Over the last few weeks, I’ve seen an interesting phenomenon in several of our stores. Some private-labeled products that we used to purchase regularly have completely disappeared from stores, and apparently, they’re not due to return either.

For example, when orange juice is not on sale, we often buy the store’s house brand from a local store. Recently, the store brand disappeared completely from the refrigerated case, and after a few weeks passed, we realized it might not be coming back at all.

I asked a store employee what happened to the store’s juice, and he said that it was getting too costly to continue having juice private-labeled, and the store-brand juice was already being made by a major juice brand. So, the store discontinued the house brand and said it would only carry name brands of juice moving forward.

Another store in my area has carried a house brand of coconut-scented liquid hand soap that I really liked. In fact, I liked it more than any other scent on the market, so I purchased it often. However, it too has recently disappeared from the shelves of this store. When I asked when they would restock the coconut soap, this store told me a similar answer: Their store-brand soaps had been discontinued due to manufacturing costs.

When stores offer house-branded products, the items may be manufactured by a third-party private label, or they might be manufactured by a major manufacturer. In the case of the orange juice, the product inside the store brand of juice was likely the same juice as the name brand sells, whether that’s under its brand name or under the store’s. If the price point of private-labeled orange juice was remarkably close to the brand-name juice’s price, it’s understandable why the store opted to stop offering both varieties. I believe the situation with the coconut soap is similar.

With the incredibly high inflation we’re living through, it’s likely we will see other shifts in the kinds and varieties of products stores offer. According to retailer platform RangeMe, we can expect to see a reduction in the number and variety of stock-keeping units (SKUs) at grocery retailers over the next five years. They state that stores will reduce the number and varieties of products being sold, preferring to focus on faster-moving SKUs.

This results in two things happening at the store. Stores can turn inventory over quickly because there are fewer product varieties on the shelf, reducing the number of items that might outdate if they’re not sold within a shorter timeframe. However, that same SKU reduction also means that shoppers have fewer varieties of products to choose from.

For example, imagine a row of barbecue sauces on a store’s shelf. One single brand might have multiple different varieties: Original, Mesquite, Hickory, Applewood and Brown Sugar. When a store does a SKU reduction, they might look at these products’ sale history and note that Original and Hickory are the best sellers. Then, they might drop the other four varieties completely, opting to fill the same shelf space with multiple rows of Original and Hickory only.

This practice benefits the store in that employees do not need to restock shelves with the remaining flavors nearly as often, because they’ll now have more shelf space and can store far more bottles in the space opened up by the kinds that were eliminated. However, customers who are loyal to any of the flavors that are no longer being carried will be disappointed, and they will then need to purchase those varieties elsewhere – or, not at all.

The unfortunate reality, though, is that if every store engaged in this practice, eventually, the less-popular (yet, likely, just as delicious!) sauces won’t get a chance to be on the shelves anywhere and enjoyed by customers. Without retailers to showcase them, the manufacturers might eliminate them from production, ultimately giving shoppers fewer choices than before.

It is an interesting time in the industry to observe these sorts of changes going on. What are you seeing in your local stores? Drop me a line at jill@ctwfeatures.com.