Where is all the Alfredo sauce in Hamilton? We found out
The meal is a simple classic: fettuccine Alfredo.
Ameen Konbar, 19, has made it since he was a little kid. He's always used the same Classico garlic Alfredo sauce, found in a Mason jar at your average Hamilton grocer.
He and his mother planned to have the dish for dinner Monday night.
All we needed was a jar."
The pair drove to the Walmart on Upper James Street and Fennell Avenue East. Konbar trudged through a small line and went for aisle four, the pasta aisle. His mother stayed in the car.
He came back empty-handed. Alfredo was out of stock.
They started the car again and drove to the next Walmart on Mohawk Road East. Konbar waited in the next line. Inside, he was met with another a wall of red sauce. An employee casually came around. Konbar told him the problem.
He said, Yeah, at this point, I have no idea where the hell the (Alfredo) sauce has gone.'"
Growing worried, Konbar and his mom switched it up and headed for two Food Basics, first to one on Mohawk Road East just off Upper Gage Avenue.
Nothing there," said Konbar. It's as if they never sold the product in the first place. Their own (Selection) brand - gone. They replaced the entire pasta shelf with Classico's marinara sauce."
And at the other, on Rymal Road West and Upper Wentworth?
Same situation. Completely empty."
A last-ditch effort at Giant Tiger was to no avail. Konbar got fed up and settled for Classico marinara.
As he and his mother drove home, five stores and more than an hour later, a question lingered: Where is all the alfredo sauce in Hamilton?
The short answer is it isn't.
When COVID hit, pasta sauce makers had to limit production and tailor product lines to best fit consumers' needs and wants.
At Kraft-Heinz Co.'s manufacturing plant just outside Montreal - where 63 types of Classico sauces are made and shipped to grocers across Canada - Alfredo production was halted in May.
It was a decision that boiled down to sales and volume: make all sauces but less of them, or make only popular sauces but more of them.
If you produce your more popular brands, you can actually produce more of it because you're not changing the production lines as much," said Av Maharaj, chief administrative officer at Kraft-Heinz Canada.
Since pivoting to red sauces, Kraft-Heinz has seen a 10 per cent hike in the production of Classico, from 984,000 jars a month pre-COVID to 1,092,000 jars a month presently.
In a normal year, production lines at the company's plant could be used interchangeably to make different sauces. But that takes time, Maharaj explained. Lines have to be shut down and cleaned to avoid cross-contamination and emphasize flavours in individual sauces. It's a process that can take four to six hours or up to a full day.
If you do that a bunch of times, you become much more inefficient and actually get less out," said Maharaj, noting Kraft-Heinz has made similar changes to Kraft Peanut Butter. Instead of making the same amount of smooth and crunchy, they chose to make more of the former because that's what consumers are most likely to buy.
And I'm a crunchy peanut butter kind of guy," he added with a chuckle. But we want to get as many products out to Canadians as possible as they stock their pantries in the second wave."
The same is true for other companies.
The Financial Post reported in May that a mysterious case of missing Cool Ranch Doritos stemmed from its manufacturer, PepsiCo Foods Canada, temporarily halting production early in the pandemic to cope with a rise in demand for snacks.
While Kraft-Heinz hasn't received too many complaints from customers regarding the whereabouts of Classico's eight Alfredo sauces, Maharaj said the company is expanding its current fleet of 40 production lines. Alfredo jars should be back on store shelves by spring 2021.
That comes as welcome news to Konbar, who, after finishing a reluctant plate of spaghetti with mom, posted a question to Reddit asking where the Alfredo has gone in Hamilton.
More than a hundred people commented.
I'm in Oakville and there's none here," wrote one user. A friend in Burlington said there's none there either."
In St. Catharines, can also confirm," wrote another.
There is, of course, a reasonable alternative to Konbar's dilemma: make your own sauce. All it takes is a little butter, cream and Parmesan, as plenty of users pointed out.
Konbar agrees - in part. It's not the hardest thing to make," he said. But there's something about the simple convenience of the jar, its ready-made sauce no less tasty than homecooked, that's hard to give up.
It's also kind of a nostalgic thing for me, and I'm sure I'm not speaking just for myself here," Konbar said. A lot of us grew up on the jar of Classico Alfredo sauce. It's simple and convenient for those who don't have the time to sit, wait for a sauce to simmer, then a rolling boil, then back to a simmer."
Can he wait another six months, until his beloved Alfredo is back on store shelves?
I'll live," Konbar said.
Sebastian Bron is a Hamilton-based reporter at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sbron@thespec.com