Modern life is full of tragedies. There are the big ones – the climate crisis, living in late-stage capitalism, take your pick – but the little ones sting too. Like finding out there are 200,000 people ahead of you in line for Taylor Swift tickets or taking a screenshot when you wanted to turn off your phone. Or, say, discovering that your favorite snack is out of stock at the one place it was sold, and will probably never come back.
I’m not proud of it, but ordering groceries from Amazon Fresh has become a weekly habit in my house. It’s affordable, plus Fresh sells some surprisingly good snacks under the Alenty house brand. This is not to be confused with the Whole Foods brand, or the 365 house brand, or the Fresh brand. The other-other-other house brand. It’s hit and miss. You can skip the rosemary herb almonds, but the runaway hit in my house have been the white cheddar beignets.
Let me tell you about the white cheddar beignets. First off, they’re puffy as heck, airy, and satisfying to bite into. The white cheddar dressing is intense. It’s edgy and forthright. Your mouth hurts after a while, in the best possible way.
Out of stock on Fresh but forever in our hearts.Image: Amazon / RockedBuzz
Pirate booty? Cheez-it? Pfft. Kids stuff. Nothing else has the same pungent cheddar flavor or thick layer of powder as Alenty’s cheddar beignets. When we discovered them, my husband and I started ordering them every week. Then we dropped all sense of self-respect and started buying multiple bags at once because we’d run out of the first one in two days and didn’t want to wait a week to buy more.
So it was a real situation in my house that Alenty White Cheddar Puffs had been out of stock since January. I know it was last in stock because Amazon teases me with a sad “Purchased in January” badge whenever I reach for white cheddar beignets, which is weekly. I checked to see if they are available for collection rather than our usual delivery – sometimes there is different availability for items if you use collection – but no, not for my precious cheddar beignets.
I think old Andy Jassy needs to deal with it urgently
I don’t want to tell anyone how to do their job, but I think old Andy Jassy needs to take care of it urgently. He needs to stop doing whatever he’s doing—building AI robots that follow us and sell us laundry detergent or whatever—and get to the bottom of the white cheddar beignet situation. What’s the problem? Where is the snag in the supply chain? For such a customer obsessed company, I think someone he should be obsessing over the white cheddar beignet crisis.
I don’t want to believe what may be the painful truth: that white cheddar beignets are never going to come back. Someone at Fresh probably didn’t like the ROI on beignets and simply never ordered more from whatever company actually makes them. And rather than give it to me straight, they’re dangling the possibility of future cheddar beignets in front of me, like some kind of sick game.
I plan to keep checking beignets as long as there’s a product list for them, but in the meantime I’m making suggestions for another snack to fill the beignet-shaped hole in my cabinet.
