This looks related to something that's mystified me for years about Safeway.
Background:
- Safeway rotates every product through "sale" and "full price" periods. It's a strictly calendar-based thing; every sale price is going to recur if you wait, and every product will spend a lot of time at "full price" and a lot of other time at two or three different "sale" prices.
- Triscuits come in a variety of special flavors.
All triscuit varieties go on sale together. If triscuits aren't on sale that week, you can get whatever flavor you want. But if a sale has happened, the Parmesan Garlic flavor is probably sold out. This happens, reliably, every time triscuits go on sale, and affects only the Parmesan Garlic flavor. To get that flavor at a sale price, you need to be in the store near the beginning of the sale period.
To me, the diagnosis is obvious: Parmesan Garlic is more popular than every other flavor, and Safeway should stock more of that flavor than they do of other flavors. But though I've observed this for years, they don't. All flavors get the same shelf space, Parmesan Garlic always sells out quickly, and Safeway appears to be happy to forgo the lost sales of Parmesan Garlic triscuits that they could have made if they'd just had them in stock.
Background:
- Safeway rotates every product through "sale" and "full price" periods. It's a strictly calendar-based thing; every sale price is going to recur if you wait, and every product will spend a lot of time at "full price" and a lot of other time at two or three different "sale" prices.
- Triscuits come in a variety of special flavors.
All triscuit varieties go on sale together. If triscuits aren't on sale that week, you can get whatever flavor you want. But if a sale has happened, the Parmesan Garlic flavor is probably sold out. This happens, reliably, every time triscuits go on sale, and affects only the Parmesan Garlic flavor. To get that flavor at a sale price, you need to be in the store near the beginning of the sale period.
To me, the diagnosis is obvious: Parmesan Garlic is more popular than every other flavor, and Safeway should stock more of that flavor than they do of other flavors. But though I've observed this for years, they don't. All flavors get the same shelf space, Parmesan Garlic always sells out quickly, and Safeway appears to be happy to forgo the lost sales of Parmesan Garlic triscuits that they could have made if they'd just had them in stock.