When shop stops stocking a favourite food...

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When your usual shop stops stocking a favourite food... What do you do? Change to shoppng at another shop (aargh!) or change to another brand (aargh!)?

I firebomb the place, and when I find a new store, I tell the owner, "You hear about that store that got burned to the ground? What a shame. Yeah, they stopped carrying [insert food here]. I'd hate to see that happen here."

Or I just go to Wal-Mart. Depends on what mood I'm in.

I switch to another brand.

Two words: Amazon Prime.

I've been to every possible supplier in town. Nowhere has my sauce:'-@
I got a different one... but it's just horrid.
I'm going to write to my regular shop... Or I'll have to move to another town?;-P

I can't recall a single time when something at a supermarket I go to has stopped being in stock due to them just not wishing to stock it anymore. When it's stopped being there it's always because the item stopped being produced by the supplier (notable examples include Dr Pepper and Schweppes Sarsparilla, though the sarsparilla has been back on the shelf in recent years)

This I can't say. Usually if a store is no longer stocking an item, chances are that the item in question has been discontinued.

If it's a food item, I try to look for a product that is as similar as possible.

Anything else, I go on Amazon.com

Funny you should mention Dr. Pepper, because until a few weeks ago, there was a special version of Dr. Pepper that used cane sugar (which was how it was originally made) rather than corn syrup. The catch: it was only available within 44 miles of the small town of Dublin, Texas (about 70-80 miles southwest of Dallas-Fort Worth). It decided to be a rebel bottling plant and stick with cane sugar while the other Dr. Pepper plants were using corn syrup. The Dublin plant was given a cease and desist order from Dr. Pepper to stop bottling their product. They discontinued the Dr. Pepper at that plant but it continues to produce other beverages.

And here I was thinking Dublin Dr Pepper was made in Dublin, Ireland . I tried to cane sugar one, wasn't bad.

The IGA here supposedly sells cans of Dr Pepper individually, but there's never any in stock.

I can think of multiple things the store I go to stopped selling, some of which weren't discontinued.

I like cream of chicken cup a soup. They stopped selling that. There was a kind of red cabbage my mother liked that they stopped selling. To get both of these we had to get my aunt to pick it up at another store because we don't drive. They stopped selling aspen litter for a long time. There were these breaded chicken on a stick things that I liked that they stopped selling. I don't know if those were discontinued.

Hmm, maybe the specific grower of the red cabbage stopped growing it. Sometimes it's a matter of that; the preferred supplier stops selling the product and the extra shipping cost of getting it from another supplier makes the product no longer worthwhile to be stocked (even less worthwhile if the product isn't that popular and doesn't sell well to begin with).

I just thought of another one (upon the mention of chicken); Woolies used to stock premade chicken kiev balls in their meat section. My first BF's family used to buy them all the time, but they're not there anymore. I have to buy the frozen ones

I feel quite frustrated, I might sigh or roll my eyes, but then usually I just get whatever else I need then I get the hell out of there.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT9-qL_fh10[/youtube]

Generally when that happens, my conversations with the store managers goes approximately like that.

In all seriousness, though, I do sometimes complain to managers at stores, asking them to get stuff back. Sometimes they listen, sometimes they don't. The only place I really have this problem with is the Asian market, with really specific brands of, say, canned coffee, they'll just stop ordering one brand or something one day for no good reason, and then like a year later it'll be back. One time I saw a guy stocking shelves with a book in his hand, and he had the catalog of stuff, and I pointed out my favorite ones to him and they got them back next week. The Asian market is the only place I really have a problem with, as it's a bit of a drive to get to them, and there's not much competition or anything for them, so they'll all stock what they want for however much they feel like, usually they're cheap for everything, though. I have a favorite one that has more of what I want, but I have to drive through a bad area of the town to get there and it's just a pain to get to compared to the one I often go to. Whereas with a normal grocery store, there's various chains within short distances of eachother, and they all got sorta equivalent stuff.

Basically, complaining works sometimes. In other times, most of the stores I shop at are like, closeout kinda stores, so most of what they get is kinda random, so a lot of times, they'll have something I like, but it'll only be there one week, for those stores it's sorta pointless to complain or request stuff. Requesting stuff does work though, IE, Price Rite now has a lot more Halal meats now, just because a lot of Muslims went there and requested them.

So what do I do? I don't know, go to another store sometimes, just deal with it other times, find an equivalent item, all of the above really.

I live in Southern California. That doesn't happen here.

I try to buy fresh meat and produce as much as possible, because most of the stuff that comes in a package with a colorful logo and a brand name is not really food. When I buy a chicken or a bag of tomatoes, I don't really care who produced it. The only exception are lactose-free dairy products. I always buy a particular brand of Swiss cheese with zero lactose and no preservatives. The lactose-free cheeses of other brands are usually preserved with natamycin, an antifungal agent that is not exactly healthy.

I get very attached to particular shops though. I used to shop exclusively at a "Real" chain store, which sold pretty much everything. I didn't mind that many things were cheaper at Aldi, Lidl or Edeka. The smaller German supermarket chains are totally claustrophic, with narrow aisles, an unfriendly staff, and long lines at the checkouts, of which there are usually only 2-4. The local Real store was more like the American supermarkets that I've seen on TV. Very large, wide aisles, friendly staffers, A/C during the summer, eight checkouts, and an additional 10-items checkout (something that I'd like to see more often).

Alas, the Real store in Aurich closed in early 2011 Now I'm forced to shop at cramped, tiny supermarkets that have a much smaller selection of products. Aldi and Lidl don't sell much in terms of fresh groceries, and the produce at Edeka often starts to mold one day after the purchase. I've even seen molding tomatoes on the store shelves To make things worse, there is only one shop now that sells lactose-free products (also Edeka), and they don't carry some of the things that I used to buy, such as lactose-free buttermilk. It took me months to get used to my new, less enjoyable and more claustrophobic shopping experience.

My favorite is mac and cheese and they will never stop stocking that.