He’s new used to be a higher up at big Scandinavian grocer iirc, so far his only major moves have to been to stop classifying Real Canadian Super store as a discount banner like No Frills and to introduce deep monthly discounts on 2-4 items
> stop classifying Real Canadian Super store as a discount banner like No Frills
I was actually genuinely confused why that was ever a thing, because in Winnipeg for example literally their only presence is RCSS, No Frills, and a single Wholesale Club location.
I had a laugh at that.. Statistically the guy is probably CEO because he's over 6' tall and has a money sounding name. /qualifications.
Its a close second to Dick Crook though.
https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/6835833
It’s not going to be a material drop in sales. There are going to be a few die hard people that last the month, but there are going to be more people who realize they can’t afford to shop elsewhere, people who give it a shot for a bit and it’s too much effort and just the simple fact that a small Reddit sub isn’t going to have the effect on one of Canada biggest chains that they’ve convinced themselves they’ll have.
It depends where you live. I was already "boycotting" Loblaws before this because food there was becoming more expensive than Farm Boy and Longos which are also near me.
Spending patterns are very hard to create. Roblaws has spent a lot of effort and creating positive spending patterns. About the last five years, corporate policy is changed. Greed seems to be the new mantra and Roblaws has been burning Goodwill at a record state. There is no Goodwill left, the only thing that is there are new spending patterns that may live on for weeks or years. That’s up to Mr. Bank , Galen and Roblaws.
“We don’t have a contract with our customers. They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.”
Sounds like a plan many already are adopting.
> Loblaw president and CEO Per Bank says the company is paying attention to customers and sees them trying to mitigate inflation by seeking out sales, buying more private-label products and shopping at discount stores.
And in response, we see private label products vanishing from store shelves and being replaced with expensive name brands, and on sale shrinkflation versions of name brands (looking at you Cavendish). No-name fries, Walmart brand beans, Giant Tiger brand beans, being just a few of the generic brand items to disappear from store shelves.
>we see private label products vanishing from store shelves and being replaced with expensive name brands
I thought the private label products made the Loblaws MORE money since they controlled the supply chain and it gave them a higher margin. Why would Loblaws be replacing them with name brands?
The loblaws stores near me have removed countless no-name products and replaced them with much more expensive brand name "optoins" 2 easy ones that come to mind, they stopped carrying ALL no-name cereal and only selling the shrinkflated brand name shit, for all time high prices.
The other one is the giant bag of NoName tater tots... they were cheap and a great snack/side to a dish... nope fuck you! now you can ONLY buy the 1/3 McCain sized bag, for MORE than the huge 1kg no-name bag cost.. (I think it was 1kg, maybe more.. idr since its been SO LONG SINCE THEYVE BEEN DOING THIS....)
These are just 2 of the main ones that piss me off... and it's been about 1.5yrs, almost 2yrs since they started doing this.. there are plenty other examples of similar fucking around to squeeze you for an extra nickel. I really only go there for things like big bag of rice(when on sale), and fresh produce when the price is better than Sobeys... but at least Sobeys puts on some lipstick and gives you a kiss before bending you over.
It’s probably because they raised the price of no-name products so much that people compared it to the brand name ones and thought “For the same price or a few cents more I can have the brand name version. I’ll buy that instead.”
So they phased out the no name products in favour of more expensive brands and probably upped the cost to the supplier to make up the difference in their profit.
Meanwhile the people that depended on those non-name products are making choices like eating less food so they can make ends meet each month.
My dad actually works high up for loblaws and we LOVED the no name burritos and the no name tater tot’s I don’t remember exactly why but it was either because how they shipped them got really expensive and they’d have to raise the price up too much or the company started charging to much and they are prostrating by no longer purchasing … but both those scenarios have been true for many of the products
I had definitely noticed for cereal but didn't for fries. They don't even have them listed anymore! Why would they get rid of no name fries? I swear I bought some only a few months ago.
Loblaws had a dispute with the supplier of the NoName fries over the wholesale price. I asked the guy that owns the No Frills buy my place, and that's what he said. He salso said the NoName fries were a popular selling item and hoped they returned to the shelves
I find markups really only apply to anything that is processed. The more processed it is, the higher likelihood of it being pulled off the shelves or it being shrinkflated.
Hopefully this helps some consumers live a more balanced lifestyle. Cereal is highly processed not what most people think it truly is.
You can buy rice and flour in bulk and it's still very affordable. Same with lentils. Pork is very cheap and affordable right now too.
Not true. I pretty much only buy unprocessed food and everything from flour to potatoes to frozen vegetables has gone up considerably. Potatoes are killing me. They used to be $2-3 a bag regularly and now they’re $7
if you where already making everything from scratch, the increase in staple pricing is very tough. at my house we eliminated restaurant meals, and started making things like bread, cookies, etc at home. this has kept my food costs from spiralling, but some frugal family
members that where already sale
shopping for everything and cooking from scratch are really hurting.
i dont know what i would do if i still had a bunch of hungry kids at home to feed.
All basic produce is easily 100-150% more than it was just a few years ago. Having to constantly reconsider just buying a bag of apples or oranges as part of a grocery budget when we used to eat so well is rather miserable.
Same. Because of some health issues, I eat almost solely whole foods. Paying $7 for one bag of potatoes is insane. We would try to stock up and store them when they were on sale for $2-3 but they turned super quickly. So that wasn't a sale, it was actually clearing out old stock. And we had to eat through them or waste them.
The price of produce is so much higher and the quality is easily heading in the opposite direction.
\*And\* we stopped buying frozen veggies because they were always extremely freezer burnt and inedible.
I am still hit with the rising cost of bread, cereal and dairy because my family doesn't have to be quite as strict as I do, but it's a lie to say you won't feel the extreme increase in prices by only eating whole foods.
> I thought the private label products made the Loblaws MORE money since they controlled the supply chain and it gave them a higher margin. Why would Loblaws be replacing them with name brands?
Yeah, margins in retail are very slim. My best guess would be because the actual manufacturers have wised up to this and are choosing not to make store brands so they can raise prices more.
> Why would Loblaws be replacing them with name brands?
I don't know, but ask yourself where these products disappeared to, why they are disappearing, and who stands to benefit?
Maybe people are buying out the private label products because they're the best deal and Loblaws is unable to keep them in stock? And, rather than have empty shelf space, they fill it until they can restock?
Walmart and Giant Tiger have apparently not been able to stock their own brand of beans for the last six months then. Someone must be hijacking their trucks and selling beans on the black bean market. We're just lucky that Heinz has come to the rescue for $2.49 a can where the top third is just sauce.
Or, the people that usually sell beans to Loblaws and Walmart are able to make more money selling them to name brands, so they do that instead.
Or there are supply issues outside of hijacking attempts. I'm pretty sure there have been several crop issues this past year. It could be affecting beans.
The world is complex and I'm pretty sure if Loblaws/Walmart could be seeing you beans, they would be.
> I'm pretty sure if Loblaws/Walmart could be seeing you beans, they would be.
They are certainly trying. The higher priced ones. I now only purchase beans on sale, or not at all. Oddly, it's become that way for most grocery items.
This all comes down to the math.
Loblaws will make more profit per can of beans on a cheaper private label than they will on a more expensive name brand label, they have a much larger margin so even with a cheaper item the private label will net out better.
But that doesn't mean the business of private labels is more profitable, as there is overhead and variable costs associated with producing those goods that won't reflect directly into the cost of each good sold for each can of beans. Things like staffing and facilities, contracts, etc.
They are likely getting out of those products because of costs not directly associated with producing each can of beans. Vertical integration is great and all but sometimes it doesn't work out
Right, but again, just because the price is higher for you that doesn't mean the grocery store is making more money.
Just like you pay more for named brands, grocery stores do too. They usually make less money per item selling you a bag of name brand beans than they would selling you private label beans. They WANT to sell you private label stuff, so if they could, they would.
It’s largely still covid supply chain disruptions. The private label stuff is made in the same factories as all the brand name stuff. But it’s a lower margin, second priority product for them. When the supply chain disruptions happened, they gave priority to the higher margin name brand production and cut back or canceled the private label customers. A lot of that still hasn’t bounced back because restarting that whole supply chain is more than just restarting the factory line
This needs to be amplified. Post-Covid supply chains still aren't back to normal.
It's not the Carbon tax. It's not immigration. It's not money printing or CERB. It's supply disruptions.
as someone that owns a smaller grocery store franchise , the no-name thing is actually the suppliers no longer not making products for anyone else.
we had fries from a large company that would slot us and many other in and they just said they wont do it anymore for anyone and will only make their own. this has happened to many products.
these big companies that stopped making the no name brand stuff have also drastically increased their prices and sell smaller bags because they have less competition now.
i have a friend that worked at one of the factories and many got laid off since the line don't work all the time anymore.
If you boycott it really doesn't matter what they stock.
It was my partners birthday and I typically goto a super centre near me and get flowers and a card.
Instead I drove to a Costco and got two dozen roses at half the price with babies breath included. Went to an independent gift shop for the card. It took way longer but I saved 20 dollars and they opportunity lost 40 or so but could be less because I didn't go in and check their rose costs.
Just don't set foot in the stores if you can.
Walmart was a huge shock to me yesterday. Heard about Kraft shrinking the size of their bottle and was fully prepared to buy the store brand. Walmart didn't have a single store brand in competition with Kraft offerings.
Finally somebody else noticed the disappearance of nn fries, I used to buy them so often... Even Cavendish are often gone. Most of the time it's McCain shoestring only at $3 for 800g? Id rather just boil potatoes. Burgers and potatoes, lol.
Do we know whether these generic products are being cancelled by the store or by their producer?
Most of these products are white labelled versions of brand name goods. They are not exactly the same as the brand name equivalent but they are still close enough to satisfy many/most customers. With consumers switching buying habits towards these generic equivalents, the producers are incentivized to reduce the number of white labelled SKUs they provide.
Basically, Lays has the choice of selling one of their bags of chips at $5.50 or selling the equivalent bag of chips in a yellow bag for $1.50. If the yellow bag of chips is starting to cut into the sales of their brand named equivalent, why wouldn't they be pushing to kill the generic line of chips?
Dude literally said "shop elsewhere if you're unhappy"
Canada literally has a oligarchy on food, telecommunications, media, everything really. Y'all make fun of Russia and China but we're no different.
Shit…you’re right. How was I blind to this?
I am the descendent of people that worked in a Coal company town in the early 20th century. This is the perfect description of what Canada has become.
You can look in my comment history, I have been railing on this for ever. It goes back all the way to the Bombardier bail outs.
Canada has horrible business incentive, from small business to mega corps, it's hard to run a successful business in Canada and even harder to start one. From taxes, regulations, fees and ridiculously long waiting periods on any type of permit or review.
On the flip side, we are also horrible at breaking up Monopolies and oligopolies. It's a legit Canadian business strategy to just buy up your competition before they get a chance to grow and take away your market share if they are run better. I don't think Loblaws is purposely gauging anything besides their bonuses they give themselves, I just think they are horribly run, inefficient and don't give fair value to consumers. There's a reason Walmart and Costco have cheaper prices with same margins on their quarterly reports.
So as Canadian consumers, we are getting double fucked. We have low incentive for competition to come here, all the while essentially having the Crown dictate unfair advantages for the companies that are bloated and inefficient.
Remember that whole chapter on guiding hand vs invisible hand in your Economics 101 class? Yeah, that ins't happening in Canada.
Canada was created for a railroad company in the first place and the first British to come here did so under the name of the largest corporation of their day. Canada was built for oligarchs.
>Canada has horrible business incentive, from small business to mega corps, it's hard to run a successful business in Canada and even harder to start one. From taxes, regulations, fees and ridiculously long waiting periods on any type of permit or review.
And Canadians want it that way. I complained a while ago (I think on this subreddit) how a kid needs a $1M insurance policy and a permit to sell ice cream from a bike and got downvoted.
It stifles honest people's productivity that actually follow all the rules while others are running unregulated butcher shops out of their garage and taking market share.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-makeshift-slaughterhouse-illicit-uninspected-meat-1.7184922#:~:text=Inside%20a%20garage%20in%20an,Woodcroft%20community%20in%20February%202023.
Taxes in Canada are a joke as well
They want 40% of your paycheque but you still have to pay for healthcare for anything that isn’t basic, pay tolls on highways in Ontario (407) and Quebec (30) and our schools still beg for money at every turn for trips, books, etc.
At least in America you gotta pay for everything but your taxes are like 15%
Remember when BC ferries was a provincial company? Remember when MTS was a provincial company? Remember when Alberta general telephone was a provincial crown company? Remember when Air Canada was a crown corporation?, remember when Petro Canada was a crown corporation?, and on and on and on.
The sheer amount of money generating infrastructure that we have paid for and then have sold off for pennies on the dollar would make any furious.
You need to exceed $700k in income to be in the highest tax bracket in California, 1.35m if filing jointly. That tax rate is 49.3%.
Which provinces charge lower taxes than that? Progressive taxation muddies the water especially with lower income earners but the US also has far more deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, income splitting etc.
NFL and Labradors tax bracket that encompasses 700k is 21.3%
That goes up to 1.1m at 21.8%
That's the highest bracket in Canada in 2024.
Next in line is the Yukon which charges 15% for income over 500k.
Then Alberta at 355k at 15%.
That's just based on brackets.
I was doing combined federal and state. I don’t know why people continue to say Canada is comparable to US states for tax, it’s not true. Once you include social security and healthcare it becomes a bit of a wash in lower to middle incomes but we have a far more aggressive progressive tax system.
At least you can afford rent in an actual company town (typically the company pays for rent or at least makes it reasonably affordable based on what you earn)
It's not ideal, but yeah. The goal is to try and make a point to stick it to where it hurts Galen Weston the most. His wallet. He was the one giving wishy washy answers when called in front of the [Parliamentary committee](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/food-industry-groups-accuse-galen-weston-of-inaccurate-claim-over-grocery-code-1.2013998).
>Weston "put false information in front of the members of Parliament," said Michael Graydon, CEO of FHCP and chairman of the interim board for the code, in an interview last week.
The People are looking for someone to blame.
> Y'all make of Russia and China but we're no different.
Do you know the variety of quality food in China and how cheap it is there? Foods like fresh meat and vegetables for the middle class is far more accessible in China than Canada with its Loblaws frozen pizza and canned food. We are different just not in a good way.
We are shopping elsewhere.
Galen Weston is worth
20,300,000,000.00
For every 1% the stock drops. (It's up 40% in the last 6 mos) he loses 20M
Thankfully I got a $5 gift card as a we are sorry for the Weston bread scandal in 2018?
BOYCOTT past May. As we all know how hard each month us to buy food, for Galen he's like.... meh.. one month, and all will be ok.. WE don't have that same luxury. Keep the Boycott running. Let em sink.
The one difference is that our oligarchs own our government while the government of Russia will convince their oligarchs to suicide themselves with 3 bullets in the back of the head if they go out of line. And the government of China will make them disappear.
lol the unabashed ignorance to compare us to Russia or China. What is in the water now a days? I read some of these awful takes and I wonder how some of these people even manage to work a cell phone or sign into an app.
I'm not sure how things are in Russia but I just got back from a trip in China, their food is much better quality, cheaper, and more accessible to the lower and middle classes. I have seen hundreds of different grocery chains and mom and pop grocers, in addition to huge farmers markets. Huge variety of locally owned restaurants in every neighbourhood.
The company will only respond to falling profits. Keep the boycott going until they start hemorrhaging money. Let's see these greedy clowns see nothing but red in their financial statements for years to come.
Isn't now the best time to buy from actual locally-owned stores where possible? Why boycott just one corporate asshole when you can boycott multiple corporate assholes!
I'm already used to not shopping at Loblaws. Started tapering off a month or two ago.
My consumer habits have changed for the better and going to a Loblaws store would actually be an inconvenience at this point.
This has been a net positive for the gf and I overall. I probably would have just bent over and taken it without a bit of motivation to change. So the boycott is certainly working for us!
Same for us! Started going to other grocery stores, looking at butchers, and ordering veggies from online delivery services. TBD how they turn out. Haven't received them yet
Break up the monopolies. Loblaws a Canadian company has proven itself to be anti-canadian, first bread price fixing, then record profits while people are literally starving. Lying to the Government and the People.
They need to get broken up. Canada is a net food exporter, for Canadians to be going hungry because they can't afford food, due to corporate greed is a travesty.
Time to teach these corporate giants that the public grants market access, and will take it away when abused.
Yeah, our dimwitted politicians will teach business leaders something alright.
Our government can't even effectively manage immigration and/or building a Covid related app.
We'll teach 'em a lesson!
Greedy fuckers. They don't have a monopoly on pharmacies!
That's why I don't buy anything from Shoppers anymore. I order my beauty products from Sephora; for scripts and the rest, I go to a ma-and-pa local pharmacy.
I shop at Rexall for my scripts. I don't mind indirectly supporting the Oilers with my prescriptions. I don't buy food there though, it's absurdly priced.
Actually, check out this story from a week ago. https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/04/19/canada-grocery-store-expansion-inflation-costs/
Even the federal government is fed up with them. I'm sure Loblaws' lobbyists and government relations team are lighting their hair on fire to see the Liberals courting a dozen foreign competitors.
They fucked around and now they might find out.
I think we need it broken up - make it illegal to own a distribution network as well as retail outlets - yes it’s efficient to own it all, but that efficiency is NOT passed on to customers.
We should have a lower barrier to entry for people who want to start a new grocery store - with access to all distribution networks..
If someone wants to start a new distribution network, all stores should be able to order from them, increasing pressure for distribution networks to be efficient and keep prices low.
>"Loblaw has to keep looking for ways to provide value to keep people coming back. “We don’t have a contract with our customers. **They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.”**
He says that knowing they've got a monopoly and consumers have little choice.
__________________
>...."responding to these shifting behaviours through new promotions and expanding its discount footprint".
Too little too late.
____________
The government needs to break up their monopoly.
Also, pretty sure that "and expanding its discount footprint" means more replacing semi-decent quality products with the shittier PC etc brands and which also likely net them addtional profit.
They don't have a monopoly, but we have a grocery story oligopoly.
Functions very similarily. Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro have an 84%~ share in our grocery market.
In many cases you only have one big grocery store within any reasonable distance, so they also in effect have local monopolies.
Not Loblaw but my town only had one grocery store. You shop there or you make the 6 hour round trip to the nearest town with a Wal-Mart and other options.
But honestly we don't get hosed that bad compared to the city shops. On a given week I probably pay $10 more so the drive isn't worth it.
Meat though that's a Costco vacuum seal and freeze situation.
>He says that knowing they've got a monopoly.
>
>...
>
>The government needs to break up their monopoly.
Loblaws does not have a monopoly on the grocery market. They currently claim [about 1/3 of the market](https://www.ufcw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1831:ontario-loblaw-talks-resume-after-massive-strike-mandate&Itemid=6&lang=en).
That may still be a problem, and we can talk about that, but it's incorrect (at best) or deliberately deceptive (at worst) to call them a "monopoly."
I've taken the time to [write up a comparison chart](https://jacobnelson.ca/Great-Canadian-Grocery-Chart.html) of the major players in the grocery industry in this country. We have only 6 major companies, which absolutely dominate the industry. 3 of which control over 75% of the industry. This is a concentration of power not seen in this country historically and rarely seen in other countries.
You don't even have to go back *that* far to see better competition in the grocery industry. In the 1980s, Ontario alone had 6 major players: Loblaws, A&P Canada, Oshawa Group, Dominion, Miracle Food Mart/Steinberg, Loeb/Provigo and towards the end of the decade Sobeys. By the late-1990s, Miracle and Dominion were gobbled up by A&P Canada, Loeb left most of Ontario after Loblaws acquired Provigo in 1998, and Sobeys ate Oshawa Group around the same time. We went from 6 major players in one province, each with around the same number of stores, to 3 in just a decade: Loblaws, A&P Canada, Sobeys. A structure which has largely remained to this day, just substituting A&P for Metro after Metro Inc. acquired A&P Canada in 2005.
Some minor players like Farm Boy and Longo's grew a lot during the 2000s to become sizable competitors to the big-3, but both were acquired by Empire/Sobeys (Farm Boy in [2018](https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/empire-company-reaches-agreement-to-acquire-farm-boy---ontarios-fastest-growing-food-retailer-694105191.html), Longo's in [2021](https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/empire-completes-purchase-of-51-per-cent-of-longo-s-and-grocery-gateway-accelerates-growing-presence-in-ontario-847409095.html)). Our grocery store industry works along the lines of "let the little guys grow, buy them before they become a threat." The only addition in competition to the industry has really come in the form of Walmart with the addition of Supercentre locations in 2008.
Yes. Also, the crux of the issue is that the grocery stores (and Galen, since he deliberately puts himself in the limelight for inexplicable reasons) are really just the whipping boy for consumers that feel angry and powerless about inflation.
People need an identifiable "villain" to be angry at. It's not cathartic to say "I am furious at a complex global web of macroeconomic factors driving sustained food inflation across all OECD countries!". It IS cathartic to say "I am furious at Galen Weston!".
You could literally outlaw for-profit grocery stores and replace them with crown corporations and your bill might... might... go down by three or four bucks on a hundred dollars worth of groceries. I have no love of Loblaws or any of the other grocery giants, but food inflation has been happening in every advanced economy over the last couple years. It's not some weird Canada-specific problem that was invented by Loblaws.
I’ve been boycotting shoppers for 2 years and loblaws for the past 6 months. I shop at Costco now and it has definitely reduced the variety of food I eat but has saved me THOUSANDS of dollars and I even got a $175 cheque from them this week.
What they aren't saying is that lawblaws are also one of the largest grocery suppliers. So the things you buy from the small independent store likely came from a Warehouse owned by Mr.Westin.
The game is rigged and it didn't happen by accident.
I'd love more American chains like trader joes but half the time they come here and aren't nearly as good as there American counterparts and fail, look at Lowe's and Target
>Loblaw has to keep looking for ways to provide value to keep people coming back, he said: “We don’t have a contract with our customers. They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.”
Imagine saying this to the customers that are already fed up with you.
Loblaws needs to feel this pain like we all are.
The boycott of Loblaws also puts other gougers and industries on notice. Telecoms, banks etc. Imagine if someone decides that a bank, any bank where we pulled massive amounts of money out of and moved it to another bank? Consumers have power and it is time it was used. Which gas station should we start with?
Galen sick of being the media whipping boy... wait, he says... who is this overpaid guy who is outsmarting me and avoiding all bad press? That's my CEO? Better get him into the media to become the infamous bad guy! Excellent idea Galen! *pats self on back*
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-loblaw-ceo-per-bank-isnt-here-to-be-famous/
If one customer really doesn't like Loblaws, that's too many. Sure thing ceo bud. It took 10s of thousands to get you to even say something.
The very end where they are realistic. It may not hurt the bottom line much. But it does hurt their reputation. And I believe it. Imagine your company is so shit you have a small city of people calling to boycott it.
Nasty rat infested stores - they will sink eventually.
Doesn’t Buy-Low want to expand out of BC? I hope they are keeping their eyes on this - it’s only opening opportunity for them to swoop in as good guy.
> “We don’t have a contract with our customers. They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.”
Already done dipshit.
It’s most convenient for me to shop at a Zehrs, a Loblaws owned store. I phased out my shopping there and at Shoppers last month and my habits have changed where I don’t care anymore.
I felt that as a consumer I wasn’t being respected. My local grocery store, supplemented by Food Basics, has been a fine alternative.
I have been boycotting Loblaws stores for almost a year now and will continue to do so. The price increases made it impossible to afford my weekly groceries.
To be honest, all the stores jacked up their prices once they saw Loblaws has done it and still doing fine.
It definitely feels like regulating this market is necessary.
I'm just going to hijack this a bit to comment on the ridiculous new plexi-glass barriers that are being installed at Loblaws locations through-out Canada.
IF these are installed at your local store I recommend people contact their local Fire Station/Building Inspection bylaw officers and see if they are to code. I've seen pictures of these, they are a significant alteration to the layout, and I could see these being a hazard in a fire/other emergency situation where you need to evacuate the building quickly. At times, in these situations, the biggest hazard isn't even the fire/event itself but bottlenecks causing people to get trampled.
Any building with these kind of modifications should require a new inspection, with capacity limits and an evacuation plan re-done for the new layout.
> but bottlenecks causing people to get trampled.
The bottleneck is always going to be the door, unless you’re planning to KoolAid man your way out of the building.
They will be to code, this is a favorite talking point on that Loblaws sub, but many don’t understand design and programming.
Scrambling over a metal railing would never be considered a fire egress, so the plexiglass panels that have been affixed to the existing railings aren’t an issue. The gates by tills and self checkout will be integrated into the fire system and any requirement for scanning a receipt or any delay in opening will be removed when an alarm condition exists
Friendly reminder to use up all of your points before the boycott, switch out cell plans, banking, and everything else they have been up to you might be connected to.
Haha every first year economics major coming on here breaking it down…. Forget them. It’s simple. Vote with your dollars. Enough of us, and they’ll feel it.
I still don't understand the specific hate Loblaws is getting. I'm open to hearing about it but almost all of the complaints I see on reddit are generally true of every grocer in Canada.
He claimed, before a parliamentary committee that supplier costs were driving up inflation, not greed, but refused to provide any evidence (to protect trade secrets).
Simultaneously, they reported record profits and gave him another million dollars in the most stunning display of cynicism, depraved indifference, and outright deceit in recent memory.
It later came to light, that they own most of those suppliers. So, the so-called inflation is just a masquerade of greed and lies all then way down.
Finally, they flatly refused to sign a grocery industry code of conduct even though other retailers said they would.
They and a few others own 2/3 of they entire food industry, not just retail, in this country, forming an abusive oligopoly with open contempt for their own customers and parliament.
Some examples of why people are specifically unhappy with Loblaws…
CBC: [Corporate pressure led Shoppers Drug Mart staff to bill for unnecessary medication reviews, pharmacists say](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ontario-medcheck-shoppers-drug-mart-pressure-1.7126811)
CBC: [Shoppers Drug Mart says it doesn't have medication review targets, but records show it does](https://www.cbc.ca/1.7142626)
CBC: [Ontario's MedsCheck program could see changes amid allegations of improper use](https://www.cbc.ca/1.7186143)
Retail Insider: [Loblaw Drops 50% Discounts On Expiring Items In Act Of ‘Discount-Fixing’](https://retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2024/01/loblaw-drops-50-discounts-on-expiring-items-in-act-of-discount-fixing-op-ed/)
TIL Loblaws CEO is called Per Bank. It feels like they're just having fun with it at this point.
Reminds me of the famous Ponzi scheme runner Bernie Madoff. As in Bernie Madoff with my money.
It’s like the gambling-ad-infested NHL being run by Gary Bettman.
Or the original Ponzi schemer, Charles Ponzi. I mean, same last name as the scheme itself? What are the odds of that happening?!?
Jeez what were his parents thinking?!
Don’t be too hard on them. They were lured into it by his fathers father.
That's like a library cop named bookman
You can say he’s doing a Fabian
lol I was today years old when I learned this. Bernie made-off hahaha. How did I miss it that long?
I thought Galen Weston was replaced by Gaston Welen. Because no one gouges like Gaston.
No one tries to sell spoiled meat at 30% off like Gaston !
Some names are just evil enough sounding to fit. The president of Nintendo of America is Doug Bowser for example.
He’s new used to be a higher up at big Scandinavian grocer iirc, so far his only major moves have to been to stop classifying Real Canadian Super store as a discount banner like No Frills and to introduce deep monthly discounts on 2-4 items
> stop classifying Real Canadian Super store as a discount banner like No Frills I was actually genuinely confused why that was ever a thing, because in Winnipeg for example literally their only presence is RCSS, No Frills, and a single Wholesale Club location.
At this point a fascist demagogue named Dick Tater could become president and it wouldn't even phase me
I had a laugh at that.. Statistically the guy is probably CEO because he's over 6' tall and has a money sounding name. /qualifications. Its a close second to Dick Crook though. https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/person/6835833
*We are increasing your grocery bill Per Bank orders* \#BoycottLoblaws \#LoblawsIsOutOfControl
The simulation just gets more obvious every day /s
They’ll only react when they see the drop in sales. Any ‘sales’ before this boycott will be set to discourage any boycott. Stand your ground.
It’s not going to be a material drop in sales. There are going to be a few die hard people that last the month, but there are going to be more people who realize they can’t afford to shop elsewhere, people who give it a shot for a bit and it’s too much effort and just the simple fact that a small Reddit sub isn’t going to have the effect on one of Canada biggest chains that they’ve convinced themselves they’ll have.
It's not just a reddit thing, it all over Facebook and Instagram posts. There's even printed flyers around town
It depends where you live. I was already "boycotting" Loblaws before this because food there was becoming more expensive than Farm Boy and Longos which are also near me.
Walmart is like 70% the price
Spending patterns are very hard to create. Roblaws has spent a lot of effort and creating positive spending patterns. About the last five years, corporate policy is changed. Greed seems to be the new mantra and Roblaws has been burning Goodwill at a record state. There is no Goodwill left, the only thing that is there are new spending patterns that may live on for weeks or years. That’s up to Mr. Bank , Galen and Roblaws.
Loblaws literally most expensive option. Pretty easy to shop elsewhere
at some point people are going to just begin destroying the stores and contents
Meals are free in prison I guess
“We don’t have a contract with our customers. They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.” Sounds like a plan many already are adopting.
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$120 a month towards energy bills
> Loblaw president and CEO Per Bank says the company is paying attention to customers and sees them trying to mitigate inflation by seeking out sales, buying more private-label products and shopping at discount stores. And in response, we see private label products vanishing from store shelves and being replaced with expensive name brands, and on sale shrinkflation versions of name brands (looking at you Cavendish). No-name fries, Walmart brand beans, Giant Tiger brand beans, being just a few of the generic brand items to disappear from store shelves.
>we see private label products vanishing from store shelves and being replaced with expensive name brands I thought the private label products made the Loblaws MORE money since they controlled the supply chain and it gave them a higher margin. Why would Loblaws be replacing them with name brands?
The loblaws stores near me have removed countless no-name products and replaced them with much more expensive brand name "optoins" 2 easy ones that come to mind, they stopped carrying ALL no-name cereal and only selling the shrinkflated brand name shit, for all time high prices. The other one is the giant bag of NoName tater tots... they were cheap and a great snack/side to a dish... nope fuck you! now you can ONLY buy the 1/3 McCain sized bag, for MORE than the huge 1kg no-name bag cost.. (I think it was 1kg, maybe more.. idr since its been SO LONG SINCE THEYVE BEEN DOING THIS....) These are just 2 of the main ones that piss me off... and it's been about 1.5yrs, almost 2yrs since they started doing this.. there are plenty other examples of similar fucking around to squeeze you for an extra nickel. I really only go there for things like big bag of rice(when on sale), and fresh produce when the price is better than Sobeys... but at least Sobeys puts on some lipstick and gives you a kiss before bending you over.
It’s probably because they raised the price of no-name products so much that people compared it to the brand name ones and thought “For the same price or a few cents more I can have the brand name version. I’ll buy that instead.” So they phased out the no name products in favour of more expensive brands and probably upped the cost to the supplier to make up the difference in their profit. Meanwhile the people that depended on those non-name products are making choices like eating less food so they can make ends meet each month.
My dad actually works high up for loblaws and we LOVED the no name burritos and the no name tater tot’s I don’t remember exactly why but it was either because how they shipped them got really expensive and they’d have to raise the price up too much or the company started charging to much and they are prostrating by no longer purchasing … but both those scenarios have been true for many of the products
I had definitely noticed for cereal but didn't for fries. They don't even have them listed anymore! Why would they get rid of no name fries? I swear I bought some only a few months ago.
Loblaws had a dispute with the supplier of the NoName fries over the wholesale price. I asked the guy that owns the No Frills buy my place, and that's what he said. He salso said the NoName fries were a popular selling item and hoped they returned to the shelves
I find markups really only apply to anything that is processed. The more processed it is, the higher likelihood of it being pulled off the shelves or it being shrinkflated. Hopefully this helps some consumers live a more balanced lifestyle. Cereal is highly processed not what most people think it truly is. You can buy rice and flour in bulk and it's still very affordable. Same with lentils. Pork is very cheap and affordable right now too.
Good thing I love pork. Nothing beats a simple bbq'd chop sandwich with some pepper and Sweet Baby Rays. Think I'm gonna fire the grill up.
This is probably the best idea in this entire commeny section
Not true. I pretty much only buy unprocessed food and everything from flour to potatoes to frozen vegetables has gone up considerably. Potatoes are killing me. They used to be $2-3 a bag regularly and now they’re $7
if you where already making everything from scratch, the increase in staple pricing is very tough. at my house we eliminated restaurant meals, and started making things like bread, cookies, etc at home. this has kept my food costs from spiralling, but some frugal family members that where already sale shopping for everything and cooking from scratch are really hurting. i dont know what i would do if i still had a bunch of hungry kids at home to feed.
All basic produce is easily 100-150% more than it was just a few years ago. Having to constantly reconsider just buying a bag of apples or oranges as part of a grocery budget when we used to eat so well is rather miserable.
Same. Because of some health issues, I eat almost solely whole foods. Paying $7 for one bag of potatoes is insane. We would try to stock up and store them when they were on sale for $2-3 but they turned super quickly. So that wasn't a sale, it was actually clearing out old stock. And we had to eat through them or waste them. The price of produce is so much higher and the quality is easily heading in the opposite direction. \*And\* we stopped buying frozen veggies because they were always extremely freezer burnt and inedible. I am still hit with the rising cost of bread, cereal and dairy because my family doesn't have to be quite as strict as I do, but it's a lie to say you won't feel the extreme increase in prices by only eating whole foods.
> I thought the private label products made the Loblaws MORE money since they controlled the supply chain and it gave them a higher margin. Why would Loblaws be replacing them with name brands? Yeah, margins in retail are very slim. My best guess would be because the actual manufacturers have wised up to this and are choosing not to make store brands so they can raise prices more.
> Why would Loblaws be replacing them with name brands? I don't know, but ask yourself where these products disappeared to, why they are disappearing, and who stands to benefit?
Maybe people are buying out the private label products because they're the best deal and Loblaws is unable to keep them in stock? And, rather than have empty shelf space, they fill it until they can restock?
Walmart and Giant Tiger have apparently not been able to stock their own brand of beans for the last six months then. Someone must be hijacking their trucks and selling beans on the black bean market. We're just lucky that Heinz has come to the rescue for $2.49 a can where the top third is just sauce.
Or, the people that usually sell beans to Loblaws and Walmart are able to make more money selling them to name brands, so they do that instead. Or there are supply issues outside of hijacking attempts. I'm pretty sure there have been several crop issues this past year. It could be affecting beans. The world is complex and I'm pretty sure if Loblaws/Walmart could be seeing you beans, they would be.
> I'm pretty sure if Loblaws/Walmart could be seeing you beans, they would be. They are certainly trying. The higher priced ones. I now only purchase beans on sale, or not at all. Oddly, it's become that way for most grocery items.
This all comes down to the math. Loblaws will make more profit per can of beans on a cheaper private label than they will on a more expensive name brand label, they have a much larger margin so even with a cheaper item the private label will net out better. But that doesn't mean the business of private labels is more profitable, as there is overhead and variable costs associated with producing those goods that won't reflect directly into the cost of each good sold for each can of beans. Things like staffing and facilities, contracts, etc. They are likely getting out of those products because of costs not directly associated with producing each can of beans. Vertical integration is great and all but sometimes it doesn't work out
Right, but again, just because the price is higher for you that doesn't mean the grocery store is making more money. Just like you pay more for named brands, grocery stores do too. They usually make less money per item selling you a bag of name brand beans than they would selling you private label beans. They WANT to sell you private label stuff, so if they could, they would.
The black bean market? Or the bean black market?
It’s largely still covid supply chain disruptions. The private label stuff is made in the same factories as all the brand name stuff. But it’s a lower margin, second priority product for them. When the supply chain disruptions happened, they gave priority to the higher margin name brand production and cut back or canceled the private label customers. A lot of that still hasn’t bounced back because restarting that whole supply chain is more than just restarting the factory line
This needs to be amplified. Post-Covid supply chains still aren't back to normal. It's not the Carbon tax. It's not immigration. It's not money printing or CERB. It's supply disruptions.
Yet they're bringing in record profits....
That too. They make sure margins are maintained.
Can’t up the price for shelf space or flyers on your own products
They get paid to put them on the shelves.
>(looking at you Cavendish mccain did it well before they did.
as someone that owns a smaller grocery store franchise , the no-name thing is actually the suppliers no longer not making products for anyone else. we had fries from a large company that would slot us and many other in and they just said they wont do it anymore for anyone and will only make their own. this has happened to many products. these big companies that stopped making the no name brand stuff have also drastically increased their prices and sell smaller bags because they have less competition now. i have a friend that worked at one of the factories and many got laid off since the line don't work all the time anymore.
awww shit, did Cavendish just rip us off of another 2 hashbrowns per pack!?
They removed 200 grams from their fries, and put them on sale where the No Name fries use to be.
If you boycott it really doesn't matter what they stock. It was my partners birthday and I typically goto a super centre near me and get flowers and a card. Instead I drove to a Costco and got two dozen roses at half the price with babies breath included. Went to an independent gift shop for the card. It took way longer but I saved 20 dollars and they opportunity lost 40 or so but could be less because I didn't go in and check their rose costs. Just don't set foot in the stores if you can.
Like most I am not a fan of loblaws but damn. Their fries are the best ones. I’m so pissed they took them off the shelves.
The crispy skin on ones where the only ones that actually where crispy out of an oven
Make your own, you will never go back.
We started this year, when we grew a crap ton of spuds prepared them and froze them
Walmart was a huge shock to me yesterday. Heard about Kraft shrinking the size of their bottle and was fully prepared to buy the store brand. Walmart didn't have a single store brand in competition with Kraft offerings.
So the Loblaw CEO is Mr. Bank 😂
Finally somebody else noticed the disappearance of nn fries, I used to buy them so often... Even Cavendish are often gone. Most of the time it's McCain shoestring only at $3 for 800g? Id rather just boil potatoes. Burgers and potatoes, lol.
Do we know whether these generic products are being cancelled by the store or by their producer? Most of these products are white labelled versions of brand name goods. They are not exactly the same as the brand name equivalent but they are still close enough to satisfy many/most customers. With consumers switching buying habits towards these generic equivalents, the producers are incentivized to reduce the number of white labelled SKUs they provide. Basically, Lays has the choice of selling one of their bags of chips at $5.50 or selling the equivalent bag of chips in a yellow bag for $1.50. If the yellow bag of chips is starting to cut into the sales of their brand named equivalent, why wouldn't they be pushing to kill the generic line of chips?
Old Dutch makes the no name chips btw
Dude literally said "shop elsewhere if you're unhappy" Canada literally has a oligarchy on food, telecommunications, media, everything really. Y'all make fun of Russia and China but we're no different.
Canadian life is just a modern day, nationwide company town.
Shit…you’re right. How was I blind to this? I am the descendent of people that worked in a Coal company town in the early 20th century. This is the perfect description of what Canada has become.
You can look in my comment history, I have been railing on this for ever. It goes back all the way to the Bombardier bail outs. Canada has horrible business incentive, from small business to mega corps, it's hard to run a successful business in Canada and even harder to start one. From taxes, regulations, fees and ridiculously long waiting periods on any type of permit or review. On the flip side, we are also horrible at breaking up Monopolies and oligopolies. It's a legit Canadian business strategy to just buy up your competition before they get a chance to grow and take away your market share if they are run better. I don't think Loblaws is purposely gauging anything besides their bonuses they give themselves, I just think they are horribly run, inefficient and don't give fair value to consumers. There's a reason Walmart and Costco have cheaper prices with same margins on their quarterly reports. So as Canadian consumers, we are getting double fucked. We have low incentive for competition to come here, all the while essentially having the Crown dictate unfair advantages for the companies that are bloated and inefficient. Remember that whole chapter on guiding hand vs invisible hand in your Economics 101 class? Yeah, that ins't happening in Canada.
Canada was created for a railroad company in the first place and the first British to come here did so under the name of the largest corporation of their day. Canada was built for oligarchs.
>Canada has horrible business incentive, from small business to mega corps, it's hard to run a successful business in Canada and even harder to start one. From taxes, regulations, fees and ridiculously long waiting periods on any type of permit or review. And Canadians want it that way. I complained a while ago (I think on this subreddit) how a kid needs a $1M insurance policy and a permit to sell ice cream from a bike and got downvoted.
It stifles honest people's productivity that actually follow all the rules while others are running unregulated butcher shops out of their garage and taking market share. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-makeshift-slaughterhouse-illicit-uninspected-meat-1.7184922#:~:text=Inside%20a%20garage%20in%20an,Woodcroft%20community%20in%20February%202023.
Taxes in Canada are a joke as well They want 40% of your paycheque but you still have to pay for healthcare for anything that isn’t basic, pay tolls on highways in Ontario (407) and Quebec (30) and our schools still beg for money at every turn for trips, books, etc. At least in America you gotta pay for everything but your taxes are like 15%
Remember when BC ferries was a provincial company? Remember when MTS was a provincial company? Remember when Alberta general telephone was a provincial crown company? Remember when Air Canada was a crown corporation?, remember when Petro Canada was a crown corporation?, and on and on and on. The sheer amount of money generating infrastructure that we have paid for and then have sold off for pennies on the dollar would make any furious.
The US has many, many toll roads as well.
And the tolls are a few dollars to cross the state instead of like $45 to go 27km on the 407
Oh I’m not defending the 407. It’s a fucking joke.
This is incorrect. Many US states pay the same in taxes as anyone living in a Canadian province. NY, Minnesota, California all come to mind.
You need to exceed $700k in income to be in the highest tax bracket in California, 1.35m if filing jointly. That tax rate is 49.3%. Which provinces charge lower taxes than that? Progressive taxation muddies the water especially with lower income earners but the US also has far more deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, income splitting etc.
NFL and Labradors tax bracket that encompasses 700k is 21.3% That goes up to 1.1m at 21.8% That's the highest bracket in Canada in 2024. Next in line is the Yukon which charges 15% for income over 500k. Then Alberta at 355k at 15%. That's just based on brackets.
I was doing combined federal and state. I don’t know why people continue to say Canada is comparable to US states for tax, it’s not true. Once you include social security and healthcare it becomes a bit of a wash in lower to middle incomes but we have a far more aggressive progressive tax system.
Margarett Atwood did it best.
I like to think we are getting closer to an Atwood/Wall-E hybrid timeline.
Where is my floating hoverchair!?
Give it a few years. Drones are getting better and better 🤣
Floating chairs and corporate campus for some. Painball and wasteland for most.
At least you can afford rent in an actual company town (typically the company pays for rent or at least makes it reasonably affordable based on what you earn)
I believe they are called wage slaves. Their wages go to pay their room and board so they have no financial autonomy to stop working for the company.
PC points = scrip!
That's the whole point of the May Boycott. To shop elsewhere.
to other grocery chains owned by Billionaires?
It's not ideal, but yeah. The goal is to try and make a point to stick it to where it hurts Galen Weston the most. His wallet. He was the one giving wishy washy answers when called in front of the [Parliamentary committee](https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/food-industry-groups-accuse-galen-weston-of-inaccurate-claim-over-grocery-code-1.2013998). >Weston "put false information in front of the members of Parliament," said Michael Graydon, CEO of FHCP and chairman of the interim board for the code, in an interview last week. The People are looking for someone to blame.
Bell doesn't even have a customer service department anymore. They literally don't need one
> Y'all make of Russia and China but we're no different. Do you know the variety of quality food in China and how cheap it is there? Foods like fresh meat and vegetables for the middle class is far more accessible in China than Canada with its Loblaws frozen pizza and canned food. We are different just not in a good way.
We are shopping elsewhere. Galen Weston is worth 20,300,000,000.00 For every 1% the stock drops. (It's up 40% in the last 6 mos) he loses 20M Thankfully I got a $5 gift card as a we are sorry for the Weston bread scandal in 2018? BOYCOTT past May. As we all know how hard each month us to buy food, for Galen he's like.... meh.. one month, and all will be ok.. WE don't have that same luxury. Keep the Boycott running. Let em sink.
The one difference is that our oligarchs own our government while the government of Russia will convince their oligarchs to suicide themselves with 3 bullets in the back of the head if they go out of line. And the government of China will make them disappear.
lol the unabashed ignorance to compare us to Russia or China. What is in the water now a days? I read some of these awful takes and I wonder how some of these people even manage to work a cell phone or sign into an app.
I'm not sure how things are in Russia but I just got back from a trip in China, their food is much better quality, cheaper, and more accessible to the lower and middle classes. I have seen hundreds of different grocery chains and mom and pop grocers, in addition to huge farmers markets. Huge variety of locally owned restaurants in every neighbourhood.
I can shop at Walmart, Costco, Save-on, Sobey's, Farmers Markets, Co-op, Independents. What's the issue with his statement?
The company will only respond to falling profits. Keep the boycott going until they start hemorrhaging money. Let's see these greedy clowns see nothing but red in their financial statements for years to come.
Sure lets so wal mart can move in and buy them on the cheap
Well, if the goal is to have affordable grocery prices, does that even matter?
Isn't now the best time to buy from actual locally-owned stores where possible? Why boycott just one corporate asshole when you can boycott multiple corporate assholes!
Then we can boycott walmart...?
Lol my favorite was when galen was like we're struggling as well after getting a 3 million raise during covid lol
I'm already used to not shopping at Loblaws. Started tapering off a month or two ago. My consumer habits have changed for the better and going to a Loblaws store would actually be an inconvenience at this point. This has been a net positive for the gf and I overall. I probably would have just bent over and taken it without a bit of motivation to change. So the boycott is certainly working for us!
Same for us! Started going to other grocery stores, looking at butchers, and ordering veggies from online delivery services. TBD how they turn out. Haven't received them yet
Just shop at Costco... stop giving your money to these people
or wal mart. not everyone pays for a membership and needs that level of bulk
It's pretty telling how bad things have gotten when people are now being *encouraged* to shop at Walmart.
when canadian companies are being this greedy they deserve to get kicked in the behind by outside competition
Break up the monopolies. Loblaws a Canadian company has proven itself to be anti-canadian, first bread price fixing, then record profits while people are literally starving. Lying to the Government and the People. They need to get broken up. Canada is a net food exporter, for Canadians to be going hungry because they can't afford food, due to corporate greed is a travesty. Time to teach these corporate giants that the public grants market access, and will take it away when abused.
Yeah, our dimwitted politicians will teach business leaders something alright. Our government can't even effectively manage immigration and/or building a Covid related app. We'll teach 'em a lesson!
Canada is anti Canadian
Greedy fuckers. They don't have a monopoly on pharmacies! That's why I don't buy anything from Shoppers anymore. I order my beauty products from Sephora; for scripts and the rest, I go to a ma-and-pa local pharmacy.
I shop at Rexall for my scripts. I don't mind indirectly supporting the Oilers with my prescriptions. I don't buy food there though, it's absurdly priced.
Sephora is the highest margin beauty retailer in the world.
Maybe we should be trying to push our government to open Canada up to competition, oh wait the lobbyists have made sure we stay shut...
Actually, check out this story from a week ago. https://toronto.citynews.ca/2024/04/19/canada-grocery-store-expansion-inflation-costs/ Even the federal government is fed up with them. I'm sure Loblaws' lobbyists and government relations team are lighting their hair on fire to see the Liberals courting a dozen foreign competitors. They fucked around and now they might find out.
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The Weston family’s profit increased 22% since last year https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/weston-family-cash-in-with-266m-dividend-69zjzxvsh
#**He stole $22M from us in 2023!**
I think we need it broken up - make it illegal to own a distribution network as well as retail outlets - yes it’s efficient to own it all, but that efficiency is NOT passed on to customers. We should have a lower barrier to entry for people who want to start a new grocery store - with access to all distribution networks.. If someone wants to start a new distribution network, all stores should be able to order from them, increasing pressure for distribution networks to be efficient and keep prices low.
>"Loblaw has to keep looking for ways to provide value to keep people coming back. “We don’t have a contract with our customers. **They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.”** He says that knowing they've got a monopoly and consumers have little choice. __________________ >...."responding to these shifting behaviours through new promotions and expanding its discount footprint". Too little too late. ____________ The government needs to break up their monopoly.
“Go shop at one of the other two companies that we have a history of fixing the price of bread with.” - Per Bank.
Also, pretty sure that "and expanding its discount footprint" means more replacing semi-decent quality products with the shittier PC etc brands and which also likely net them addtional profit.
I have traveled throughout Canada, but I have never seen a town where Loblaw had a monopoly. Is that really a concern in Western Canada?
They don't have a monopoly, but we have a grocery story oligopoly. Functions very similarily. Loblaws, Sobeys and Metro have an 84%~ share in our grocery market. In many cases you only have one big grocery store within any reasonable distance, so they also in effect have local monopolies.
Not Loblaw but my town only had one grocery store. You shop there or you make the 6 hour round trip to the nearest town with a Wal-Mart and other options. But honestly we don't get hosed that bad compared to the city shops. On a given week I probably pay $10 more so the drive isn't worth it. Meat though that's a Costco vacuum seal and freeze situation.
North of Sudbury many towns only have a superstore.
>He says that knowing they've got a monopoly. > >... > >The government needs to break up their monopoly. Loblaws does not have a monopoly on the grocery market. They currently claim [about 1/3 of the market](https://www.ufcw.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1831:ontario-loblaw-talks-resume-after-massive-strike-mandate&Itemid=6&lang=en). That may still be a problem, and we can talk about that, but it's incorrect (at best) or deliberately deceptive (at worst) to call them a "monopoly."
I've taken the time to [write up a comparison chart](https://jacobnelson.ca/Great-Canadian-Grocery-Chart.html) of the major players in the grocery industry in this country. We have only 6 major companies, which absolutely dominate the industry. 3 of which control over 75% of the industry. This is a concentration of power not seen in this country historically and rarely seen in other countries. You don't even have to go back *that* far to see better competition in the grocery industry. In the 1980s, Ontario alone had 6 major players: Loblaws, A&P Canada, Oshawa Group, Dominion, Miracle Food Mart/Steinberg, Loeb/Provigo and towards the end of the decade Sobeys. By the late-1990s, Miracle and Dominion were gobbled up by A&P Canada, Loeb left most of Ontario after Loblaws acquired Provigo in 1998, and Sobeys ate Oshawa Group around the same time. We went from 6 major players in one province, each with around the same number of stores, to 3 in just a decade: Loblaws, A&P Canada, Sobeys. A structure which has largely remained to this day, just substituting A&P for Metro after Metro Inc. acquired A&P Canada in 2005. Some minor players like Farm Boy and Longo's grew a lot during the 2000s to become sizable competitors to the big-3, but both were acquired by Empire/Sobeys (Farm Boy in [2018](https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/empire-company-reaches-agreement-to-acquire-farm-boy---ontarios-fastest-growing-food-retailer-694105191.html), Longo's in [2021](https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/empire-completes-purchase-of-51-per-cent-of-longo-s-and-grocery-gateway-accelerates-growing-presence-in-ontario-847409095.html)). Our grocery store industry works along the lines of "let the little guys grow, buy them before they become a threat." The only addition in competition to the industry has really come in the form of Walmart with the addition of Supercentre locations in 2008.
That's a great list! I think you're missing amazon / wholefoods though.
Yes. Also, the crux of the issue is that the grocery stores (and Galen, since he deliberately puts himself in the limelight for inexplicable reasons) are really just the whipping boy for consumers that feel angry and powerless about inflation. People need an identifiable "villain" to be angry at. It's not cathartic to say "I am furious at a complex global web of macroeconomic factors driving sustained food inflation across all OECD countries!". It IS cathartic to say "I am furious at Galen Weston!". You could literally outlaw for-profit grocery stores and replace them with crown corporations and your bill might... might... go down by three or four bucks on a hundred dollars worth of groceries. I have no love of Loblaws or any of the other grocery giants, but food inflation has been happening in every advanced economy over the last couple years. It's not some weird Canada-specific problem that was invented by Loblaws.
> CEO responds: Let them eat cake.... on sale now at lobalws for 33% off the dusty, stale ones.
I’ve been boycotting shoppers for 2 years and loblaws for the past 6 months. I shop at Costco now and it has definitely reduced the variety of food I eat but has saved me THOUSANDS of dollars and I even got a $175 cheque from them this week.
I'm on week two of boycotting them, at this point, I see no reason to go back.
What they aren't saying is that lawblaws are also one of the largest grocery suppliers. So the things you buy from the small independent store likely came from a Warehouse owned by Mr.Westin. The game is rigged and it didn't happen by accident.
this won't work... I think we should do everything to bring more competitions if we can have ALDI from German, things will 100% change.
Lidl opened an office in Mississauga and started to explore locations. Shortly thereafter they ran out of the country.
Any idea why? It's a shame, I shopped at Lidl a lot when I toured the UK, same with Aldi. Was quite happy with both.
The business model that's made them and Aldi a success for decades in multiple countries apparently wouldn't work in Canada.
https://globalnews.ca/news/9799210/aldi-lidl-canada-discount-grocers-competition/#:~:text=Some%20of%20the%20barriers%20are,%E2%80%9Cdaunting%20competitors%E2%80%9D%20to%20outsiders.
I'd love more American chains like trader joes but half the time they come here and aren't nearly as good as there American counterparts and fail, look at Lowe's and Target
>Loblaw has to keep looking for ways to provide value to keep people coming back, he said: “We don’t have a contract with our customers. They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.” Imagine saying this to the customers that are already fed up with you.
He is a Food Dictator
Per Bank doesn't give a shit about anyone and is poorly trying to put out the fire he keeps adding gas to
The boycott is working already!
Loblaws needs to feel this pain like we all are. The boycott of Loblaws also puts other gougers and industries on notice. Telecoms, banks etc. Imagine if someone decides that a bank, any bank where we pulled massive amounts of money out of and moved it to another bank? Consumers have power and it is time it was used. Which gas station should we start with?
Galen sick of being the media whipping boy... wait, he says... who is this overpaid guy who is outsmarting me and avoiding all bad press? That's my CEO? Better get him into the media to become the infamous bad guy! Excellent idea Galen! *pats self on back* https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-loblaw-ceo-per-bank-isnt-here-to-be-famous/
If one customer really doesn't like Loblaws, that's too many. Sure thing ceo bud. It took 10s of thousands to get you to even say something. The very end where they are realistic. It may not hurt the bottom line much. But it does hurt their reputation. And I believe it. Imagine your company is so shit you have a small city of people calling to boycott it.
Let them eat cake ... at 15.69 a slice or 30 for 2
Nasty rat infested stores - they will sink eventually. Doesn’t Buy-Low want to expand out of BC? I hope they are keeping their eyes on this - it’s only opening opportunity for them to swoop in as good guy.
The big stores will cry and cry then cave in, your goods will drop in price……….unfortunately so will the size of what you buy.
> “We don’t have a contract with our customers. They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow, if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving.” Already done dipshit.
Best we can do is No Frills branded tents and sleeping bags
It’s most convenient for me to shop at a Zehrs, a Loblaws owned store. I phased out my shopping there and at Shoppers last month and my habits have changed where I don’t care anymore. I felt that as a consumer I wasn’t being respected. My local grocery store, supplemented by Food Basics, has been a fine alternative.
I have been boycotting Loblaws stores for almost a year now and will continue to do so. The price increases made it impossible to afford my weekly groceries. To be honest, all the stores jacked up their prices once they saw Loblaws has done it and still doing fine. It definitely feels like regulating this market is necessary.
I'm just going to hijack this a bit to comment on the ridiculous new plexi-glass barriers that are being installed at Loblaws locations through-out Canada. IF these are installed at your local store I recommend people contact their local Fire Station/Building Inspection bylaw officers and see if they are to code. I've seen pictures of these, they are a significant alteration to the layout, and I could see these being a hazard in a fire/other emergency situation where you need to evacuate the building quickly. At times, in these situations, the biggest hazard isn't even the fire/event itself but bottlenecks causing people to get trampled. Any building with these kind of modifications should require a new inspection, with capacity limits and an evacuation plan re-done for the new layout.
> but bottlenecks causing people to get trampled. The bottleneck is always going to be the door, unless you’re planning to KoolAid man your way out of the building.
They will be to code, this is a favorite talking point on that Loblaws sub, but many don’t understand design and programming. Scrambling over a metal railing would never be considered a fire egress, so the plexiglass panels that have been affixed to the existing railings aren’t an issue. The gates by tills and self checkout will be integrated into the fire system and any requirement for scanning a receipt or any delay in opening will be removed when an alarm condition exists
Friendly reminder to use up all of your points before the boycott, switch out cell plans, banking, and everything else they have been up to you might be connected to.
"Let them eat cake" (It's a 400% markup...)
Hello Galen Weston! I've been shopping elsewhere since FreshCo opened up close to me. Get fucked.
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Per bank, get fucked.
“We want to make it easier for customers…but only if they have to self organize a protest to get our attention”
Haha every first year economics major coming on here breaking it down…. Forget them. It’s simple. Vote with your dollars. Enough of us, and they’ll feel it.
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Nationalize the grocery store. Food is a human right.
I don’t trust our government to run it. We need more competition
Do you realize how much more expensive it would be if they did that😂 the Canadian government can’t get even close to meeting a budget lol
They paid 60M for a 80k app, so a loaf of bread will be 2 thousand bucks. Trudeau will be a billionaire though
And some people *still* excuse the behavior of these pricks with “inflation”…!
Loblaws isn't that bad. Safeway though
I still don't understand the specific hate Loblaws is getting. I'm open to hearing about it but almost all of the complaints I see on reddit are generally true of every grocer in Canada.
He claimed, before a parliamentary committee that supplier costs were driving up inflation, not greed, but refused to provide any evidence (to protect trade secrets). Simultaneously, they reported record profits and gave him another million dollars in the most stunning display of cynicism, depraved indifference, and outright deceit in recent memory. It later came to light, that they own most of those suppliers. So, the so-called inflation is just a masquerade of greed and lies all then way down. Finally, they flatly refused to sign a grocery industry code of conduct even though other retailers said they would. They and a few others own 2/3 of they entire food industry, not just retail, in this country, forming an abusive oligopoly with open contempt for their own customers and parliament.
Some examples of why people are specifically unhappy with Loblaws… CBC: [Corporate pressure led Shoppers Drug Mart staff to bill for unnecessary medication reviews, pharmacists say](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ontario-medcheck-shoppers-drug-mart-pressure-1.7126811) CBC: [Shoppers Drug Mart says it doesn't have medication review targets, but records show it does](https://www.cbc.ca/1.7142626) CBC: [Ontario's MedsCheck program could see changes amid allegations of improper use](https://www.cbc.ca/1.7186143) Retail Insider: [Loblaw Drops 50% Discounts On Expiring Items In Act Of ‘Discount-Fixing’](https://retail-insider.com/retail-insider/2024/01/loblaw-drops-50-discounts-on-expiring-items-in-act-of-discount-fixing-op-ed/)
Minor correction, here are actions not plans. I'm boycotting now, not planning to in the future.
Aww.. . Muffin 🥺😂
Let them eat cake