by Andrew Mellman » Fri Jan 29, 2021 3:12 pm
Low cal soft drinks shortages are due to aluminum shortages and difficulties in obtaining shipments from India (where a lot of can aluminum comes from), but also there's a big problem still with distribution chains not working well. In other words, food service soft drink sales are way down, retail sales are way up (while people eat and drink at home), but retail packaging has not and likely will not gear up production as in a matter of months restaurants should come back! The result: manufacturers are concentrating production for retail on 2-3 key SKU's (they sell a lot more Diet Pepsi than Diet Pepsi Cherry!).
Right now people are still stuck at home, and they are baking. It is likely that many companies have large stockpiles of food-service white chocolate but little availability of small bags or similar containers! If you can get together with friends to use a restaurant-sized bag of white chocolate, you might want to try Sysco (or another food service purveyor) and buy a bag? Hopefully it would be available (I really don't know), but it might be worth trying!
Andrew Mellman
