When did macadamia nuts become hard to find? They have them at Jewel, if you live in the greater Chicago metropolitan area, there is one of those 20 minutes away. If you mean hard to find reasonably priced macadamia nuts, maybe that's a thing. Story time with grandpa51. 30 years ago I worked in Elk Grove (Northrup) right next to a place called John B Sanfilippo & Son Inc. It was a giant factory with a store open to the public in front. They sold every variety of every kind of nut, in bulk, plastic bags and scoops. Not just nuts but snack food, candy, loose tea, even boxes of scrap from the factory floor as bird feed. Everything was cheap, a bunch of us would walk over there and stock up, most guys bought a ton of super cheap macadamia nuts. So I went to look it up to see if the store/factory was still there in Elk Grove, sadly it's not, looked up if it moved to another location in the area, it did. It's now in a building I used to work in 10 years later Matsushita, in ommy land at Randall Rd. and I90, and the store still exists, no idea if it's still a good deal. TL;DR this place may have cheap macadamia nuts.
https://jbssinc.com/contact/#fishernuts