I went food shopping today and I noticed empty shelf spaces throughout the store.

None of these empty spaces were large (by themselves) and they were of certain items of a certain flavor and brand.

This looked more like backorders that haven't come in as yet which may or may not be significant.

The amount of empty spaces is significant because it has not been that way before except as an aftermath of Katrina. After Katrina, The entire space allotted to staples such as flour and sugar were empty until the next truck would come in. This was not the case today, there would be other brands of the same product there.

Maybe there was a big sale and you missed it?

Or everyone knows something and you don't.

Sue

plus alot of really bad weather is slowing down the trucks..
closed roads--big mult car-truck crashes--with the cost of
fuel they may not be shipping as often--i noticed at the
high-end grocery store where i shop for things like fruit
and meat that the peanut butter was hit real hard--no sales
but it was not full like they normaly keep it..

Up near the border, on Fridays (payday), the Canadians come across the border to shop and they usually cleaned out the stores by closing time. Also, most stores up there get a vegetable/canned goods/dry goods and also a meat shipment once a week.

When I lived in St. Ignace, Mi, the vegetable/canned goods/dry goods came on Tuesdays and the Meat Delivery truck arrived on Thursdays. If you wanted a London Broil, you had to be at the store before Thursday night or else you were SOL for another week.

In typical Oklahoma fashion we were predicted to get somewhere between a trace and 12" of snow in one afternoon earlier this week. However, the temperature was forecast to be about 40F the following day and only go up on subsequent days.

Even with the weather expected to blow in & blow out in a day (or two at the most) the store shelves were looking pretty bare just in advance of the storm. Don't people keep ANY food at home anymore??? (I'm afraid I know the answer to my own question.)

It is Super Bowl Sunday.

Were these empty shelves near the Beer, Chips, and Brautwerst sections?

No.. all the good stuff was in plentiful supply!!!!

There's your answer: they swapped out a truck of real food for pretzels and cheesy poofs.

I've noticed several different grocery stores having less than full shelves lately.
However, yesterday, one of the major stores in my city did not have a single unused shopping cart available, with many buy 1, get 1 free sales..

I just ordered groceries for the boat (7 men x 14 days):

While placing the order, I was informed that canned Crowder Peas & Purple Hull Peas were "unavailable".

Later, the grocer called back to report that Quaker Oats Crunchy Bran cereal was not available.

This goes hand-in-hand with my observations of grocer shelves while I wass home.