Claussen Pickles Are In Short Supply, Here’s Why

I love pickles, but not all pickles are created equally. In fact there really is one brand I prefer above all the rest, and that is the always refrigerated Claussen Pickles. They are consistently the best pickles out there. I like the dill pickles because I'm not some kinda of bread and butter freak. Dill is the way to go, and that's apparent because it's been tough to find on the shelves since the Coronavirus pandemic began.

At first I thought nothing really about it. We were seeing some bizarre shortages on shelves as people's buying habits drastically changed. Obviously there were problems with toilet paper shortages. People were buying up tons of flour because they all of a sudden were going to become some bake from scratch bakers or something. We saw runs on meat, frozen pizzas, canned good, noodles, and the other staples. But Claussen pickles? Are people really buying these up? I thought I was the only one who reached for an extra jar to bring with me, but apparently I wasn't. There's more to it though than that.

An article in Supply Chain Management Review explains that it has to do with "Tier - 2 supply shortages." Which is a real bummer because according to them that means it's a sustained shortage. The problem is the fact that the amount of glass recycling is down, causing a shortage on glass pickle jars that Claussen uses. That makes a lot of sense, because while we've seen other items such as beef, and toilet paper, and other things bounce back quickly, the supply chain for Claussen pickles is an ongoing problem. Glass recycling is down because of reduced city services for recycling. At one point this summer there was up to an 88% in Claussen Pickles.

I've fortunately been able to still find some pickles still. I have not been able to find my favorite though, which is the dill spear cut pickles. This isn't a huge deal in the big picture for the average person, obviously. I've just been cutting up the whole pickles and getting buy. There has been time where I couldn't find any. But, if you're like me and you've been wondering what the issue is, it's a bit more complicated than you may have thought.