Grocery store shelves aren’t going back to normal this year

Many of the country’s biggest food makers are telling grocers that they will have limited quantities of a number of their products, including items such as Rice Krispies Treats, Sour Patch Kids, some Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavors, McCormick gourmet spices and Marie Callender’s pot pies because of labor, commodity and transportation constraints “Like many sectors, at times there are challenges in getting all our product to stores, for a variety of reasons related to supply and distribution,” a Unilever spokesperson told CNN said in an email. Packaging issues also continue to be a problem. For example, some seasonings are in tight supply due to challenges procuring glass bottles.A McCormick representative said in an email to two distributors on September 20 that “our U.S. bottle supplier shut down due to a Covid related issue and we have not received bottles for several weeks” for its gourmet spices line. “The lack of bottles has impacted our production and is eroding our safety stock across the entire line,” the representative said. As a result, McCormick said, it would ship approximately 70% of what it had previously forecast, and the company was encouraging customers to cancel their promotions in November and December for the spices line.Lori Robinson, a spokesperson for McCormick, said in an email to CNN Business that “Gourmet is the only product line impacted by this packaging shortage,” and the company’s more recognizable red-cap spices will be fully in-stock throughout the holidays, which customers can use as a substitute for the gourmet spices, she said. The company did not say how many retailers received allocation notifications on gourmet seasonings.And some sizes of Marie Callender’s frozen pot pies could be harder to find.Conagra said in a September 27 email to a distributor that it was putting an allocation on Marie Callender’s 10 ounce and 15 ounce pot pies until November 29 because it “encountered packing material challenges from our tray and carton supplier resulting in a production interruption.”Conagra did not respond to requests for comment.Chieh Huang, CEO of online bulk goods retailer Boxed, said “allocations are the new norm” from food and packaged goods’ makers and are impacting the levels of products in stock at Boxed. Still, he said, “the industry is better off than we were this time last year.” CNN Business’ Danielle Wiener-Bronner contributed to this article.