Employees say the "OTS" system was put in place prior to Amazon's acquisition of Whole Foods, and described it as "militaristic" and resulting in the opposite of the intended effect as it has started to remove focus on customers.
While acknowledging the system is resulting in savings due to reduced food spoilage in stock rooms, employees told Business Insider it had gone too far. Store managers are walking through aisles and stock rooms with checklists to make sure every item is in its right place and there is no excess stock, and writes up the department head if something is amiss, according to the report.
Two midtown Manhattan storesWholeFoodsMagazinevisited on Wednesday appeared intact and bustling with lunchtime shoppers. Those were the Columbus Circle and Bryant Park locations.
However,analysts from Barclaysearlier this week reported the out-of-stock problem and BI said the Union Square market near its offices was depleted.
The out-of-stocks come at a time when the higher visibility at Whole Foods and the lower prices are driving more traffic to stores. As with anything involving Amazon Whole Foods, the news was gaining momentum and spreading by day's end.
"Out of stocks are a perpetual problem in grocery," said Bill Bishop, chief architect of Brick Meets Click, a retail consultancy, in an interview withWholeFoodsMagazine. "The only way to completely eliminate them is to increase the inventory on the shelf for the faster moving products. Seems most likely the increase in out of stocks has been caused by the new system, which reduced inventory in the backroom without increasing the inventory of faster moving items on the shelf.
"A partial fix to the problem," he added, "would be simply returning to the old system and paying the price for slower inventory turns and increased shrink. A complete solution would involve resetting all the shelves to provide enough inventory on the fast moving products so that they remain in stock between deliveries.
"This certainly is a logical solution," Bishop continued, "but it's one that would require the store to take that additional space from slower moving items and most retailers would not want to do that because they'd be concerned about shopper reaction.
"At the core of this problem is the old fashioned approach to shelf management planning and supply chain execution. So far few retailers, with the exception of the hard discounters, and even they have problems with this, have solved it," Bishop noted.
Now would be a good time for independents to market their in-stock availability.What are you seeing in your market? Share your comments in the field below.
