Is there a shortage of Fritos?
Not exactly.
But two years into the pandemic, consumers are still wondering why they can’t find certain snack foods at the store. That includes Fritos, a staple among Texans who cherish Frito Pie.
It’s a question that’s puzzled consumers for the last several months, especially considering that Plano-based Frito-Lay is by far the largest snack food company in the country.
“What’s the deal with Fritos being harder to find than common sense in Washington, D.C.?” a radio station in East Texas asked in late November.
“Could a strike that happened at the Frito factory have had much longer effects than anyone anticipated?” another station in Shreveport asked in December.
Google searches for “Frito shortage” have spiked in recent weeks across Texas and surrounding states.
To understand why consumers still can’t find their favorite snack foods on shelves as easily as they could before the pandemic, it’s worth looking at how the supply chain has changed over the past two years.
Frito-Lay didn’t respond to questions, but the most important factor is likely labor. Irregular inventory levels can be the result of fewer workers in plants or behind the wheel of distribution trucks. And demand for snacks is higher than it was pre-pandemic.
At 30 plants across the U.S., Frito-Lay turns potatoes, corn and other food products into the brand’s iconic snack foods. From there, the snacks are bagged and shipped to one of its 34 distribution centers.
The snack shelves at grocery and convenience stores are filled and managed by Frito-Lay employees who have routes and make regular deliveries. It’s a similar model to how beer makes it to store coolers: It’s delivered by the local beer distributor and never goes through a grocer’s warehouse.
On-shelf availability of snack foods at the end of February was 16% lower than pre-pandemic, according to data analysis firm IRI’s dashboard tracking supply across the U.S. It shows lower stock in physical stores coupled with higher demand.
But there isn’t a shortage of these foods as we would traditionally think about it. The corn that goes into a lot of these snack foods is more expensive these days, but it’s not in low supply.
Professor and head of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University Jayson Lusk is a food economist who studies what we eat and why we eat it. He points to changes in the workforce over the COVID-19 pandemic as the best way of explaining the “randomness” of what we do and don’t see on shelves.
The so-called Great Resignation has affected the food and agricultural industries, he said.
“You’re seeing wage rates in food processing increasing at a rate that’s even faster than the broader economy,” he said. “It is another sign that these food processors are having a hard time finding enough people to work, and those wages are getting pulled up in response.”
The highly publicized strike at a Frito-Lay plant last year is unlikely to still be affecting production, Lusk said. But COVID-19 has caused some plants to run at reduced capacity or shut down in some cases during surges.
There’s also the question of how reliably goods are moving from processing to distribution centers to stores.
“There’s at least a couple of truck rides there,” Lusk said.
And the country’s truck driver shortage is well known.
But on top of all of this, Lusk points to increased consumer anxiety, driven mostly by an increase in prices that the U.S. hasn’t seen in nearly 30 years. If someone’s favorite brand or product is missing from a shelf, that adds to the anxiety.
When will the randomness be behind us?
If someone said they know for a fact when inventories will start looking like they did pre-pandemic, Lusk said they’d be lying.
Normalization will depend on expanding the labor force and tamping down inflation, he said.
In October, Frito-Lay announced that it’s hiring 15,000 workers, partly to bolster its distribution networks to meet consumer demand.
On its website, Frito-Lay has a product locator and a standing notice for customers looking for its products:
“In our continued efforts to keep the store shelves stocked, we have simplified our production to best meet the current consumer demand. As a result, we have temporarily paused the production of some items. Please know we’re working hard to get all your favorite snacks back in a store near you ASAP. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”
We may not be patient, but a poll conducted by Lusk’s team at Purdue’s Center for Food Demand Analysis and Sustainability indicates that Americans are overwhelmingly satisfied with their diets.
The center’s survey of 1,200 U.S. residents found 87% were satisfied with their current diets.
“There’s a lot of negative angles we can point to in the food system but … the vast majority of people are pretty happy with the food environment that they face,” Lusk said.
