Remember that moment when you’re staring at an empty shelf where your favorite grocery item should be? It happened to me last week. I reached for my usual brand of cooking oil, and there was nothing but empty space. At first, I thought it was just my local store, but then friends across town reported the same thing. What’s going on? Since 2020, we’ve seen waves of product shortages hit our stores. From toilet paper to baby formula, missing grocery items have become an unwelcome surprise. But what’s behind this latest disappearing act, and why does it keep happening?
Why your favorite products keep disappearing
It feels like playing grocery roulette these days. You make a shopping list, head to the store, and cross your fingers that everything you need will be there. The empty shelves we’re seeing in 2025 aren’t just random bad luck – they’re the result of multiple problems hitting at once. The pandemic started it all, causing factory shutdowns and worker shortages that many companies still haven’t fully recovered from. Then came weather problems that damaged crops. Add in packaging shortages, transportation issues, and suddenly that cooking oil (or whatever your missing item might be) can’t make it to your local store.
What makes today’s shortages different from 2020 is that they’re more targeted. Instead of entire categories being wiped out, we’re seeing specific products vanish while similar items remain available. According to the FTC report on supply chain disruptions, bigger stores often get first dibs on limited products, leaving smaller retailers without stock. This means you might find your item at one store but not another. The shortage problem isn’t going away soon – experts predict several grocery categories will face ongoing supply issues through spring 2025.
Weather problems are hitting food production hard
The crazy weather we’ve been having isn’t just making your weekend plans difficult – it’s wreaking havoc on food production. Farmers across the country have been dealing with everything from record droughts to flooding rains, and their crops are suffering. Take corn, for example. Many farmers planted less corn this year because of rising costs and unpredictable growing conditions. Since corn is in everything from cereals to cooking oil to animal feed, this shortage ripples through the entire food system. When the corn supply drops, prices go up, and suddenly that corn-based item you need every week isn’t on the shelf.
California’s ongoing water struggles have been especially tough on tomato production, which explains why pasta sauce and ketchup have been harder to find. And it’s not just fresh produce that’s affected. Weather events impact everything from grain harvesting to cattle raising. When farmers face these climate challenges, they sometimes have to cut back production or switch to different crops altogether. This means the supply of certain ingredients drops, and food manufacturers can’t make as much of their products. The result? Empty spaces on store shelves where your go-to items should be.
Big companies are getting products first
Have you noticed how the big chain stores sometimes have products that smaller local shops don’t? There’s actually a reason for that, and it’s not just because they order more. When supplies get tight, big retailers like Walmart and Kroger have the power to push suppliers to give them priority. They can threaten fees or penalties if deliveries aren’t made on time, even during shortages. This means when there’s not enough of a product to go around, the big stores get served first, and smaller grocery stores are left waiting – or completely out of luck.
This isn’t just a theory – it’s something the Federal Trade Commission found in their investigation. Their report shows that the three largest food retailers – Kroger, Walmart, and Amazon – actually made supply chain problems worse by pressuring suppliers to favor them. Some big companies even bought their own suppliers to make sure they got products first. This means that where you shop now makes a bigger difference in whether you’ll find what you need. If your favorite cooking oil, cereal, or other item is made by a company that’s feeling this pressure, smaller stores might not get any stock at all.
Labor shortages still plague the food industry
Remember when everyone was talking about the “Great Resignation”? Well, the food industry is still feeling its effects. From farms to factories to delivery trucks, companies can’t find enough workers. This worker shortage means there aren’t enough hands to pick fruits and vegetables, operate food processing equipment, or drive delivery trucks. Think about it – even if all the ingredients for your favorite pasta sauce are available, if there aren’t enough people working at the factory, they can’t make as many jars as before. Or if there aren’t enough truck drivers, those jars might sit in a warehouse instead of making it to your store.
The dairy industry has been hit especially hard by these labor problems. Making butter, cheese, and other dairy products requires skilled workers, and many dairy processing plants are operating below capacity because they can’t find enough staff. This is why butter has been in shorter supply and more expensive. The truck driver shortage is another huge problem – even when products are made, they often get stuck in distribution centers waiting for transport. This creates those strange situations where manufacturers say they’re making plenty of a product, but you still can’t find it at your store.
Rising costs force manufacturers to cut back
Have you noticed your grocery bill getting higher and higher? You’re not alone. Food prices have jumped significantly in the past few years. What you might not realize is that these rising costs are also hitting food manufacturers hard. The price of ingredients, packaging, transportation, and energy has gone through the roof. For some food companies, it’s become too expensive to keep making certain products at the same levels as before. When profit margins get too thin, manufacturers might decide to focus only on their best-selling items and stop making others completely.
This is why some of your favorite niche products have disappeared. Companies are making tough choices about what to keep producing. According to industry reports, many food manufacturers are facing “accelerating pressures on profitability” and are streamlining their product lines in response. This means eliminating less profitable items or those with complicated ingredients or production processes. The cooking oils category has been hit hard by this trend – especially specialty oils that cost more to produce. When companies pare down their offerings to save money, those special items you love might not make the cut.
Global conflicts disrupt food imports
Even though your grocery store feels local, many of the products on its shelves come from all over the world. When conflicts break out in other countries, they can quickly affect what’s available here. The ongoing war in Ukraine has been especially disruptive for global food supplies. Ukraine and Russia together normally export huge amounts of wheat, sunflower oil, and other food commodities. With those exports severely limited, global supplies have tightened, and prices have risen. This is why certain cooking oils, flour, and other grain products have become scarce or more expensive.
These disruptions in wheat and oilseed exports from Ukraine and Russia have created a ripple effect through the global food system. When sunflower oil becomes scarce, for example, food manufacturers switch to alternatives like palm or soybean oil. This increases demand (and prices) for those alternatives. The same thing happens with wheat – when Ukrainian wheat isn’t available, buyers turn to other sources, increasing pressure on those supplies. These shifts in global markets can cause unexpected shortages of products you’d never connect to overseas conflicts. That missing item on your shelf might be absent because of events happening thousands of miles away.
Packaging shortages create bottlenecks
Here’s something you might not think about: sometimes it’s not the food itself that’s in short supply, but the packaging. Aluminum cans, glass jars, plastic bottles, and even cardboard boxes have all faced shortage issues. Without these materials, food manufacturers can’t package their products, even if they have all the ingredients. This packaging problem explains why you might see plenty of one size of a product but none of another. For example, a company might have 16-ounce bottles of cooking oil but no 32-ounce bottles, simply because they can’t get enough of the larger containers.
The packaging industry has been hit by many of the same problems affecting food production – labor shortages, rising costs, and transportation issues. But it also faces unique challenges. For instance, recycled paper shortages have made cardboard boxes more expensive and harder to get. Aluminum has faced its own supply constraints, affecting canned goods. And plastic packaging, which depends on petroleum products, has been impacted by oil price fluctuations. When these packaging materials are scarce, food companies have to make choices about which products to prioritize. Often, they focus on their most popular items, leaving specialty products temporarily discontinued.
Food deserts are getting worse in some areas
Sometimes the problem isn’t just that a product is missing – it’s that the entire store is gone. Food deserts – areas where people have limited access to affordable, nutritious food – have been a problem for years, but they’re getting worse in some parts of the country. When supermarkets close in an area, residents are left with fewer shopping options and often face more frequent shortages. This is happening more in both urban neighborhoods and rural communities, where grocery stores struggle to remain profitable. When a neighborhood loses its main grocery store, residents often have to travel farther to shop and face more limited selection.
According to research from Duke University, about 8.5% of Americans live in areas with limited supermarket access. While this percentage hasn’t changed much in the past decade, the distribution has shifted. Some rapidly growing areas in the South and West have seen residential development outpace commercial growth, creating new food access gaps. Meanwhile, some urban centers have lost supermarkets as chains pull out of lower-income areas. These trends mean that depending on where you live, you might face more widespread shortages simply because there are fewer stores competing to stock the products you need.
The empty shelf where your favorite product should be tells a bigger story about our food system. It’s not just one thing going wrong – it’s many problems happening at once: weather disruptions, labor shortages, packaging problems, and big companies flexing their muscle to get priority access. While some shortages are temporary, others signal longer-term changes in what’s available and where. The best approach is staying flexible with your shopping list and maybe keeping a backup plan for those must-have items. After all, in today’s unpredictable grocery landscape, adaptability is becoming as essential as your shopping cart.
