Mustard, sunflower oil, flour… For the French, the year 2022 was placed under the sign of shortages. In some supermarket departments, the shelves were particularly empty, leaving a bitter memory for consumers.

Indeed, before that time, stock-outs and shortages were relatively rare in supermarkets, especially for highly popular products such as mustard and oil.

In stores, a completely different specter hangs over customers, that of inflation. Along with stock-outs, this phenomenon has spread to almost all consumer goods as well as services, to the great displeasure of the French wallet.

While this phenomenon does not appear to be waning in 2023, stockouts appear to have eased. However, these are still present in supermarkets. In April 2023, “the Total PGC-FLS shortage rate reached 5.2% and increased by 0.3 points compared to the same period last year. These shelf shortages represent a loss of earnings over a full year gross of 5.1 billion euros in hypermarkets and supermarkets”, specifies Elodie Thévenet, OSA Nielsen IQ consultant to our colleagues from LSA.

Discover in our slideshow the ranking of the 5 departments most affected by stockouts in April 2023 compared to the same period in 2022, according to a Nielsen IQ study for LSA carried out between March 27 and April 23.