> Has canned fruit actually lost popularity? Or did the grocery stores decide that the shelf space had a higher profit margin pushing something else?
> The last couple of times I tried to get canned fruit for a recipe I had to actively hunt for the particular cans of fruit I needed (I needed to hit 3 different grocery stores).
> I haven't tracked peaches recently, but I can tell you that canned apricots have been a bit thin on the ground for at least a couple of years.
Groceries stores with canned fruit being harder to find is entirely consistent with it being less popular. Pushing you to go to another store for something is bad, if you're a grocery store. That's a great way to drive off customers. There's a lot of shelf space at my local grocery stores still dedicated to fairly-redundant products or high amounts of extra copies of items, so I don't think they're being pushed out because something else is way more profitable. (My local stores have much larger selections of canned beans than canned peaches, for instance.)
I think it's just generational trends. Generally health-conscious consumers these days are more skeptical of canned vs fresh, and non-health-conscious have more junk food options than ever. It's also gotten easier to source fresh fruit across seasons than thirty or forty years ago, further squeezing canned options.