tinfins

That's exactly the reason for this policy. One of many reasons, actually.

But it actually is meant for things on regular shelves, it doesn't apply to the produce department, which is what all the pictures in this terrible article show. It also doesn't apply if the product is going to be out-of-stock for a known period of time. It's meant for situations where the buyer didn't order enough and it will only be out for a day or two.

Yeah, I wonder. We definitely aren't used to all the media attention - honestly, I got a little carried away in the comments here.

I wouldn't say I even particularly care about Whole Foods' reputation, it's more the false narrative that bothered me and I just happened to know how wrong it was. Must be so much worse for employees at the big tech companies or others that are in the news all the time.

You wouldn't want backstock for produce of more than a day or two, because that's going to reduce freshness. You can't just constantly keep tons of backstock of everything year-round just in case there's a storm one week.

Also, OTS allows backstock of top selling items or in emergencies. If you can predict a big storm like what probably caused most of the problems in the article, you are allowed to stock up on product.

That's why I have a problem with the article, it's just so factually incorrect.

OTS is really just a collection of pretty common-sense guidelines like don't have more than a certain percentage of inventory in backstock, don't have backstock of stuff that doesn't sell well, keep your backstock organized, etc.

There are a few details about it that can be irritating, but the comments from employees in the article are extremely misleading. If they're having a hard time passing their inspections it's because they're doing something very wrong - no one is failing an inspection for having 1 box facing the wrong way like it says in the article.

Not necessarily, I'm saying that even if there is, the article has no clue why.

Good point, but I'm not necessarily disagreeing that there were a few days with high out-of-stocks, just that the employees criticizing the OTS system in the article are being very misleading and exaggerating.

Most meat teams at WFM don't have overnight crews.

The thing is too, it's a snapshot. We don't know how long it looked like that, what time of the day it was, whether someone called out sick, etc.

So you think stores should just keep a huge backstock of fresh produce just in case an extreme weather event or some other rare issue hits? That's going to lead to less fresh produce for the 350 days a year when everything goes smoothly.

The OTS system in the article also allows for exceptions - if there were bananas available the store could have stocked up on them. It's just so wrong on many levels - I could spend all day pointing them out, but this thread is getting bigger than I thought and I don't know if I can spend much more time on it. I was going to edit my original comment with more information but it doesn't look like I can anymore.

There's no centralized replenishment system yet at Whole Foods, OTS is just a collection of guidelines enforced by inspections. 99% of ordering is done manually at the store level for now.

I took another look at the pictures. Notice all those stores where whole sections are out are in the Northeast. Probably they missed a delivery or two because of the weather. Plus during extreme weather grocery stores get shopped hard.

There was one picture of an empty banana set with a pineapple in the wrong spot - that's what I was referring to before.

The sole picture in San Francisco was the reset I mentioned.

I don't find it hard to believe that a few stores ran out of bananas or whatever for a day. That's all it would take for a customer to snap a picture. The picture of a meat department cooler with empty slide racks was obviously in the middle of a reset - notice the lack of price tags on all the racks because they were just installed.

I'll add some more info in a few hours.

I gave my opinion on the causes elsewhere in the comments.