Ask Lemmy

Many stores are pushing their own brand of stuff. For example, you'll see a lot more "Great Value" at Walmart.

As for variety, there's the same mix of random stuff, new flavors brands are trying, and your favorite is always the first to get discontinued.

Oh no, there are only three rebrandings of the same hot dogs from the same hot dog manufacturing plant instead of five 🪦

almost all corporate grocery stores in the United States are pretty fucking terrible in the selections that they offer

if you're lucky enough to be around a community owned or co-op oriented story you're much better off but even those seem like they're pretty limited sometimes

I've not measured it in any objective way, but here I got access to the same brands as before.

Premium stuff gets less shelf space in favor of cheap in economically trying times but I still find it.

Produce? You mean the apples, bananas and cabbage section? Basically all the exotic foods are gone or significantly reduced and staple foods are taking up more room on displays. Most processed foods seem about the same but more expensive

My limited experience in my little pocket of the US is that the produce sections have gotten much shittier. There was a great produce store near me that was in business since the '60s, but they closed last year. Maybe that's what I'm noticing, but all the grocery stores in the area have a pretty shit selection of fresh produce.

No

Where? In my country there isn't less variety, no

Depends on the store. Lidl has a brand of peanut butter while AH and Jumbo has 4 brands

Sometimes it seems that way when a favorite brand disappears.

For example Tropicana Juice has mostly disappeared: only oj left and it’s smaller and higher priced. I used to occasionally buy their other juices because at least it’s sweetened by fruit juice. Without it, I guess there’s the same variety but missing the middle choice. You need to choose either the corn syrup from the bottom shelf or the expensive stuff from the top shelf

Did you change the time you goto the store? I’m off my routine so the last several times I went to the store everything was out of stock

Compared to how long ago? I haven’t noticed any changes.

I think a lot of grocery stores fill their shelves with store brand stuff now. The profit margins are probably higher. This results in less shelf space for other items.

There are more varieties of Mountain Dew than ever.

So far, it doesn't seem like it. Eggs are expensive, but that means there's more on the shelves. The only things I've seen disappear is non-black varieties of cold brew and beer grain is gone at every brewing store I've been to. These are probably incredibly specific to me lol

changes in variety of stuff I can afford? absolutely, otherwise not much

Not really. But my sibling works at a grocery and sees all the deals so brings home random free stuff sometimes we get to try! Some is good. Some bad.

I feel like the answer to this question will depend on your location and what you're used to seeing. I personally grew up in the Chicago suburbs and then moved to Chicago and the difference in choices at the grocery store is night and day. Not only are there far more niche items, but there are also more stores to select from. So if one store doesn't have something, I simply go to another. But I also have noticed that if I'm out in the rural areas, it's pretty strictly the basics. There's also a big difference between regions. I have more variety in Chicago than in Phoenix and there's certainly more variety in New York than Chicago. I haven't noticed a drop off at my usual grocery stores, however....

I have noticed a large drop in variety specifically at box clothing outlets. There is less variety and less stocked sizes readily available. I think this is likely because of the proliferation of online shopping and corporations seeing this as an opportunity to save money by simply shipping less popular items to stores when people can order them online instead.

That's just been my personal experience having traveled around a bit 🤷

I moved to a shitty small city a few years ago. My most diverse grocery store is a fucking Food Lion.

No. I'd guess that it's about the same; existing grocery stores aren't reducing their size, so unless they're going to stock more of one thing, I'd expect them to stay pretty comparable.

A store could close and a new one open, but I'm pretty sure that if anything, grocery store size has increased over time in the US, not decreased.

Yeah, do they still make deep fried mac and cheese bites

I wouldn't know. I shop at aldi, so the less variety is expected.