[phkahler]

From the article:

Order-to-shelf "has transformed the inventory levels that we have in the back room, essentially clearing them out so that we're mainly focusing on what we call our never-outs, the key items that we need to have in stock all the time in our stores,"

If your item isn't on the "never out" list I suppose they don't really care about gaps in availability. The problem with that isn't just customer satisfaction, people will be forced to go somewhere else when they're in need, and that will hurt loyalty and keep people looking at alternatives.

[Jemmeh]

Whole foods has a lot of very niche specialty food. That is what they are probably scaling back on.

For example there's a small organic food store near my house that no longer sells cocoa butter because it's very expensive and rarely purchased. And it's more common now, but I used to have to go to Whole Foods foods for things like almond flour, coconut flour, dairy-free products, and gluten-free products. (I used to date someone with digestive issues.) It was nice to be able to buy them somewhere instead of having to special order it online. But I can't imagine they sell nearly as much of those foods.

[phkahler]

>> Whole foods has a lot of very niche specialty food. That is what they are probably scaling back on.

A lot of people go there because of those items. But hey, if they want to compete on price with Kroger more power to them.

[Jemmeh]

And I did too, but I can already buy a lot of those foods elsewhere now. Even Walmart carries almond and coconut flour now, grassfed beef and butter, humane local eggs, generic brand almond milk, etc. Whole Foods does have a few more options, but I don't think I have very much reason to step into the organic food store/whole foods anymore. And it's lessening by the day as their competitors pick up those niche items more.

That was with my ex so I don't have to deal with it anymore, but when you have a limited budget and strict diet requirements in addition to medical bills we just looked for the cheapest place that sells what didn't kill him.

[ianai]

It’s why I go there. If they drop my SKUs I’ll drop them.

[robryan]

Here in Australia if a supermarket was regularly out of things that they normally stock I would shop elsewhere. Are people in the US more accustomed to going to multiple shops to get groceries?

[mikeash]

Not at all. A grocery store being out of any normally stocked product is really unusual. If it happened with any regularity for stuff I wanted to buy, I’d stop going to that store.

The concept of “never out” products doesn’t make any sense to me. That should describe everything!

[pbhjpbhj]

It sounds like they're trying to optimise their just-in-time delivery. I think Lidl/Aldi do this, they have a very small "back area" so almost all goods are on the shelves. This presumably optimises so floor usage and reduces storage costs/wastage and such.

[notyourday]

Aldi's business model is "few things that you need, cheap".

Whole Foods business models is "Look at the stuff we have that you never knew about so you have no idea of what the price on it should be or what to use it for. Buy it!" The entire thing was based on a blow job with a smile level customer service. Do you know that employees of Whole Foods carried sharpies so if a customer looked lost trying to figure out if the customer wanted to try this or that item, the sharpie came out to wipe off the UPC code of the item and that item went into customer's bag for free because Whole Foods determined that losing $3-10 on the item is perfectly fine as they made $300 on a basket that this person was likely to buy on average a month? Or how about a knife that everyone in produce carried? So if a customer was not quite sure about that apple, the knife came out the apple was cut right in front of him or her, a piece was given to them and the rest became sample?

That's why Whole Foods had insane revenue. It was the level of service one only got at specialty stores delivered to the masses.

Drop that and Wegmans would destroy it.

Source: Wife used to work at Whole Foods.

[mikeash]

That's a great thing to do as long as you don't take it to the point where you end up with products out of stock. The moment you do, you're encouraging your customers to patronize the competition instead.

[jdminhbg]

> The concept of “never out” products doesn’t make any sense to me. That should describe everything!

Definitely not; plenty of items are seasonal and therefore only available at certain times. One of the reasons I prefer WF to e.g. Safeway is that they stock certain vegetables, fruits, and seafood without requiring that they be available year round. WF has persimmons in the fall; Safeway never does.

[mikeash]

That’s why I said “normally stocked products.” Seasonally available products are fine. The problem is products which are supposed to be available but can’t be purchased when I’m there because the store is cutting their JIT delivery too close.

[WillyF]

This is my frustration. I'd prefer to shop elsewhere, but the convenience of walking to Whole Food and grabbing whatever I need (or at least trying to) is hard to pass up when the alternative likely requires getting in the car. My strong preference would be to go to multiple shops (butcher, fishmonger, produce store, etc.), but the convenience of Whole Foods usually wins out.

[gwbas1c]

That's normally the case. Whole Foods is not a normal grocery store and has an extremely loyal customer base. Many of their customers already go out of their way to go to the store and pay higher prices for the same items that other stores have.

This is probably why Whole Foods is trying to cut back on inventory, so they can lower prices to compete with every other grocery store.

[wil421]

Absolutely not but some people do shop around. Everyone has a store they go to more often then not. If the usual store was out of things had sub par quality I won’t go back. There are a couple on my black list around me.

My regular grocery store will be out a handful of times of years when I winter storm is coming. It will only take a day to recover stock in this case.

[dhimes]

Sometimes I do, for specialty items. I think we were just giving the stores the benefit of the doubt because of the hurricanes and blizzards(I'm in the Boston area).

[ci5er]

No.