes being the more expensive part (in addition to it being hard on the environment if you think of the fuel used to ship it and emissions it produces). I'm not their ideal customer, mostly becau…

As a customer I don't really care about that kind of thing -- if a store consistently doesn't have stuff I need I'm just going to go somewhere else.

This issue strikes me as short sighted thinking by bean counters. It might save money in the short term, but you're going to lose customers and employees this way.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#182

Post by tinfins »

onli wrote: post #122
tinfins wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took another look at the pictures. Notice all those stores where whole sections are out are in the Northeast. Probably they missed a delivery or two because of the weather. Plus during extreme weather grocery stores get shopped hard. There was one picture of an empty banana set with a pineapple in the wrong spot - that's what I was referring to before. The sole picture in San Francisco was the reset I mentioned.

But that's exactly the problem the article describes: That the moment something goes wrong the stores don't have any reserves anymore, because the system is too strictly set on reducing costs and spoilage, seemingly with a total disregard to consumer satisfaction and overall profit. Add to that crazy-sounding control schemes - which maybe is kinda normal in a country like the US without real employee protection laws,…

So you think stores should just keep a huge backstock of fresh produce just in case an extreme weather event or some other rare issue hits? That's going to lead to less fresh produce for the 350 days a year when everything goes smoothly.

The OTS system in the article also allows for exceptions - if there were bananas available the store could have stocked up on them. It's just so wrong on many levels - I could spend all day pointing them out, but this thread is getting bigger than I thought and I don't know if I can spend much more time on it. I was going to edit my original comment with more information but it doesn't look like I can anymore.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#183

Post by tinfins »

dingaling wrote: post #116
tinfins wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't find it hard to believe that a few stores ran out of bananas or whatever for a day. That's all it would take for a customer to snap a picture. The picture of a meat department cooler with empty slide racks was obviously in the middle of a reset - notice the lack of price tags on all the racks because they were just installed.

Why are they resetting a section during shopping hours? Even 30 years ago when I was a student worker in a food store that sort of task only happened after 22:00 when the last customers had left.

Most meat teams at WFM don't have overnight crews.

The thing is too, it's a snapshot. We don't know how long it looked like that, what time of the day it was, whether someone called out sick, etc.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#184

Post by aero142 »

meri_dian wrote: post #177
caseysoftware wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife was a political reporter in DC, covering the Hill, the Pentagon and White House at various times. One time we were watching CNN and they mentioned a briefing at the Pentagon and she noted she was in the same one. Halfway through the coverage, she jumped up and said "that's not what they said!" I was confused.. she went back to her bag and handed me her notebook which contradicted their coverage. It's not uniq…

This conversation has progressed for a while without anyone mentioning that the sentiments expressed are essentially in support of Trump's accusations of fake news. So we can have a conversation on HN in support of Trump's "fake news" and in recognition of severe bias in media that would indicate "fake news" isn't as much a slur as it is a matter of fact statement. What am I missing?

Trump uses this to promote a worldview that facts are whatever you want them to be. As with most things Trump, any kernel of truth is immediately ruined by some even more false, stupid and incompetent idea he wants to promote.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#185

Post by kolbe »

bearcobra wrote: post #147
onli wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's exactly the problem the article describes: That the moment something goes wrong the stores don't have any reserves anymore, because the system is too strictly set on reducing costs and spoilage, seemingly with a total disregard to consumer satisfaction and overall profit. Add to that crazy-sounding control schemes - which maybe is kinda normal in a country like the US without real employee protection laws,…

Anecdotally, I have experienced the same phenomenon at several major grocery chains in Canada. City gets hit with a winter storm and Safeway, SuperStore, & Walmart all had empty produce & bread sections. I've also seen it in certain stores during summer months in the run up to a long weekend. Not saying the new supply chain software can't be the cause, but there does seem to be other reasonable explanations.

If those are the companies we should compare Whole Foods to, then I will stop going to Whole Foods and save 50%

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#186

Post by tinfins »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #111
tinfins wrote: post #7

I'm a Whole Foods employee, having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is. The author seems to have talked with 10-20 disgruntled employees at a few stores nationwide, and a few customers on top of that. Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Food…

Not sure I'm convinced. Your store does ok; that's certain. But you know about exactly one more store than I do ; do you know the article is wrong for all stores? For a majority? For any? Not sure how far that induction can go. If even one store did ok, we could see an employee from there posting here. Not sure that is information; more like a data point.

Good point, but I'm not necessarily disagreeing that there were a few days with high out-of-stocks, just that the employees criticizing the OTS system in the article are being very misleading and exaggerating.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#187

Post by gamblor956 »

tinfins wrote: post #108
gamblor956 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that a few stores ran out of bananas or one item for the day. Take a look at the pictures: entire sections like produce are basically empty. The only time I've seen shelves that bare were at Kmart and Sears locations before they went bankrupt and shut down.

I took another look at the pictures. Notice all those stores where whole sections are out are in the Northeast. Probably they missed a delivery or two because of the weather. Plus during extreme weather grocery stores get shopped hard. There was one picture of an empty banana set with a pineapple in the wrong spot - that's what I was referring to before. The sole picture in San Francisco was the reset I mentioned.

The header image where the veggie section is basically empty is actually from Houston, so I'm going to assume that you're being willfully blind about the issues raised in the article.

It's not a regional issue, it's systemic.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#188

Post by tinfins »

Angostura wrote: post #171
tinfins wrote: post #7

I'm a Whole Foods employee, having one of those rare (for me) moments where I can reasonably be considered very well-informed on the subject of a news article, and it's a little bit disturbing just how misinformed and one-sided the article is. The author seems to have talked with 10-20 disgruntled employees at a few stores nationwide, and a few customers on top of that. Maybe she should have reached out to Whole Food…

So I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that there is no stock control issue and those photos are deliberately misleading?

Not necessarily, I'm saying that even if there is, the article has no clue why.

Re: Whole Foods employees reveal why stores are facing a crisis of food shortages

#189

Post by rootusrootus »

fouc wrote: post #156
specialist wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh. Crichton coined that phrase? That's some potent unintentional irony right there.

How so?

He vocally let his political ideology direct his selective interpretation of facts around climate change. So it's perhaps a little ironic that he would make an observation about biased reporting coming from other people or organizations. I would argue that it's not ironic, it's expected. IMO people most easily observe the faults in others that they themselves exhibit.
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