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 hurt too. Like finding out there are 200,000 people ahead of you in line to get Taylor Swift tickets or taking a screenshot when you wanted to turn off your phone. Or, say, finding out that her favorite snack is out of stock at the only place it’s sold, and she’ll probably never return.
I’m not proud of it, but ordering groceries from Amazon Fresh has become a weekly habit in my house. It’s convenient, plus Fresh sells some surprisingly good snacks under the house brand Abundy. That’s not to be confused with the Whole Foods brand, or the 365 house brand, or the Fresh brand stuff. The other-other-other house brand. It’s unpredictable. You can skip the rosemary herb almonds, but the runaway hit at my house has been the white cheddar puffs.
Let me tell you about the white cheddar puffs. First of all, they’re puffy as heck, airy, and satisfying to bite into. White Cheddar Cheese Seasoning is intense. It is sharp and direct. He makes your mouth sore after a while, in the best possible way.
Pirate booty? Cheez-Its? No. Children’s things. Nothing else has the same strong cheddar flavor or thick layer of dust as Abundy cheddar puffs. When we discovered them, my husband and I started ordering them every week. We then abandoned all sense of self-esteem and started buying multiple bags at once because we would finish the first one in two days and we didn’t want to wait a week to buy more.
So it’s been a real situation in my house that Abundy White Cheddar puffs have been out of stock since January. I know that was the last time they were in stock because Amazon taunts me with a sad little “Bought in January” badge every time I search for the white cheddar puffs, which is weekly. I checked to see if they are available for pickup instead of our usual delivery (sometimes there is different availability for items if you use the pickup option), but no, not for my precious cheddar puffs.
I think old Andy Jassy needs to address this urgently.
I don’t want to tell anyone how to do their job, but I think old Andy Jassy needs to urgently address this. He needs to stop whatever he’s doing (build AI robots that follow us and sell us laundry detergent or whatever) and get to the bottom of the white cheddar puff situation. What is the support? Where is the problem in the supply chain? For a company that is so customer-obsessed, I think someone You should be obsessed with the white cheddar puff pastry crunch.
I don’t want to believe what may be the painful truth: that white cheddar puffs will never come back. Someone at Fresh probably didn’t like the ROI on the puffs and just never ordered more from any company that actually makes them. And instead of setting the record straight for me, they’re dangling the possibility of future cheddar puffs in front of me, like some kind of sick game.
I plan to keep looking for the puffs as long as there’s a product list for them, but in the meantime, I’m taking suggestions for another snack to fill the puff-shaped hole in my cabinet.
