October is the month of plenty of pork, for a long time was the month for hog slaughtering on farms. Usually this month pork prices are the lowest of the year.
I went to two grocery stores today. Sausage was on my shopping list. Walmart (main instigator of the shortages?) has had more foods in stock than I've seen in years but had virtually no sausage. A few packs of patties or links but no rolls of sausage at all.
Went to another regional chain store. They had more but not a lot. only three or four rolls of one brand. And the price was sky high. It was about $3 a roll a couple of weeks ago. Today it was $4.49.
This store always has pork chops for a great price in October. I didn't look at the prices but nothing was on special and I haven't seen any on sale all month.
Higher prices on any meat isn't a shock but why the dearth of sausage in a month when pork is usually more plentiful than any other time of year?
Like I said, I'm not looking for meat. My point is not to help me find meat. I found the sausage I was looking for at a smaller chain. The point of my post is that I think the big national chains like Walmart are manipulating shortages.
The smaller, regional stores seem to always have at least some of whatever is totally out of stock at Walmart. I'm guessing the store you're talking about is a small, locally owned or regionally owned store.
The Walmart I'm talking about has about 25 large Evergreen type shipping containers behind the store, bought I'm sure from a nearby inland port. A lot of people in the area buy the used ones from the port. They've had those for years and often have things in stock that take weeks or months to get put out on the shelves. Like I said above, this store for years had empty shelves all over the store. Now, all of a sudden, the shelves are full. Just no sausage.
I think Walmart is irrelevant now. I don't go there. If I want something that local stores don't sell, I order online from companies that do sell it.
Gee. I drive 50-90 miles round trip to get to ANY grocery store and there aren't many. Some of us don't live in towns or cities. You sound like my liberal family members who brag that they never shop at Walmart. But they have five or six other grocery stores within a mile or two of their homes.
We have Food Lion and Aldi's. That's all. And there is nothing within a mile of my house, other than a convenience store that doesn't even have gas pumps.
Nothing within a mile of my house except trees, farms and mountains. I did have three wild turkeys mosey across the road in front of me yesterday. I said I could have shopped for Thanksgiving. No stores closer than 25 miles from me. That's Walmart. If I drive another five miles or so, the regional chain. After driving 25 miles through country roads, I often don't feel much like crawling through town to get to the other store.
And at least at Walmart I don't have to make yet another drive to get to the hardware store or the dollar store for non food items. Believe me, I'm no Walmart fan but I'm no fan of driving all over hell's half acre to shop either. Some of it is probably just enjoying pulling liberal chains when they ask where I got this, that or the other and I say, "Walmart." Then they go into the usual pompous rant. They'd probably faint if they went into Rural King, where I actually found little led lights that clip onto a baseball cap brim.
If I have time, I drive another 15 miles to the town where there are more stores closer together and the butcher shop for meat, farm stand for produce, all close by.