The huge efforts by the UK grocers and their suppliers are helping to bring out-of-stock levels under control, but there is still work to do. The latest data from Edge by Ascential shows unavailabilities across some categories increased over the past week and disparities between the ability of supermarkets to respond.
During the week to April 2, out-of-stock levels at the UK grocers reached a high of 21.9% but ended the week at an improved 18.4%. This compares to a high of 23.1% the previous week. Average out-of-stock levels for the UK grocers before the coronavirus pandemic stood at around 1.3%.
Measures such as reducing the number of essential items that customers were able to buy have helped with this and also restrictions on the size of online orders.
Looking at essential products by category, it is clear that paper goods remain the most in-demand and the most frequently out of stock as retailers struggle to replenish the shelves with these items. Toilet tissue remained at 43.1% out-of-stock, down slightly from 45.6% a week ago. This compares to average levels of just 1.7% before shoppers began to stockpile these items amid the threat of Covid-19.
There have been significant variations in stock levels between the supermarkets. Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose have all seen the number of unavailable products creep up slightly over the past week.
Ocado and Morrisons have, to a degree, seen their availability across essential product categories improve.
The grocers have responded to the supply chain challenges in different ways. Waitrose rationalised its cooking sauces, rice and dry pasta ranges last week, but these are now largely back in stock, bringing down the percentage of unavailable products.
Sainsbury’s experienced challenges in the availability of paper products over the past week and also smaller increases in the unavailability of cooking sauces, health and vitamins, and tea.
Following 12 days of declines in product unavailability at Tesco, there were some small increases at the end of last week in out-of-stocks. These were mainly in categories such as soap and health & beauty.
Ocado and Morrisons have seen their out-of-stock levels improve over the past week. Ocado’s improvement is almost entirely due to the frozen-food category, which saw a 20% improvement in availability compared to the previous week.
Overall, the huge efforts being made by grocery retailers and their suppliers are paying off. However, challenges remain and it will take some time until we see availability return to pre-Covid-19 levels.
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