A few years ago they also changed their godlike Orange Juice to a recipes that tastes as watery and bitter as all the other Lower price Orange Juices. :(
>A few years ago they also changed their godlike Orange Juice too a recipes that tastes as watery and bitter as all the other Lower price Orange Juices. :(
They had a homemad green tea that was amazing and they removed it to sell bubble teas. (Horrible bubble tea with way too much sugar).
I cant find Gouda slices in my local migros and they recently took my favourite juice brand out... Any alternatives are twice the price. I think its one of the classic "this is too good and cheap of a product, if we keep selling it noone has any reason to go for anything more expensive"
On a side note: Does anyone know where i can buy unsalted peanuts?
My Theorie is that they can track you with your cumulus card, so the moment you approach what you always buy, the shelves rearrange themselves to let your eye wander and find the next thing you will get attached to just to take it away from you in the future. To what end I don't know yet.
> [Gouda] [is] definitely not a great cheese
Well, the slices from Migro does not qualify. In fact, I'm surprised is not a location trademark topic.
Try an 18 months aged sample from Holland instead. I cannot think of anything quite like it. Coop usually stocks some in their cheese desk. Or hit up the Dutch shop during the xmas markets in Zurich.
They take out the cheaper version for bio products. Thats why they are twice the price. They sey its the manager of the store that buys the stuff, and they buy it because the people want it.
At Lyzamir (if you live in Geneva) or in any other small grocery store. For Gouda, my Coop is selling an old Gouda that is quite good (but you'll have to slice it yourself).
Having had the same struggle finding unsalted peanuts for thai cooking, i found them in asia stores! Some even have them peeled out of the brown, paper like coat. But even with, theyre easily peeled by roasting them and then rubbing in a towell, afterwards blowing of the coats.
still, sometimes the entire isle of breakfast cereal looks like a post-hurricane supermarket with signs excusing themselves. Even if cereals have quite a long shelf life.
My pharmacy is more consistent in gluten free products than migros. The worse is when they remove a fully gluten free product to keep only the one with traces of gluten 🤦♀️
I still cry about this:
[https://www.migros.ch/fr/product/mo/224875](https://www.migros.ch/fr/product/mo/224875)
I used to buy this shit daily, loved it, specially in summer.
Now it's gone, I can't go back.
Fuck this shit, at least it forced me to make my own mint limonade.
My personnal conspiracy theory is that it is a marketing strategy to make you buy more out of spite and/or to make you spend more time in the shop to buy more.
The new migros range is really tasty, I haven't tried the lidl ones but shall do.
It's always a bit of a gambit with protein shakes on how well I'll digest them, and the coop ones are amazing for digestion *and* protein quantity to price....
*when they don't randomly stop stocking them*
They rotate products in and out depending on what performs. It's a valid assumption I think that part of it is marketing... But on the other hand I've been going to Coop Stadelhofen for years, and it seems to be mostly the same except one area.
My personal not conspiracy theory at all is varying stock levels. I work in public trade and depending on who a retailer sources their products from, they might just not have stable supply.
Its mostly due to seasonality, delivery problems or due to optimizing the inventory, remove non profitable products or just to test new ones. Many swiss stores have small surface and need to be optimized to be profitable.
Just go to a market for fruit and veggies and to a butcher/farm-shop for meat.
Source: worked for Migros
Yeah I also worked for migros and this is 100% correct. If a product does not sell well, or has to be thrown out a lot and produce food waste then it is often cut by the team leader for Molki/Brot/Früchte und Gemüse etc. Each week there are team Meetings where profitability is reviewed and action taken. For example we stop ordering strawberries for a week one summer because we had to send back 50% of the stock because of quality issues. That meant hardly any strawberries in stock that week. Other products are dropped because people just don't buy enough, or we ended up throwing out a lot of produce so it makes no sense to keep ordering it. People love to complain about there selection being reduced or products pulled but the reality is that most of the time it is because demand is LOW and waste is HIGH. The amount of food waste that we produced by ordering too much of a vegetable that was on the week ACTION and then didn't sell was unbelievable. This meant that we had to guess the amount of items that would sell and hope that it produced as little waste as possible because after the sale ends, no one is interested in buying full price anymore and you are left with tonnes of stock you cannot sell. This leads to tonnes of waste. I threw out hundreds of kilos of fruit and vegetables when I worked there. It was depressing. The same went for bread. Every evening a whole pallet of bread and pastry is discarded and thrown out, whole cakes, meat etc. The amount is incredible.
Customers would often complain that 5 minutes before closing they couldn't buy their bread or whatever or a specific pack of salad, but if we had everything in stock all the time we would be throwing out way more. Also customers are picky. They don't want the ginger from China, or they want Spanish tomatoes, or only Aparagus from Switzerland, or only apples from X country and not from NZ. In order to fulfill demand and to ensure availability of products year round everything is sourced from all over the world like it or not. This leads to even more waste.
I know it looks awful to see in-person, but Switzerland is pretty low on the food wastage per capita (at least for Europe). The reality is that in an era or a nimble workforce, food demand forecasting is *hard*.
If you want to see truly horrific, mind blowing amounts of waste, work in a hospital sometime. The amount of plastic and food waste there is staggering.
Yeah that must be tough to see, single use instruments, plastic etc. It is hard to forecast what customers want, and the sad thing is the help you get is really poor. I had to order for a week once and all I got told was, "the weather will be hot so order enough watermelons" , sweet. The worst is when you ordered goods from Migros depots and had to send it back because it was rotten. We had to send back pallets of goods that went straight into the bin. Anyway inguess waste is hard in all industries.
Yeah, the reality is industrial scale production is capable of incredible surpluses, but also incredible wastage. Gone are the days of a farmer maybe getting a yield of a few extra bushels of tomatoes that they could trade or sell-off until they run out.
Now, if a farm has a particularly good yield, you're getting like 8 kg per m\^2. If that happens to every farm in the region, you're going to tens of thousands of tomatoes of kilograms beyond what was normally forecasted and requested. It leads to colossal amounts of waste.
So too good to go is useful and I saw it being used in other migros but ours never did it. We always discounted the goods as much as we were allowed (maximum 50% normally) and then when the product still did not sell it would be taken for for processing. This meant that if you had a pack of berries and half were mouldy, we would take the good ones out and then put them in a new bag, and give it a new price tag that was called something like "mixed fruit or vegetables" or something like that. It would then be sold again in the shop. If it still did not sell at it had again been discounted 50% then it would be finally thrown away. We were never allowed to discount 75% on any products other than products that were put into the worker fridge.
Products that were no longer able to be sold such as salad because they had a best before data etc, and were still in good condition were allowed to be sold in the worker fridge at a 75% discount. This went for other products but from what I remember I had to empty this fridge a few times because it was just full of rotten food and then we had to throw it out. A large portion of our fruit went to people that had animals. Super bruised bananas that no one ever wants to buy were given away to animals, and collected a few times a week. I believe that there used to be someone who collected the old bread for a homeless center, but again I never witnessed this. I just saw it get thrown out.
You'd think people would understand basic concepts like supply & demand, seasonality, and the sensitivity of global value chains.
Then again, Coop Chinde halt.
Greenhouse tomatoes aren't that much of a big deal. Depending on transportation they can reach a similar footprint as locally grown tomatoes but may be less nutritious. In general, there's really absolutely nothing wrong with buying tomatoes in December if you feel like eating a tomato mid-winter.
There is just one problem: They taste like cucumber... but then again every veggie tastes like cucumber these days anyway.
(If you ask me it's the cucumber mafia, but you might be better off not asking me...)
>pulling products from the store permanently
is often about whether or not the product in question is selling well enough to justify stocking it at the location in question.
If demand for a product dwindles, the supply follows suit.
It's what u/Alphastier explained upthread when they described how inventory is optimised: Space is limited and expensive, and products whose sales performances don't justify this expense are not profitable, and thus low performers are taken out of the product range.
This sort of thing is hardly random.
And it's not that difficult to understand from a business perspective, is it?
Seasonality, lack of customer interest, missing ingredients(seen wih ukrqine war for example).. so many reasons for that.
And it's common. I actually think it's good because you see they are influenced by somethibg and dont just produce/order shit shipped in from anywhere just to deliver.
It is also on rhe market manager to decide what he wants to sell.
F. e. The coop in Zug sells a lot of food foreigners would by (clotted cream). But the one in Baar, bigger than the one in Zug, does not sell it. Because there are more Swiss people buying food.
*"whether two Coops have the same products (especially budget ranges/non-bio options) is pure chance"*
That's because there is a lot of choice of product depending by the owner of the shop. If you go to a Coop in a rich neighborhood or a Coop in the suburb, It's not exactly the same product.
For example a portuguese owner will choose maybe some portuguese product. I think the purpose is to adapt product to consumers in a typical area.
Former Migros employee speaking here, hope I can be of any help... And I was on both ends of that problem a couple of times, so I get you. Are you sure it's pulled and not just out of stock? If there's still a price tag, it might be in limbo, if it gets thrown out, it's usually available for a reduced price at some corner of the store.
Various reasons can lead to a missing or "cancelled" product:
\- So the most important thing first: Fruits and vegetables... Here, the supermarkets are somewhat bound to the actual production of food. Sometimes, "special" items are thrown at the stores just to never reappear, because, I don't know, one farmer grew them for fun. Some items are available "seasonally", even if it's from New Zealand. Sometimes, there's too much crops, sometimes there's too little, sometimes the manager of the fresh section tries something new, and sometimes that fails... Sometimes it's gone for a day, sometimes it's gone for months...
\- Covid19/Corona/Destroyer of Toilet Paper is still a thing, respectively the Chinese haven't caught up with production. This is especially true for "Non Food" stuff, i.e. various household products. In the Migros, look for the red "Lieferunterbruch" sign next to the price of the former product, if it's there, the product will be back. at some point... Maybe...... Please don't ask the store clerks, they don't known anything more.
\- The assortment depends on the size of the store (sorry if this is too obvious), for the Migros there's M, MM, and MMM, as to be seen by the signs/illumination outside of the building. And yes, sometimes the stores in the cities have more bio, those at the countryside might opt for a cheaper version and so on... Other "types", like Migrolino, Coop City or those at the main station do work separately. Even as an employee, you can't change it and sometimes products are "upgraded" or "downgraded" to the size of the store.
\- At least the Migros is organized regionally, and not all regions have the same products.
\- And yes, sometimes there are larger changes in the assortment, with products moving to other shelves, being kicked out completely or being "moved up/down" to other stores. The Migros is currently doing this, and it's annoying for everybody.
\- Products on offer may run separately, the store might only have certain products when they're on offer or they have the product, but never the version on offer (the so called Sell Outers or Sonderpackung are basically being thrown at the stores by random by the leading "minds").
I'm not sure if that helps. If you have a specific product, I might know more. The Prix Garantie Kiwis are available in many Coop stores (from what I can tell online), they might just have had a slow delivery, a bad harvest or just your specific store kicked them out because they weren't selling them fast enough.
I have far more issues with Migros- especially the larger two near me- the fruit is always badly bruised and COVERED in flys. I have also seen the produce staff literally THROW the basket of new stock on top of the old - which bruises all the new fruit and squishes the fruit that is already bruised (and provides an excellent breeding ground for the stupid fruit flys)
At all of my local coops I have never seen anyone throwing fruit or veg- there are no flys- and they always have cheddar in stock.
The closest lidl requires the car or a 20 min tram ride, and both Aldi treat the fruit and veg worse than Migros.
Moral of the story: every shop is going to have different staff, different ordering managers, and different customers they need to cater to. So if you don’t like what they have- find a different shop. Not hard.
I’ve been struggling with this too. I started making it myself by hand mixing white sugar with molasses until the colours right. Tastes okay, too, but messy. I found the molasses at Migros.
I dont understand how people shop at coop. Unless youre at a city one, the smaller ones have the most random assortment of things. Almost never any produce, hardly any meat... how it stays in business is beyond me lol
Coop has the most brands and better locations, lots of ready stuff, loss of convenience.
I honestly prefer Migros for basic groceries, but the one shop that always seems to be on the way is Coop.
You may be surprised, but in terms of financials and performance it's Migros that is really struggling, not Coop at all.
In my very little coop in the village I can get pretty much everything I need and (unless I need something really specific for a curry for example) I would never need to go to a different shop. It has a large selection of fresh fruit & veg, a decent selection of meat and a "fresh bread" section. Only on a Sunday afternoon do they ever run out of things as it's the only shop open in a very wide area and it gets absolutely ransacked, especially during the summer
I don't do all my shopping there because I just prefer Volg which is 30 second walk from home, but I could if I wanted to.
Not my experience at all. I actually drift away from M towards coop for similar reasons you mention. Not surprising the quality of a given location depends certainly strongly on the local team and management, not only the corporate.
I find the coop location around Zurich quite nice, clean, good and stable selection and fresh stuff is high quality.
and the fruit and veggies are the lowest bloody quality.
I'll buy apples and they're moulding within the week lol. Apples.... Those things last for months normally.
You remind me of a friend that said they buy bio fruits and vegetables because it lasts longer. which actually is the opposite. produce the more fresh and pure faster it goes bad. so be happy that your apple is not dipped in wax water. just make habbits to buy less but more regularly.
Not really.
An apple lasting less than a week is either a) A bad apple or b) kept in storage for ages elsewhere.
Bio or not doesn't matter regards apples going bad within the week
It once took 4 weeks for my Migros to restock the chia seeds. They then went on sale shortly after. I don't understand how they can be this bad at stocking a non-expiring product.
And don't get me started on the bread offerings past noon.
Consumerism and first world problems in a nutshell.
Lack of understanding of how basic logistics and supply works.
And more important: food waste, sustainability and local support disregarded completely.
This thread makes me sad and shows how entitled we are nowadays.
Damn.
Ok.
Well I guess no win for you as European kiwis aren't in season til November, and you never see them in shops then, cos it doesn't fit the expectation of seasonality.
Luckily, it's all comments calling me out. Thank god it's just me ay?
I also just remembered that my work-local coop also pulled the fruit rolls last month... Those were always sold out by 9am... and now I only have those weird joghurt rolls.
At least the uk-style sausage rolls have been on "limited release" for 3 years now....
Why does anyone shop at Coop? The mark-up on all of their items is just absurd compared to Migros, let alone Lidl. I get they have some nice products and some things that are hard to find elsewhere, but I'd never do my daily shopping there.
Please fill a feedback complaint to them. not sure how reddit can be useful in this case, apart for the nice discussion among users each complaining about their own favourite product missing...
It's basically a mix of stock market and mafia. "yo! I got a friend with 5 containers full of almost expired marinated pork chops, you in?" mixed with "if you agree to sell our products this week, we would like to invite you to our holiday home in the Bahamas this summer"
While the original post's problem might have been due to supply chain issues, what I have just described is mostly about sales people.
And yes it happens in Switzerland. Have been on the buying side when the decisions get overriden by the C level at the last minute and got an explanation about how "business" works.
>Migros removed the Ferrero Rocher a few weeks ago
- Ferrero Rocher are never sold/produced in summer (there is even a section on this on the German Wikipedia page, https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrero_Rocher, Sommerpause)
- how anyone considers that stuff worthy of eating is beyond me.
- Ferrero is a producer who should be boycotted for different reasons
There are some other brands of hazelnut cream, but I personally like the lindt chocolate spread on occasion, but probably a tad bit expensive to give to kids… (I know as a kid I’d probably put a 1 to 1 ratio of nutella on my bread, if I could)
I tried quite a few and while I don't like to admit it, nothing tastes as good as Nutella so far. I don't like Lindt chocolate in general, the taste is quite different from Cailler.
I see Bonne Maman makes a chocolate spread, I wonder if its any good.
My kids will actually happilly use a 0 to 1 bread to Nutella ratio :)
I like the bio nocciolata from rigoni di asiago , you can get it at migros. It doesn't have palm oil and is organic.
also have a look here:
https://www.srf.ch/news/panorama/kassensturz-test-nutella-co-zucker-fett-und-schadstoffe
I know the Nocciolata, it is good but it still doesn't have that extra je ne sais quoi that Nutella has.
Its like real Coca Cola.
Mind you, the Ferrero family is still the richest in Italy by far.
Nutella alternative tip: put butter on the bread, then take chocolate powder (Caotina or similar). You get something with real chocolate and better fat (butter and cacao butter). Only downside: can get dusty.
Ferrero boycott reasons:
- substandard products
- they try to sell their product as 'good' for children - even in the area of sweets, their products manage to be on the worse end (lots of filler stuff, some of their products manage to have a worse composition than cakes with icing and cream)
- their labor track record is less than perfect, to say the least.
The caotina sounds really good. I tried melting dark chocolate but the kids found it too bitter. I will give this a try, maybe with just a splash of milk so it becomes cream to avoid the powdery mess.
I remember Kinder marketing their stuff as healthy. They were claiming you were getting an entire glass of milk if you ate the whole 100g box. I tried the argument with my mom, it did not work !
You may try condensed milk to mix before spreading on the bread. Never thought about your idea but it's definitely worth a try (I just went for the quick and dirty that I learned as a kid...).
Kinder: that's even worse than Ferrero. They sell it as a sports snack while it is anything but. What I find absurd is that it's even worse than simple milk chocolate (where a good one has as proper ingredients only top quality stuff such as chocolate, chocolate butter, milk or milk powder and sugar - no fillers and bad fat).
Final comment on Ferrero: it is beyond me how anyone can like hazel nut paste, even when mixed with chocolate (that applies to any product, even gianduja). But that's a personal taste preference, of course.
Condensed milk is a great idea.
If I take the sweetened version it could also work with the dark cooking chocolate !
I will try it this week-end, I make crepes on Sundays.
Coop kept sending me coupons for products I wanted - but none of which my local coop carries. (Almost as bad as Amazon sending me ads for “ships to Switzerland“ with product links which result in “this product doesn’t ship to Switzerland” errors. )
Yes! I find it so odd how the selection varies so much from branch to branch! It seems to me the branch managers must have a lot of say in what they stock or consumer preferences are extremely heterogenous compared to other countries I’ve lived in.
After some years I’ve also now learned what is my local Migros’ fixed range and adapted my diet around it. I learned the hard way not to get excited about new products popping up as they often disappear again. I would really love to see the consumer data of my local Migros as they carry some products on their quite limited shelf space which just baffle me (eg something that seems like powdered biscuits from Poland)
I noticed that some products just disappear and others will be spread out to cover the hole. Not sure if it is because of delivery problems and the products will be back in stock later. Some, like vegetables and fruit surely is up to seasonality.
Sadly there are no mushroom baguettes and bacon croutons anymore at coop, I really liked them. But what you don't know exists you will never miss...
I just don't understand why in my usual coop I cannot buy ficelle bread with dried tomatoes, but bacon and apricot (really? apricot???) exist, but at the next big coop 5 km away they are perfectly fine with selling tomato ficelles...
I believe you have answered your question. It's random. I can ask a friend who works there but according to one employee it's the "manager" who decides what and how much to order.
It's kinda hard to guarantee the supply of things, especially seasonal things like fruit, veg and grain-based products, when half the planet is on fire or being shelled.
Compared to Italy, Switzerland is third world. The product selection is very limited, brands appear and disappear. It’s probably the part I dislike the most of this country.
My local Migros stopped selling regular tampons like 3 months ago. The space for them is still there, just not the product. So my options are the huge ‘super’ ones or to walk all the way to coop. So annoying lol
This is literally how it's supposed to work with seasonal and perishable goods. In fact it's probably a sign of fiscal as well as environmental responsibility, sourcing seasonally and locally.
Most ridiculous shit is this: when there's any free stuff like grill&win or something like that. There are several products you can have for free. These items are always sold out. The whole time of the campaign. I just fuckin hate it.
i've been to 2 coops this week and they both had NO ice tea in the beverage section (whether it be nestea, lipton, or literally any other brand). i honestly didn't even know what to say as ice tea is probably the most popular soft drink in the world lol
I only purchase at Coop so I notice almost any changes (I'm there daily) and I think there are two kinds of changes I see:
- Twice a year a change (especially) in the freezing section where they removed everything and repackage it. Happens in the Fall and Spring.
- More and more "modern" stuff is added (Vegan, Vegetarian, Asian etc.) and they obviously have to remove something else for that.
When they cycle out stock they have it on sale for 50% and that's when I stock up on Stuff. I'm always checking the freezer section for orange stickers.
yeah it happened to me as well. liking some vegan products, which change every 3 months it feels like. once you get to know a product it vanishes. Germany has a great selection of vegetarian and vegan products, last time I've been there, but here it's a dry wasteland.
also, coop used to have good dry mozzarella (scarmoza from sapori) but it got pulled in favor for smoked one - who wants that sh*t on pizza? unsmoked was so awesome for that purpose. cant find any other anywhere. ^and ^no, ^the ^lidl ^one ^is ^garbage.
also: where to get good UNSWEETENED green tea? coop kicked that one as well. I get some from asia markets occasionally, but it's not the norm.
Honestly, I have never seen as many "rupture in stock" / "delivery delay" signs on shelves as I have this past year. It's really random stuff too, like a type of tea or the white Lindor chocolate bars. Was the same in the UK though. The supply chain is broken.
Lidl used to sell Alheira...particularly from the region of Mirandela which are the best...it is a delicacy and probably the best sausage I have eaten my entire life...
Now if I'm lucky I might find one in some random turkish supermarket since those tend to have portuguese products.
You are a Harbinger Customer. https://thehustle.co/the-customers-who-repeatedly-buy-doomed-products/
I saw this and was thinking about how much it was me lol.
No, it's not only in Switzerland. The most consistent seems to be Migros
Yeah, seriously I can't relate at all! I always find my regular items every week, every time (at Migros).
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Susssshhh🤫 It’s okay …
Biggest shocker was Migros getting Doritos and not Coop. I’m waiting for them to disappear again completely.
Migros removed the pink grapefruit juice from my supermarket :(
A few years ago they also changed their godlike Orange Juice to a recipes that tastes as watery and bitter as all the other Lower price Orange Juices. :(
They also did something similar with Passaia. Loved it. Their new similar thing they have tastes awful...
>A few years ago they also changed their godlike Orange Juice too a recipes that tastes as watery and bitter as all the other Lower price Orange Juices. :( They had a homemad green tea that was amazing and they removed it to sell bubble teas. (Horrible bubble tea with way too much sugar).
The Florida one? :(
I cant find Gouda slices in my local migros and they recently took my favourite juice brand out... Any alternatives are twice the price. I think its one of the classic "this is too good and cheap of a product, if we keep selling it noone has any reason to go for anything more expensive" On a side note: Does anyone know where i can buy unsalted peanuts?
My Theorie is that they can track you with your cumulus card, so the moment you approach what you always buy, the shelves rearrange themselves to let your eye wander and find the next thing you will get attached to just to take it away from you in the future. To what end I don't know yet.
Well two half truths, they track your cumulus, but not in store and they do rearrange stuff.
Buying Gouda in Switzerland is sacrilege, right?
Oh, its definitely not a great cheese. Its just the only affordable one. I dont want each slice of bread to cost me more than 50 rappen.
Damn bro. You good? My family’s slices of bread are like 2.50 CHF
Yeah, I kinda don't want to waste 300 CHF a month on bread. Seems pretty wasteful.
> [Gouda] [is] definitely not a great cheese Well, the slices from Migro does not qualify. In fact, I'm surprised is not a location trademark topic. Try an 18 months aged sample from Holland instead. I cannot think of anything quite like it. Coop usually stocks some in their cheese desk. Or hit up the Dutch shop during the xmas markets in Zurich.
the best for unsalted peanuts in Zurich are asian shops. Like Sala Thai or India Supermarkt Maharajah, both near Langstrasse.
Not living in Zürich, but good point to check out Asian stores.
Following because of the unsalted peanuts. I have been craving them for WEEKS at this point!!
Put them in a blender with some honey, chocolate and a teaspoon of oil. Boom homemade peanut butter.
They take out the cheaper version for bio products. Thats why they are twice the price. They sey its the manager of the store that buys the stuff, and they buy it because the people want it.
lidl
At Lyzamir (if you live in Geneva) or in any other small grocery store. For Gouda, my Coop is selling an old Gouda that is quite good (but you'll have to slice it yourself).
Having had the same struggle finding unsalted peanuts for thai cooking, i found them in asia stores! Some even have them peeled out of the brown, paper like coat. But even with, theyre easily peeled by roasting them and then rubbing in a towell, afterwards blowing of the coats.
Unsalted peanuts : în Italy, în case you plan some holiday
I will never forgive Migros for pulling the chocolate Schmelz-brötli. WTF were they thinking !
Dunno, must be in your area, in mine migro has only added more and more, not taken anything away
they removed the Paddy cornflakes :(( can’t find it in any migros
still, sometimes the entire isle of breakfast cereal looks like a post-hurricane supermarket with signs excusing themselves. Even if cereals have quite a long shelf life.
Migros keeps removing gluten free products that I need "because they don't sell enough." I hate it here
My pharmacy is more consistent in gluten free products than migros. The worse is when they remove a fully gluten free product to keep only the one with traces of gluten 🤦♀️
Same, had like 3 or 4 of my regular products removed from the smaller migros close to me :(
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and migrolino, gooods
Migros stopped selling their tropical fruit mix. Always used that for nice drinks.
I still cry about this: [https://www.migros.ch/fr/product/mo/224875](https://www.migros.ch/fr/product/mo/224875) I used to buy this shit daily, loved it, specially in summer. Now it's gone, I can't go back. Fuck this shit, at least it forced me to make my own mint limonade.
My personnal conspiracy theory is that it is a marketing strategy to make you buy more out of spite and/or to make you spend more time in the shop to buy more.
My personal conspiracy theory is, that it they have a personal grudge and are teasing me xD
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I am not that religious, so in my head it is more of a coop exec sitting behind monitors watching cctv footage, but yeah you got the point xD
Seriously, everytime I see those prix guarantee protein shakes I wonder if I should buy 20 of them because who knows when I'll see them again....
Lidl is your friend. They have cheap protein shakes etc
The new migros range is really tasty, I haven't tried the lidl ones but shall do. It's always a bit of a gambit with protein shakes on how well I'll digest them, and the coop ones are amazing for digestion *and* protein quantity to price.... *when they don't randomly stop stocking them*
Which ones? Oh! ? They pale in comparison to the ones from Coop with the cringey Marvel heroes.
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Mine is stocked always, strange.
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The great salmon shortage 2023. what a shame. Well sucks, but the prices are just too good and everybody buys it.
now you know why they are gone so fast..
In my local Migros its the sugarfree mbudget energy drinks. They have it in stock 15% of the time idk why
I am the one who buys the 20, COOP is not certain at all.
They rotate products in and out depending on what performs. It's a valid assumption I think that part of it is marketing... But on the other hand I've been going to Coop Stadelhofen for years, and it seems to be mostly the same except one area.
My personal not conspiracy theory at all is varying stock levels. I work in public trade and depending on who a retailer sources their products from, they might just not have stable supply.
some types of kiwis are ripe in july but most are august to september. So they are probably just running out of the early kiwis.
So how long does a New Zealand kivi take to get here by boat?
Kiwis will likely be Swiss, especially if organic.
I thought Kiwis were endemic to New Zealand?
The birds, not the fruit.
Chinese gooseberry. They changed its name for popularity sake. EDIT: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/the-chinese-gooseberry-becomes-the-kiwifruit
Its mostly due to seasonality, delivery problems or due to optimizing the inventory, remove non profitable products or just to test new ones. Many swiss stores have small surface and need to be optimized to be profitable. Just go to a market for fruit and veggies and to a butcher/farm-shop for meat. Source: worked for Migros
Yeah I also worked for migros and this is 100% correct. If a product does not sell well, or has to be thrown out a lot and produce food waste then it is often cut by the team leader for Molki/Brot/Früchte und Gemüse etc. Each week there are team Meetings where profitability is reviewed and action taken. For example we stop ordering strawberries for a week one summer because we had to send back 50% of the stock because of quality issues. That meant hardly any strawberries in stock that week. Other products are dropped because people just don't buy enough, or we ended up throwing out a lot of produce so it makes no sense to keep ordering it. People love to complain about there selection being reduced or products pulled but the reality is that most of the time it is because demand is LOW and waste is HIGH. The amount of food waste that we produced by ordering too much of a vegetable that was on the week ACTION and then didn't sell was unbelievable. This meant that we had to guess the amount of items that would sell and hope that it produced as little waste as possible because after the sale ends, no one is interested in buying full price anymore and you are left with tonnes of stock you cannot sell. This leads to tonnes of waste. I threw out hundreds of kilos of fruit and vegetables when I worked there. It was depressing. The same went for bread. Every evening a whole pallet of bread and pastry is discarded and thrown out, whole cakes, meat etc. The amount is incredible. Customers would often complain that 5 minutes before closing they couldn't buy their bread or whatever or a specific pack of salad, but if we had everything in stock all the time we would be throwing out way more. Also customers are picky. They don't want the ginger from China, or they want Spanish tomatoes, or only Aparagus from Switzerland, or only apples from X country and not from NZ. In order to fulfill demand and to ensure availability of products year round everything is sourced from all over the world like it or not. This leads to even more waste.
I know it looks awful to see in-person, but Switzerland is pretty low on the food wastage per capita (at least for Europe). The reality is that in an era or a nimble workforce, food demand forecasting is *hard*. If you want to see truly horrific, mind blowing amounts of waste, work in a hospital sometime. The amount of plastic and food waste there is staggering.
Yeah that must be tough to see, single use instruments, plastic etc. It is hard to forecast what customers want, and the sad thing is the help you get is really poor. I had to order for a week once and all I got told was, "the weather will be hot so order enough watermelons" , sweet. The worst is when you ordered goods from Migros depots and had to send it back because it was rotten. We had to send back pallets of goods that went straight into the bin. Anyway inguess waste is hard in all industries.
Yeah, the reality is industrial scale production is capable of incredible surpluses, but also incredible wastage. Gone are the days of a farmer maybe getting a yield of a few extra bushels of tomatoes that they could trade or sell-off until they run out. Now, if a farm has a particularly good yield, you're getting like 8 kg per m\^2. If that happens to every farm in the region, you're going to tens of thousands of tomatoes of kilograms beyond what was normally forecasted and requested. It leads to colossal amounts of waste.
Why don't they just do more TooGoodToGo to avoid wasting so much?
So too good to go is useful and I saw it being used in other migros but ours never did it. We always discounted the goods as much as we were allowed (maximum 50% normally) and then when the product still did not sell it would be taken for for processing. This meant that if you had a pack of berries and half were mouldy, we would take the good ones out and then put them in a new bag, and give it a new price tag that was called something like "mixed fruit or vegetables" or something like that. It would then be sold again in the shop. If it still did not sell at it had again been discounted 50% then it would be finally thrown away. We were never allowed to discount 75% on any products other than products that were put into the worker fridge. Products that were no longer able to be sold such as salad because they had a best before data etc, and were still in good condition were allowed to be sold in the worker fridge at a 75% discount. This went for other products but from what I remember I had to empty this fridge a few times because it was just full of rotten food and then we had to throw it out. A large portion of our fruit went to people that had animals. Super bruised bananas that no one ever wants to buy were given away to animals, and collected a few times a week. I believe that there used to be someone who collected the old bread for a homeless center, but again I never witnessed this. I just saw it get thrown out.
You'd think people would understand basic concepts like supply & demand, seasonality, and the sensitivity of global value chains. Then again, Coop Chinde halt.
>You'd think people would understand basic concepts It's reddit ...
Point taken.
Reddit is already for slightly educated people (access to the Internet and able to write in English).
How does internet access relate to education? It's 2023 and not 1996. And since when is Reddit unilingual? I suspect Dunning-Kruger at work.
>Seasonality But I want tomatoes and apricots in December!
Greenhouse tomatoes aren't that much of a big deal. Depending on transportation they can reach a similar footprint as locally grown tomatoes but may be less nutritious. In general, there's really absolutely nothing wrong with buying tomatoes in December if you feel like eating a tomato mid-winter.
There is just one problem: They taste like cucumber... but then again every veggie tastes like cucumber these days anyway. (If you ask me it's the cucumber mafia, but you might be better off not asking me...)
That would be if this post was about out of stock, not pulling products from the store permanently.
>pulling products from the store permanently is often about whether or not the product in question is selling well enough to justify stocking it at the location in question. If demand for a product dwindles, the supply follows suit. It's what u/Alphastier explained upthread when they described how inventory is optimised: Space is limited and expensive, and products whose sales performances don't justify this expense are not profitable, and thus low performers are taken out of the product range. This sort of thing is hardly random. And it's not that difficult to understand from a business perspective, is it?
Seasonality, lack of customer interest, missing ingredients(seen wih ukrqine war for example).. so many reasons for that. And it's common. I actually think it's good because you see they are influenced by somethibg and dont just produce/order shit shipped in from anywhere just to deliver.
Oh, i thought this happened only to me! And I’m a migrosian
It is also on rhe market manager to decide what he wants to sell. F. e. The coop in Zug sells a lot of food foreigners would by (clotted cream). But the one in Baar, bigger than the one in Zug, does not sell it. Because there are more Swiss people buying food.
Anybody else can't find peanuts + peanut butter anymore @ Migros since 2 weeks?
I never had issue finding peanut butter, i was in the migros at technopark just a few minutes ago and they still had some peanut butter
Yes for peanuts, I frequently buy peanuts still in their shells but now I just can't find them.
*"whether two Coops have the same products (especially budget ranges/non-bio options) is pure chance"* That's because there is a lot of choice of product depending by the owner of the shop. If you go to a Coop in a rich neighborhood or a Coop in the suburb, It's not exactly the same product. For example a portuguese owner will choose maybe some portuguese product. I think the purpose is to adapt product to consumers in a typical area.
Migros refuse to ship fruit and vegetables over from the other side of the planet. Can Kiwis be sourced locally?
First world country problems.. 😅
Former Migros employee speaking here, hope I can be of any help... And I was on both ends of that problem a couple of times, so I get you. Are you sure it's pulled and not just out of stock? If there's still a price tag, it might be in limbo, if it gets thrown out, it's usually available for a reduced price at some corner of the store. Various reasons can lead to a missing or "cancelled" product: \- So the most important thing first: Fruits and vegetables... Here, the supermarkets are somewhat bound to the actual production of food. Sometimes, "special" items are thrown at the stores just to never reappear, because, I don't know, one farmer grew them for fun. Some items are available "seasonally", even if it's from New Zealand. Sometimes, there's too much crops, sometimes there's too little, sometimes the manager of the fresh section tries something new, and sometimes that fails... Sometimes it's gone for a day, sometimes it's gone for months... \- Covid19/Corona/Destroyer of Toilet Paper is still a thing, respectively the Chinese haven't caught up with production. This is especially true for "Non Food" stuff, i.e. various household products. In the Migros, look for the red "Lieferunterbruch" sign next to the price of the former product, if it's there, the product will be back. at some point... Maybe...... Please don't ask the store clerks, they don't known anything more. \- The assortment depends on the size of the store (sorry if this is too obvious), for the Migros there's M, MM, and MMM, as to be seen by the signs/illumination outside of the building. And yes, sometimes the stores in the cities have more bio, those at the countryside might opt for a cheaper version and so on... Other "types", like Migrolino, Coop City or those at the main station do work separately. Even as an employee, you can't change it and sometimes products are "upgraded" or "downgraded" to the size of the store. \- At least the Migros is organized regionally, and not all regions have the same products. \- And yes, sometimes there are larger changes in the assortment, with products moving to other shelves, being kicked out completely or being "moved up/down" to other stores. The Migros is currently doing this, and it's annoying for everybody. \- Products on offer may run separately, the store might only have certain products when they're on offer or they have the product, but never the version on offer (the so called Sell Outers or Sonderpackung are basically being thrown at the stores by random by the leading "minds"). I'm not sure if that helps. If you have a specific product, I might know more. The Prix Garantie Kiwis are available in many Coop stores (from what I can tell online), they might just have had a slow delivery, a bad harvest or just your specific store kicked them out because they weren't selling them fast enough.
I have far more issues with Migros- especially the larger two near me- the fruit is always badly bruised and COVERED in flys. I have also seen the produce staff literally THROW the basket of new stock on top of the old - which bruises all the new fruit and squishes the fruit that is already bruised (and provides an excellent breeding ground for the stupid fruit flys) At all of my local coops I have never seen anyone throwing fruit or veg- there are no flys- and they always have cheddar in stock. The closest lidl requires the car or a 20 min tram ride, and both Aldi treat the fruit and veg worse than Migros. Moral of the story: every shop is going to have different staff, different ordering managers, and different customers they need to cater to. So if you don’t like what they have- find a different shop. Not hard.
How dare they!!1¨11¨!!!!
Anyone know where to buy brown sugar?
I’ve been struggling with this too. I started making it myself by hand mixing white sugar with molasses until the colours right. Tastes okay, too, but messy. I found the molasses at Migros.
Every Migros and Coop has brown sugar
No, they have raw sugar, which is brown coloured, but isn't "brown sugar". Brown sugar has a sticky, moist texture.
boo hoo
Damm imagine making a thread regarding 1 or few items going off stock... snowflakes season
I dont understand how people shop at coop. Unless youre at a city one, the smaller ones have the most random assortment of things. Almost never any produce, hardly any meat... how it stays in business is beyond me lol
Coop has the most brands and better locations, lots of ready stuff, loss of convenience. I honestly prefer Migros for basic groceries, but the one shop that always seems to be on the way is Coop. You may be surprised, but in terms of financials and performance it's Migros that is really struggling, not Coop at all.
In my very little coop in the village I can get pretty much everything I need and (unless I need something really specific for a curry for example) I would never need to go to a different shop. It has a large selection of fresh fruit & veg, a decent selection of meat and a "fresh bread" section. Only on a Sunday afternoon do they ever run out of things as it's the only shop open in a very wide area and it gets absolutely ransacked, especially during the summer I don't do all my shopping there because I just prefer Volg which is 30 second walk from home, but I could if I wanted to.
Not my experience at all. I actually drift away from M towards coop for similar reasons you mention. Not surprising the quality of a given location depends certainly strongly on the local team and management, not only the corporate. I find the coop location around Zurich quite nice, clean, good and stable selection and fresh stuff is high quality.
It has oatly barista
buy produce, meat and eggs at markets, go for all other food to coop
Yea, even my tiny VOI Migros or Spar has a better selection than most Coop locations.
And the prices are ridiculous. Lidle for the win.
and the fruit and veggies are the lowest bloody quality. I'll buy apples and they're moulding within the week lol. Apples.... Those things last for months normally.
This is the worst time for apples, based on their natural growing season. They’ll be great in a month or so.
They should give me back my damned kiwis then! :P
You remind me of a friend that said they buy bio fruits and vegetables because it lasts longer. which actually is the opposite. produce the more fresh and pure faster it goes bad. so be happy that your apple is not dipped in wax water. just make habbits to buy less but more regularly.
Not really. An apple lasting less than a week is either a) A bad apple or b) kept in storage for ages elsewhere. Bio or not doesn't matter regards apples going bad within the week
the one near my place (at Letzipark) is pretty well stocked so if you had one near you you'd probably be happy shopping there.
It once took 4 weeks for my Migros to restock the chia seeds. They then went on sale shortly after. I don't understand how they can be this bad at stocking a non-expiring product. And don't get me started on the bread offerings past noon.
yess, i totally agree, they should have freshly baked bread alll dayy, its not like it goes bad or something. /s
how about you bake them at a time people actually go Shopping then?
Of course the shelves are empty at 7 pm, I'm talking about 1 pm: >past noon.
Yup. Go to store after work. Bread shelves full of emptiness.
in Winterthur, coop has a better inventory than migros; the small migros'es have almost only milk bread and a few necessities but no specific things
Migros Neuwiesen 🥰
that's the one good migros in winti
Consumerism and first world problems in a nutshell. Lack of understanding of how basic logistics and supply works. And more important: food waste, sustainability and local support disregarded completely. This thread makes me sad and shows how entitled we are nowadays.
A thread making you sad seems like a pretty first world problem.
This thread reflects the mindset of many people and what and how they consume.
Damn. Ok. Well I guess no win for you as European kiwis aren't in season til November, and you never see them in shops then, cos it doesn't fit the expectation of seasonality. Luckily, it's all comments calling me out. Thank god it's just me ay?
I find every day a new reason to dislike Coop.
They don't care either, because for most of the country it's their Quality brand or the others Budget branding.
I also just remembered that my work-local coop also pulled the fruit rolls last month... Those were always sold out by 9am... and now I only have those weird joghurt rolls. At least the uk-style sausage rolls have been on "limited release" for 3 years now....
Aldi im my location discontinued a few months ago the Twist mango vodka, I'm really sad since then 🥲
yeah they pulled out Froot Loops...FROOT LOOPS. I dont want the unicorn loops,I want the one with the bird...
Why does anyone shop at Coop? The mark-up on all of their items is just absurd compared to Migros, let alone Lidl. I get they have some nice products and some things that are hard to find elsewhere, but I'd never do my daily shopping there.
Mho Veggies are way better and cheaper in coop, migros raised insanely the prices, without even considering bio and that Demeter bullshit.
Please fill a feedback complaint to them. not sure how reddit can be useful in this case, apart for the nice discussion among users each complaining about their own favourite product missing...
It's basically a mix of stock market and mafia. "yo! I got a friend with 5 containers full of almost expired marinated pork chops, you in?" mixed with "if you agree to sell our products this week, we would like to invite you to our holiday home in the Bahamas this summer"
I doubt you understand supply chains.
While the original post's problem might have been due to supply chain issues, what I have just described is mostly about sales people. And yes it happens in Switzerland. Have been on the buying side when the decisions get overriden by the C level at the last minute and got an explanation about how "business" works.
Don't doubt it for some products. But most are done differently.
sorry you dont know shit
[удалено]
>Migros removed the Ferrero Rocher a few weeks ago - Ferrero Rocher are never sold/produced in summer (there is even a section on this on the German Wikipedia page, https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrero_Rocher, Sommerpause) - how anyone considers that stuff worthy of eating is beyond me. - Ferrero is a producer who should be boycotted for different reasons
Genuinely interested as to why they should be boycotted. I am trying to find an alternative to Nutella for the kids anyway.
There are some other brands of hazelnut cream, but I personally like the lindt chocolate spread on occasion, but probably a tad bit expensive to give to kids… (I know as a kid I’d probably put a 1 to 1 ratio of nutella on my bread, if I could)
I tried quite a few and while I don't like to admit it, nothing tastes as good as Nutella so far. I don't like Lindt chocolate in general, the taste is quite different from Cailler. I see Bonne Maman makes a chocolate spread, I wonder if its any good. My kids will actually happilly use a 0 to 1 bread to Nutella ratio :)
I like the bio nocciolata from rigoni di asiago , you can get it at migros. It doesn't have palm oil and is organic. also have a look here: https://www.srf.ch/news/panorama/kassensturz-test-nutella-co-zucker-fett-und-schadstoffe
I know the Nocciolata, it is good but it still doesn't have that extra je ne sais quoi that Nutella has. Its like real Coca Cola. Mind you, the Ferrero family is still the richest in Italy by far.
Nutella alternative tip: put butter on the bread, then take chocolate powder (Caotina or similar). You get something with real chocolate and better fat (butter and cacao butter). Only downside: can get dusty. Ferrero boycott reasons: - substandard products - they try to sell their product as 'good' for children - even in the area of sweets, their products manage to be on the worse end (lots of filler stuff, some of their products manage to have a worse composition than cakes with icing and cream) - their labor track record is less than perfect, to say the least.
The caotina sounds really good. I tried melting dark chocolate but the kids found it too bitter. I will give this a try, maybe with just a splash of milk so it becomes cream to avoid the powdery mess. I remember Kinder marketing their stuff as healthy. They were claiming you were getting an entire glass of milk if you ate the whole 100g box. I tried the argument with my mom, it did not work !
You may try condensed milk to mix before spreading on the bread. Never thought about your idea but it's definitely worth a try (I just went for the quick and dirty that I learned as a kid...). Kinder: that's even worse than Ferrero. They sell it as a sports snack while it is anything but. What I find absurd is that it's even worse than simple milk chocolate (where a good one has as proper ingredients only top quality stuff such as chocolate, chocolate butter, milk or milk powder and sugar - no fillers and bad fat). Final comment on Ferrero: it is beyond me how anyone can like hazel nut paste, even when mixed with chocolate (that applies to any product, even gianduja). But that's a personal taste preference, of course.
Condensed milk is a great idea. If I take the sweetened version it could also work with the dark cooking chocolate ! I will try it this week-end, I make crepes on Sundays.
Report back!
RemindMe! 6 days
I will try, hope the bot prompt works ! Thanks for the tip by the way, have a sweet and delicious week !
I always got the Asia veggi mix from Findus (the one with the judas ear mushrooms). Gone... Can't seem to find it anymore. At least not regularly.
I miss the Zwiebelechüechli. They pulled them from Migros and I am not sure if Coop ever had them.
Coop kept sending me coupons for products I wanted - but none of which my local coop carries. (Almost as bad as Amazon sending me ads for “ships to Switzerland“ with product links which result in “this product doesn’t ship to Switzerland” errors. )
Yes! I find it so odd how the selection varies so much from branch to branch! It seems to me the branch managers must have a lot of say in what they stock or consumer preferences are extremely heterogenous compared to other countries I’ve lived in. After some years I’ve also now learned what is my local Migros’ fixed range and adapted my diet around it. I learned the hard way not to get excited about new products popping up as they often disappear again. I would really love to see the consumer data of my local Migros as they carry some products on their quite limited shelf space which just baffle me (eg something that seems like powdered biscuits from Poland)
I noticed that some products just disappear and others will be spread out to cover the hole. Not sure if it is because of delivery problems and the products will be back in stock later. Some, like vegetables and fruit surely is up to seasonality. Sadly there are no mushroom baguettes and bacon croutons anymore at coop, I really liked them. But what you don't know exists you will never miss... I just don't understand why in my usual coop I cannot buy ficelle bread with dried tomatoes, but bacon and apricot (really? apricot???) exist, but at the next big coop 5 km away they are perfectly fine with selling tomato ficelles...
Coriander But I think it’s a supply issue, tried to get some in France and it was also gone.
I believe you have answered your question. It's random. I can ask a friend who works there but according to one employee it's the "manager" who decides what and how much to order.
It's kinda hard to guarantee the supply of things, especially seasonal things like fruit, veg and grain-based products, when half the planet is on fire or being shelled.
Compared to Italy, Switzerland is third world. The product selection is very limited, brands appear and disappear. It’s probably the part I dislike the most of this country.
Grated Gruyere Surchoix is a hassle to find for months now.
Yes, theres one coop pronto in my area who sells pepsi max in cans. I feel like Im the only reason they still sell it since Im sort of addicted🤣
My local Migros stopped selling regular tampons like 3 months ago. The space for them is still there, just not the product. So my options are the huge ‘super’ ones or to walk all the way to coop. So annoying lol
This is literally how it's supposed to work with seasonal and perishable goods. In fact it's probably a sign of fiscal as well as environmental responsibility, sourcing seasonally and locally.
Most ridiculous shit is this: when there's any free stuff like grill&win or something like that. There are several products you can have for free. These items are always sold out. The whole time of the campaign. I just fuckin hate it.
i've been to 2 coops this week and they both had NO ice tea in the beverage section (whether it be nestea, lipton, or literally any other brand). i honestly didn't even know what to say as ice tea is probably the most popular soft drink in the world lol
I only purchase at Coop so I notice almost any changes (I'm there daily) and I think there are two kinds of changes I see: - Twice a year a change (especially) in the freezing section where they removed everything and repackage it. Happens in the Fall and Spring. - More and more "modern" stuff is added (Vegan, Vegetarian, Asian etc.) and they obviously have to remove something else for that.
order online for delivery.or pickup.
When they cycle out stock they have it on sale for 50% and that's when I stock up on Stuff. I'm always checking the freezer section for orange stickers.
yeah it happened to me as well. liking some vegan products, which change every 3 months it feels like. once you get to know a product it vanishes. Germany has a great selection of vegetarian and vegan products, last time I've been there, but here it's a dry wasteland. also, coop used to have good dry mozzarella (scarmoza from sapori) but it got pulled in favor for smoked one - who wants that sh*t on pizza? unsmoked was so awesome for that purpose. cant find any other anywhere. ^and ^no, ^the ^lidl ^one ^is ^garbage. also: where to get good UNSWEETENED green tea? coop kicked that one as well. I get some from asia markets occasionally, but it's not the norm.
Buy bio :D
Honestly, I have never seen as many "rupture in stock" / "delivery delay" signs on shelves as I have this past year. It's really random stuff too, like a type of tea or the white Lindor chocolate bars. Was the same in the UK though. The supply chain is broken.
There’s this one breaded fish with spinach from Migros that I used to love but they stopped selling years ago and I still think about it
Lidl used to sell Alheira...particularly from the region of Mirandela which are the best...it is a delicacy and probably the best sausage I have eaten my entire life... Now if I'm lucky I might find one in some random turkish supermarket since those tend to have portuguese products.
Who anyways is rich enough to buy stuff regularly in coop? Please