While many of us grew up drinking milk, water or juice, today’s consumer has literally thousands of beverage choices – some 60,000 to select from! Even with that level of competition, 94 percent of households purchase REAL dairy milk, supplied from local dairy farms.
All businesses – including retail grocery – are currently challenged with increased shortages and outages. There are many reasons for these issues such as labor and trucking shortages all happening at some point in the supply line that becomes very noticeable at retail. This can be further compounded with erratic and unusual weather. Retail management teams are spending significantly more time collaborating with suppliers to prevent these issues. Milk and dairy are huge profit-makers for retailers, and retail surveys show the milk a consumer wants is out of stock, 26 percent of customers will buy it elsewhere – so retailers do their best to keep their shelves full with the best-selling items.
Steps to Take if You See a Problem
If you see a problem in your local area – such as frequent out-of-stock items or a case with less-than desirable hygiene, we encourage you to take the following steps:
- Speak up: Ask to speak with the dairy case manager or the store manager. Politely point out the problem – they may already be working on a solution or didn’t realize there was an issue.
- Snap it: Take a photo of the issue (empty shelves in the dairy case, a hygiene problem that needs attention) and note the date, time, and location. This information helps us track the frequency of the problem and gives us documentation to share with management.
- Share it: Make sure we know about it! Send your questions, pictures, and concerns to Beth Meyer, bmeyer@milk4u.org, or text 315.491.3892. That information will be conveyed to our Retail team, who will then determine next steps.