Another thing I've noticed is the small grocers are now moving to reduced inventory with
JIT stocking. While we used to see discounts for older items to reduce their inventory, now they run out before having to mark anything down. That saves them money, so I understand it. But there are a lot of people who have traditionally relied on discount products or food liquidation stores to get by, now they're turning to food-stamps.
From a survivalist perspective, it also hurts the ability of the store to recover from even a short interruption of service. If a small town gets snowed in for example, the shelves in the stores will run out quickly, they have nothing stored beyond what you see on the shelf.
Then there's the limit to "can swapping" it creates. For the uninitiated, "Can swapping" is a techniques grocers use to remain competitively priced when fresh produce is scarce. For example, if it's a bad year for corn, there won't be a lot to go around. If they mark up the price to $3.00 an ear, even though the market may demand it, consumers think they're being ripped off and the store's business hurts. In their inventory however, they have thousands of cans of corn from last year's harvest. So they mark down the canned corn to satisfy some of the demand, allowing them to retain a lower price on fresh corn longer. They can keep it on the shelf at an accessible price point for the consumer without running out or thinning their profit margin, so they save face in the eyes of the public. When the supply recovers, most consumers were none the wiser.
Now lets say we run out of fresh corn in a store without a secondary inventory. What little there is will be all that's available, and will run out quickly. As such, the prices skyrocket, the supermarket looks bad, you pay more or go without.
