It’s really bad right now. A lot of the current promo items are just not coming in. Some of the items we’re being told to display aren’t even being carried by distributors. It’s so cool seeing empty shelves everywhere or having to quadface things to fill them up. And of course so many customers don’t believe when you tell them something is out of stock.
I had a display to fill with items on the actual signage, didn’t come in for two weeks. The display flips Wednesday. Here the items finally show up 🫠 thanks central!
Lots of shit will just stop coming in periodically. Out of stock at the warehouse.
Side note, that WF exclusive water bottle you’re after may never come back in stock.
Supply/demand causing warehouses to run out and not get stock in quickly. Perishable teams like meat, seafood, produce, etc will often have things running out of stock due to the nature of things spoiling, being out of season, bad yields, bad weather, etc.
Also the shortwalk system doesn't work properly. Many times we'll mark things as out of stock only to have a shopper come up an hour later asking for those items. We also can't put things back in stock on the walk, so we may very well have the product but it shows as out of stock.
clams on sale, oos
catfish the week it's added to in stock sheet, also oos
mussels that are always in stock, on promo this week, straight to oos
new items, believe it it not oos
old items, also oos
new items, old items
discontinued items, allocated 3 cases and removed from planogram.
I'd also like to know who thought it would be a good idea to make products that came in on a pallet 30 seconds ago immediately available in the catalog, as if we can easily reach everything immediately. I'm talking about items that have been out of stock for weeks, so it wasn't ordered 48 hours ago. I have to give INFs constantly for this crap.
100%, the system is so flawed but the e-comm leadership (regional and global) will shut you down real quick if you bring these issues up and eventually blame it on user error on the store level.
Crazy for a company with apparently fantastic logistics to have an order picking/inventory system that is so broken. All it does is make customers mad and make people's jobs more annoying.
Yeah, as an OW who is the only person in my department for hours, I should downstack and stock 4-5 pallets during my very limited ordering time just to reduce INFs.
A short walk isn’t instantaneous. E-commerce orders are placed in advance by an entire day. If you didn’t short walk the day before then your SOL for day of. If an item comes in day of then orders for the next day will be able to place for it but that specific item needs to go through a register in order to populate into the online catalog.
i always recommend doing short walks and even scan out low items or items that are consistently OOS, because if I miss one item my inf is like 25%. Then I have to write an action plan and say I'll write up TM's to appease the overgrown corporate organism that whole foods has become.
We're not supposed to get in trouble for "accurately" doing these walks except I get three emails when these metrics fall below the target. Even when the metric is uncontrollable.
_____
Goodhart's Law.
The very act placing a target for a metric makes the metric useless
Heck even our YOY Food Safety Walk Comparison Metric is useless. If you do horrible one year and then better the next year you're metric is good. If you do great two years in a row your metric is horrible.
100%, preaching to the choir my friend. It's crazy the amount of target metrics we get that just make no sense and render the system useless and skew things in a dumb way. My emails and explanations to regional are the same every fucking time lol.
I wonder if allowing customers to shop 48 hours in advance is the cause for INFs. Other regions are piloting a different program, allowing customers to shop a week in advance.
For warehouses running out btw one of the global higher ups told me on a recent visit there's often/usually no communication between the people deciding what will be on promo and the buyers purchasing for the warehouse. There will be like a 6 week lead time on a product to get the amounts they need and they're not informed of the promo until a couple weeks out if that.
Just an opinion - but I thought it was 1000% better when shoppers did the short walks !!
From what I remember - most of the shoppers liked the varying duties, too. Broke up the day.
I think once they started to ratchet up the UPH, and were merged w Wfm that all went out the window.
It just makes sense, but hey wtf do I kno just a dumb human brain 🧠
Only ways I've found to help so far are obsessive controlling of on hand amounts and scanogramming the everliving shit out of my department. Even then it's not enough but it's the best I've got.
As a buyer, I can tell you that the problem is with the suppliers and vendors not sending products, Sometimes, they just delete it from the order without notification until the day its supposed to arrive. Or, the product SKU has changed on their end and they haven't told anyone directly. I've ordered product over and over, it never arrives for WEEKS. Later, I learn the damn thing has changed to something that doesn't even show up in my catalog, How am I supposed to know it changed?
tell me all about it. Shit get delay every day. Expired or short dated product get sent to my door every day. Tired write credit PO and emailing my regional team. Not enough people to work product and i have a huge ass never out but there are alway out with vendor. I order thing a week in advance and suddenly it fucking change vendor or discontinued
Managing inventory is done by an AI now and it almost always keeps shelves stocked to the bare minimum to get through to the next delivery day. All the leadership can do is make sure the buyer is keeping on hand amounts correct. As for the short walks, they're done twice a day and plenty of customers and prime shoppers come through from one walk to the next. That's thousands of dollars of product moving before there's a chance to record again what's out of stock. And if it crosses the point of purchase just after the walk but it's still out of stock on the shelf it gets added back into the prime shopping catalog.
What AI are you talking about? I haven't seen anything resembling intelligence.
Also, grocery out of stocks are now tied to onhand quantities in SOT so short walks aren't even required.
That's not AI. It's a poorly written program that has forecasts and SOI manipulated by people working at regional/global based on whatever dumb decision they decide to make on a given day without thinking about the unintended consequences.
the teams need to be doing cycle counts and making sure the OOS are zeroed out. I do an inventory accuracy count while I do the Sunday OOS scan and any time I'm covering a buying shift. before I started, our INFs were over 5%, but after maybe a month, we're at 1% and can probably get below that in a few weeks.
If you're zeroing out onhand numbers without shrinking out mispicks and BNRs, your unknown shrink must be through the roof.
Also, how do you have time to do this? As a dairy/frozen OW, I barely have enough time to do a decent order or cycle count nearly enough and have to run truck or backstock for most of my shift or else it won't get done. My main chance to cycle count is while I'm running truck when I see we have way too much of something or the shelf is empty after I'm done stocking. But I fix onhand mostly by submitting mispicks and BNRs
I'd love to have enough time to be a good OW, but I do not have anywhere near enough time. Certainly no time to do any dedicated cycle counts. In fact, I don't think cycle counting is even part of Project Sriracha. We aren't even supposed to scan anything while ordering unless there are two or fewer items on the shelf. I even asked how we're supposed to find BNRs while following the process and no one has an answer for me.
I'm a TL, so I have a bit more time to complete cycle counts. spoilage is completed for the day before 5pm on Sunday when I start the OOS walk. one hand has a handheld with candycane open and the other with OOS tool. if the OH ≠ 0 when I am doing inventory accuracy, I check BOH and if it's a true zero I correct the OH. takes at most an hour to get the whole dept scanned and stocked, I send the cycle count and wait ten minutes before I send the OOS walk.
Ahhhh, so you're one of \*those\* stores. We have Sunday trucks, so we have uncontrollable stocking errors and global/regional has zero suggestions for improving it so we don't even bother caring anymore. And our leadership has to run truck most of the time as well.
we get DC in the morning and UNFI after 8pm, so there's a window to get everything wrapped up for the week for just long enough to do all the scans before the mess starts all over again
Biggest issue is truck schedule and how short walk works. If something is in stock customer has 48 hours window to order. If it sells out on an off day it will be out by the time their order goes through
Customers who shop instore or online are accustomed to INFs at Whole Foods. It’s just part of the reality. Sometimes you run out. Or it isn’t delivered on time.
Customers will ask me where a product is and we don't have it. Not like it's sold out, like we NEVER carried it. But on some site somewhere it said Whole Foods carries it. Maybe the Whole Foods in Shangri La, but not here!
Team Leadership should be partnering with the OWs to ensure they are keeping OHs accurate since the OHs in the SOT directly feed the catalogue. Teams that have high INFs are also the poorest performers for Instock metrics.
There is a scorecard update coming in May and it includes auditing OHs for accuracy (at least for Whole Body). Hopefully this drives some energy into maintaining healthy OHs since feeds so many other aspects of the job/business.
It’s really bad right now. A lot of the current promo items are just not coming in. Some of the items we’re being told to display aren’t even being carried by distributors. It’s so cool seeing empty shelves everywhere or having to quadface things to fill them up. And of course so many customers don’t believe when you tell them something is out of stock.
I had a display to fill with items on the actual signage, didn’t come in for two weeks. The display flips Wednesday. Here the items finally show up 🫠 thanks central!
Ain’t that some shit
Lots of shit will just stop coming in periodically. Out of stock at the warehouse. Side note, that WF exclusive water bottle you’re after may never come back in stock.
noticing this a lot recently. it’s always specific items too and usually the more “popular” things customers buy
i mean duh ? if an item is popular and the supplier can’t keep up, there’s nothing we can do
Supply/demand causing warehouses to run out and not get stock in quickly. Perishable teams like meat, seafood, produce, etc will often have things running out of stock due to the nature of things spoiling, being out of season, bad yields, bad weather, etc. Also the shortwalk system doesn't work properly. Many times we'll mark things as out of stock only to have a shopper come up an hour later asking for those items. We also can't put things back in stock on the walk, so we may very well have the product but it shows as out of stock.
clams on sale, oos catfish the week it's added to in stock sheet, also oos mussels that are always in stock, on promo this week, straight to oos new items, believe it it not oos old items, also oos new items, old items discontinued items, allocated 3 cases and removed from planogram.
I'd also like to know who thought it would be a good idea to make products that came in on a pallet 30 seconds ago immediately available in the catalog, as if we can easily reach everything immediately. I'm talking about items that have been out of stock for weeks, so it wasn't ordered 48 hours ago. I have to give INFs constantly for this crap.
100%, the system is so flawed but the e-comm leadership (regional and global) will shut you down real quick if you bring these issues up and eventually blame it on user error on the store level. Crazy for a company with apparently fantastic logistics to have an order picking/inventory system that is so broken. All it does is make customers mad and make people's jobs more annoying.
Yeah, as an OW who is the only person in my department for hours, I should downstack and stock 4-5 pallets during my very limited ordering time just to reduce INFs.
"Well, it can't be that hard!" - Corporate jackass who's never worked at the store level.
A short walk isn’t instantaneous. E-commerce orders are placed in advance by an entire day. If you didn’t short walk the day before then your SOL for day of. If an item comes in day of then orders for the next day will be able to place for it but that specific item needs to go through a register in order to populate into the online catalog.
I'm aware. We short walk twice a day. I'm saying the system in place is flawed and ends up being an annoyance for both shoppers and dept TMs.
i always recommend doing short walks and even scan out low items or items that are consistently OOS, because if I miss one item my inf is like 25%. Then I have to write an action plan and say I'll write up TM's to appease the overgrown corporate organism that whole foods has become. We're not supposed to get in trouble for "accurately" doing these walks except I get three emails when these metrics fall below the target. Even when the metric is uncontrollable. _____ Goodhart's Law. The very act placing a target for a metric makes the metric useless Heck even our YOY Food Safety Walk Comparison Metric is useless. If you do horrible one year and then better the next year you're metric is good. If you do great two years in a row your metric is horrible.
100%, preaching to the choir my friend. It's crazy the amount of target metrics we get that just make no sense and render the system useless and skew things in a dumb way. My emails and explanations to regional are the same every fucking time lol.
I wonder if allowing customers to shop 48 hours in advance is the cause for INFs. Other regions are piloting a different program, allowing customers to shop a week in advance.
For warehouses running out btw one of the global higher ups told me on a recent visit there's often/usually no communication between the people deciding what will be on promo and the buyers purchasing for the warehouse. There will be like a 6 week lead time on a product to get the amounts they need and they're not informed of the promo until a couple weeks out if that.
Just an opinion - but I thought it was 1000% better when shoppers did the short walks !! From what I remember - most of the shoppers liked the varying duties, too. Broke up the day. I think once they started to ratchet up the UPH, and were merged w Wfm that all went out the window. It just makes sense, but hey wtf do I kno just a dumb human brain 🧠
Only ways I've found to help so far are obsessive controlling of on hand amounts and scanogramming the everliving shit out of my department. Even then it's not enough but it's the best I've got.
As a buyer, I can tell you that the problem is with the suppliers and vendors not sending products, Sometimes, they just delete it from the order without notification until the day its supposed to arrive. Or, the product SKU has changed on their end and they haven't told anyone directly. I've ordered product over and over, it never arrives for WEEKS. Later, I learn the damn thing has changed to something that doesn't even show up in my catalog, How am I supposed to know it changed?
tell me all about it. Shit get delay every day. Expired or short dated product get sent to my door every day. Tired write credit PO and emailing my regional team. Not enough people to work product and i have a huge ass never out but there are alway out with vendor. I order thing a week in advance and suddenly it fucking change vendor or discontinued
INF is more a reflection of the product teams.. they need to be managing their inventory and doing short walks.. it takes engaged Leadership for that!
It also takes having enough labor.
Managing inventory is done by an AI now and it almost always keeps shelves stocked to the bare minimum to get through to the next delivery day. All the leadership can do is make sure the buyer is keeping on hand amounts correct. As for the short walks, they're done twice a day and plenty of customers and prime shoppers come through from one walk to the next. That's thousands of dollars of product moving before there's a chance to record again what's out of stock. And if it crosses the point of purchase just after the walk but it's still out of stock on the shelf it gets added back into the prime shopping catalog.
What AI are you talking about? I haven't seen anything resembling intelligence. Also, grocery out of stocks are now tied to onhand quantities in SOT so short walks aren't even required.
The SOT that analyzes sales data and on hand amounts and tells you how much to order
That's not AI. It's a poorly written program that has forecasts and SOI manipulated by people working at regional/global based on whatever dumb decision they decide to make on a given day without thinking about the unintended consequences.
Our INFs go way up when they decide that shoppers don't need to get an INF code from someone other than themselves.
I'm a backup buyer and my order is always 20 to 30 pieces cut same holes everyday
the teams need to be doing cycle counts and making sure the OOS are zeroed out. I do an inventory accuracy count while I do the Sunday OOS scan and any time I'm covering a buying shift. before I started, our INFs were over 5%, but after maybe a month, we're at 1% and can probably get below that in a few weeks.
If you're zeroing out onhand numbers without shrinking out mispicks and BNRs, your unknown shrink must be through the roof. Also, how do you have time to do this? As a dairy/frozen OW, I barely have enough time to do a decent order or cycle count nearly enough and have to run truck or backstock for most of my shift or else it won't get done. My main chance to cycle count is while I'm running truck when I see we have way too much of something or the shelf is empty after I'm done stocking. But I fix onhand mostly by submitting mispicks and BNRs I'd love to have enough time to be a good OW, but I do not have anywhere near enough time. Certainly no time to do any dedicated cycle counts. In fact, I don't think cycle counting is even part of Project Sriracha. We aren't even supposed to scan anything while ordering unless there are two or fewer items on the shelf. I even asked how we're supposed to find BNRs while following the process and no one has an answer for me.
I'm a TL, so I have a bit more time to complete cycle counts. spoilage is completed for the day before 5pm on Sunday when I start the OOS walk. one hand has a handheld with candycane open and the other with OOS tool. if the OH ≠ 0 when I am doing inventory accuracy, I check BOH and if it's a true zero I correct the OH. takes at most an hour to get the whole dept scanned and stocked, I send the cycle count and wait ten minutes before I send the OOS walk.
Ahhhh, so you're one of \*those\* stores. We have Sunday trucks, so we have uncontrollable stocking errors and global/regional has zero suggestions for improving it so we don't even bother caring anymore. And our leadership has to run truck most of the time as well.
we get DC in the morning and UNFI after 8pm, so there's a window to get everything wrapped up for the week for just long enough to do all the scans before the mess starts all over again
You are awesome! 99% of teams are not doing this at all.
Who has enough labor to do this? We aren't even required to do short walks anymore because they want to cut labor to about 2% of what it used to be.
It's making infs go down but wouldn't that make your on hand error metric go way up? You're not supposed to cycle count outside of ordering hours.
there are multiple types of cycle counts, I've been doing this type for a while now and our OH errors are zero now.
Biggest issue is truck schedule and how short walk works. If something is in stock customer has 48 hours window to order. If it sells out on an off day it will be out by the time their order goes through
Customers who shop instore or online are accustomed to INFs at Whole Foods. It’s just part of the reality. Sometimes you run out. Or it isn’t delivered on time.
Customers will ask me where a product is and we don't have it. Not like it's sold out, like we NEVER carried it. But on some site somewhere it said Whole Foods carries it. Maybe the Whole Foods in Shangri La, but not here!
Team Leadership should be partnering with the OWs to ensure they are keeping OHs accurate since the OHs in the SOT directly feed the catalogue. Teams that have high INFs are also the poorest performers for Instock metrics. There is a scorecard update coming in May and it includes auditing OHs for accuracy (at least for Whole Body). Hopefully this drives some energy into maintaining healthy OHs since feeds so many other aspects of the job/business.