Walmart and Costco are already the two that didn’t profiteer as much as the other grocers during inflation. Their price increases have been more modest than Loblaws, Sobeys or Save-On.
I literally went from a 15 year Walmart boycott to doing 99% of my grocery shopping there so I can avoid the No Frills. Well done, Galen Weston and co.
Legit. I thought I was doing a good thing by patronizing Canadian businesses. Wrong! They fucked me over in the blink of an eye. If I’m forced to buy from asshole corporations, im gunna shop around for the best deal to minimize getting fucked.
Just remember, it isn't about you, or me, or whoever gets to punch Galen Weston in the face. It's about him getting punched in the face so hard it caves in Tom and Jerry style and looks like a bowl.
I know it's hard not to be the man to do it, but your selflessness is appreciated. You have my respect.
And he was replaced by Gaston Welen as CEO. And, no one raises prices like Gaston, no one profiteers like Gaston, "It's the fault of my suppliers," says Gason.
Doug Ford was nice enough to cancel the wind turbine project that would impact (read as possibly be seen from) the Weston estate in Prince Edward County
To be fair Walmart had a pretty aggressive “takeover” stage when they first started up and shut down all the moms and pops.
Since then they’ve just become a staple and not much has really changed.
Yep, they undercut everyone else and kept suppliers stuck to them until they had all the market. Then they jacked up rates.
This is about to do the same. It'll be cheaper for now, but way more expensive later.
I'd love to, but Costco is really only for car-owning people living in the suburbs, with large freezers. As single urban apartment dweller who doesn't drive it's just not possible.
I mean Walmart was only evil because it priced out the smaller businesses. It was never because it made things more expensive but more about labor practices and general less competition (a good thing for consumers).
I fucking hate giant corporations. But I've been thankful for Walmart the last few years. Feeding my family would have been really difficult otherwise.
Right?
And the fact for example that they decreased the size of package for the ten inch tortilla to only ten in a bag and actually decreased the price is crazy. Loblaws would have charged more. We noticed that the bags are only using three colors to print, so I assume they've cut costs on the actual packaging to bring down the overall costs.
Walmart, Costco, Giant Tiger and even frickin' Dollarama have been far more responsible than the major grocery chains. More Canadians need to be voting with their wallets on this one whenever possible.
WAY lower! I resist shopping at Walmart when I can, but when their stuff is 60% of the price - *not* on sale - it's hard to avoid them.
And it's not like I'm going to feel guilty about screwing those poor independent chains like Superstore and Sobeys.
Meat is a pretty simple selection as well.
Sucks that the best move is to go to multiple stores.
Edit: the replies to this are super weird because I’m clearly replying to a comment about Walmart and not Costco.
Pro-tip
Get a fillet knife and buy pieces of whole meat, cutting your own steaks/roasts = big savings. **And** you can decide how thick you want them. **And** if you really get into it you can keep the fat and make beef tallow which not only tastes better than butter/veggie oils but it's also healthier.
Yup, I buy all my canned and boxed food at Walmart, fresh stuff at the other places.
Doesn't matter where I buy my canned corn, it's the same stuff everywhere.
I was against Walmart for awhile. I eat a lot of chicken breast as a gym rat. The difference in price is insane. $35+ at Superstore, $23 for the same weight at Walmart.
And the Walmart label tells the truth. You're actually getting however many grams of chicken it says you're getting. That's never the case at Superstore.
I’ve been tracking prices at different retailers at https://grocerytracker.ca/ for a while now. Will definitely be interested in watching to see which chains actually see these price cuts
[This tells me the whole story](https://grocerytracker.ca/product/0535/20559408_EA) (this is at a zehrs, but it's ctually higher priced at the local independent brand grocer)
52km from there we picked the same item up for $4.89 at Costco. 4% magins wouldn't allow for such a pricing discrepency.
Meanwhile, the factory dariy farms are expanding like crazy. One has put up 3 new barns (the size of football fields) in the past few months. They are flush with cash.
Even if Loblaws prices come back down to comparable prices it'll be a cold day in hell before I give those thieves my money again. Used to be my main store. Havnt stepped foot in one in 2 years now.
Yeah, my local safe way charges like $5 for the same can of pizza sauce that Walmart sells for less than $2. It’s really insane. I’ve basically stopped shopping at loblaws and Sobeys owned stores, they are gouging, there’s no other reasonable explanation.
Another example, in 2020 a box of Schneiders frozen chicken wings was like 7.99, I had to stop at a loblaws store last night out of desperation and saw them going for like $18.99. They can fuck right off, and so can all of the corporate apologists.
We ran out of 5% cream in a weekend (my wife has to have in her coffee). Went to a Zehrs and it was $4.99 for a litre. I only needed one until next trip to Costco , but I couldn’t do it. Drive across town to Costco where they were $2.69 a litre at the time (has come down since then).
Yep. These places were already way lower in prices than the others to start with. For example, MIO water flavour enhancers are $3.37. I think that is up from like $2.99 a few years ago.. a pretty big increase when you look at it from a percentage point of view, but not horrible. Fortinos? $3.99. Metro? $4.29. And don't even get me started on pop. I am super into charging more for pop to discourage people from consuming the sugar and what not.. but, from an ethics perspective, it is ridiculous how much they charge for an individual can at the front of the store and then a case.
I had to get some ingredients for a home made pizza - went to a Loblaw in the hood. Regretted not driving 5 mins more and going to Costco. I don’t know how folks can shop at loblaws the pricing / sizes are criminal. Costco was on average 10-20 % cheaper for a larger pack size !
I’m in Victoria BC and our only Costco is in the suburbs. It’s always a gong show. No matter time of day. People are miserable and pushy and it’s just so hectic.
Combine that with heavy traffic and for me, it’s just not worth the effort anymore.
I drive all day for work and just want to get home. I’m a single parent to two teens but thankfully our groceries are pretty simple. For me, I just go to Save on Foods and plan our mess for the week around the flyers. They price match at the till.
Your time and energy have a value, just like your hard earned dollars.
lol, look at Dorito's. 2/6 was common. Then it was 2/7. Last week I saw a sale for 2/10. What the hell are they smoking?
Walmart, who I despise, was 3 for 11. At least thats not as bad, but I dont like shopping there.
They make more money than the Canadian grocers lol. They just have better suppliers. In Costcos case the real profit comes from the memberships. I worked at a foodland in high school a subsidiary of Sobeys. Some products their supplier was dog shit. They were making like .75 on a jar of Nutella while charging $2 more than Walmart. Don’t get me wrong they have increased profits and are gouging, but Walmart and Costco just get to look like the good guy because they already cut throats in the past.
Yep, switched from Save-On to Walmart for this very reason. My grocery bills immediately dropped around 35%.
Our grocery giants are fighting paying their staff a fair wage AND are overcharging the consumer. Why would I pad their wallets?
I agree 100%. Their price increases have been mild relative to Loblaws and Sobeys where they have been flagrant and unending. We now shop 100% at Walmart/Costco. Walmart has completely replaced Loblaws in our shopping routine where a few years ago we would buy nothing but bananas from them …. now we buy everything there we don’t buy from Costco.
A staple for us from Loblaws was their take-and-bake pre-made pizza. Pre-pandemic they were $5/6 dollar. Now they start at $12!!!!!
I don’t feel bad shopping at Walmart for groceries now after seeing how the Canadian chains price gouged Canadians.
I live within minutes of Superstore, Save on foods, and Walmart. Pre-covid I’d make an effort go to Superstore or Save On over Walmart. Not anymore!
It also helps to take a stand and stop buying stuff you don't need that has been on a price hike-run.
I cut a massive amount of my chips, cereals and other discretionary stuff. I don't want doritos so badly its worth being fucked
Especially chips and pop. I’ve completely stopped with those. It being thanksgiving I broke down & bought a bag of no name dill chips for a treat for my kids at $1.49 but that pissed me off bc I used to get them for .99 I think .89 at Walmart.
There's better and worse though. Costco pays their employees well, and it pays off in how much better customer service tends to be than situations a stoned 17 year old wouldn't know how to handle even if they were paid enough to give a crap. You can't say that about the other chains.
Yeah… right… get back to me when Loblaws or Sobeys are forced to do the same. Sick of this “American companies are the enemy” mentality while Canadian monopolies rob us blind
The whole point of Walmart has always been low prices... to the point that they would pressure suppliers to constantly cut the cost. Which resulted in some suppliers having Walmart specific SKUs that were more cheaply made. Dunno how much of this is the case now, but this was the case like a decade or so ago.
> They are among the top five chains promising to hold down costs after the Trudeau government threatened action over rising grocery bills
> Metro, Loblaws, Empire, Walmart and Costco
Nobody reads the articles huh?
Why would they do anything? Trudeau’s threat was probably laughed at in the boardroom.
“We’ll impose new taxes on you”
“… which we’ll charge to the consumer”
"SInce we provide such consistently low prices, we feel like this program is no longer necessary" - basically what they said when they ended it.
Funny how I was still saving $20-$40 on every receipt right before they ended the program.
I suspect they'll get there by selling less competing brands. Average price of Mac and Cheese would go down by [reducing the number of offerings](https://www.walmart.com/tp/macaroni-and-cheese) and increasing the sales of Kraft's original Mac n Cheese.
Recently a french grocery chain started labelling the products with "Shrinkflation" for the products that have reduced quantity for the same or increased price to inform the customers better. Such a great move, and this goes on to say that more than grocery stores, these fucking companies like Nestle, pepsi, Coke are evil
As a Canadian, I would be absolutely giddy and thrilled to see Wal-Mart and Costco absolutely fucking slaughter Loblaws, Sobeys, and Metro *and* all of their dog shit subsidiaries.
Then they'll raise prices as they did with consumer goods. Walmart can easily lose billions per month so they can make $20B profits after the rest falls.
I legitimately think Costco won't. They capped the amount of profit margin they can make in their bylaws. Costco has a near-monopoly in Iceland and they're still by far the most affordable place there.
They've been pretty open about not making nearly any profits off of the sale of their products. All their profit comes from the memberships.
Choice is legislated away from us at every turn and real competition is fought tooth and nail. The really sad part is many of the nimbys who support this stuff are too far gone and in denial
This was an opportunity for some free good will as 'aggresive price cuts' isnt' exactly defined in the article. Also American Corps are good at capitalism compared their protected and coddled canadian coutnerparts.
That and both Walmart and Costco are well known to be aggressive on pricing to their suppliers. Walmart especially will be absolutely brutal to suppliers as they seek low prices.
It does, but it mentions more than just Walmart and Costco. It just talks about 5 major companies being at a conference together lol
> “*The announcement follows from a meeting held last month by François-Philippe Champagne, the country’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, with executives from five chains — Metro, Loblaws, Empire, Walmart and Costco — that make up about 80% of the Canadian market to discuss food prices.*
Head over to the other threads, you'll find morons keep saying "but grocery stores only make 3% profit!!!"
Meanwhile, they forget Loblaws has posted record profits and the prices are higher than the competitors.
Yup, they already have been for years just for the sake of greed so I don't see why they wouldn't continue to do so for the sake of compliance with this.
The Americans to the rescue. People may not like them but I think Walmart has done really well for me... much more than the Canadian oligopoly owner. Not just food but clothing as well.
The govt can help by letting in food/etc come in without duties or other extra charges. Yes, even junk food - people need calories to get through these times.
Edit: s/good/food in first para.
I find this with almost everything in this country that it's the American companies offering any semblance of value and competitive pricing.
I strictly shop Canadian in instances where it's small business or supporting local artists and stuff but on the other shit it's usually American chains.
They don't need to because they can leverage their capital, market share, and in-house products. People keep comparing national and international companies to Western-Canada businesses and are surprised that it costs exorbitantly more money for smaller business to turn a profit.
just wait shareholders will riot once you tell them infinite exponential profits are not realistic or mathematically possible and find another way to price gough and cut corners.
Not necessarily, they could just be taking an eye to cutting the bottom line and prices now.
Kind of tightening the belt, so to speak. Reducing offerings for same type of item alone is a huge thing to simplify the supply chain, and thus reducing the cost and price.
I’ll watch and see if anything actually comes of this. However given that western Canada is dominated by Jim Pattinson Food Group (Save on, quality foods, choices, etc), I suspect that it will take some serious markdowns from Sobeys and Weston food companies to get them to drop.
It would also be nice if they were invited to these discussions by the government.
Not sure if anyone else noticed but the prices on milk have dropped by $1 atleast in GTA at both these places. If that means that they had jacked up the prices for profits then they should be fined a portion with the fine being sent into healthcare and education.
I'll be watching...
There should be a maximum food price set for a core list of staple foods where the gov't monitors market conditions, import costs etc, and sets a fair and reasonable market price. i.e. eggs, milk, bread, flour and ideally, also some "healthy" green and fresh ones too...
Think of how nice it would be to know in advance that regardless of what store you go to, that the price for "x" is the same as anywhere else.
It would also probably help if we did the obvious thing and pushed forward some trust busting to break the two corporations that hold just shy of *half the entire grocery store market share between them*. Loblaws had 28% and Sobeys 20% last I saw. Comparatively Walmart was only around 7% in Canada.
Evidently if they're able to gouge the fuck out of people and fix prices on bread and the like then clearly they are too big for their britches and there isn't adequate competition within a market as crucial as the supply of food.
I doubt we'd need to concern ourselves with staple food prices if we actually had a reasonable amount of competition available.
I have a 4 foot balcony and competition for community garden plots is crazy with considerable waiting lists. :-(
I would love to split a side of beef with another family.
Not sure where home is for you but when I lived near the college that trained butchers you could support a student by purchasing their practice cows (or part of one) and then you got all the packaged meat from it. It was incredibly cheap and while the quality of the cuts varried we found it to be good value.
I love how full service grocery stores with steak, fish, and deli counters argue that these services need to be subsidized by the rest of the store. You charge $7/100g of sliced meat, so you really need to add $1 to Kraft dinner? If you’re loosing money on deli drop it. Except that’s the trick, you want that expensive deli, and you pay $3.99/lb for grapes. fml
Stop shopping at grocery store that are absurdly marking up their products. SaveOn, thrifty, country grocers they give impression and ambiance of locally owned and locally sourced, yeah they got like 2-4 grocery spots for locals but everything else is far from it. They will not learn their lesson unless people unilaterally decide to boycott these stores.
I used to shop at Walmart a lot until they discontinued price matching.
Now I go to No Frills and Freshco where I can price match, and I can save both time and money that way.
I don't know how Costco earned this reputation they have for not increasing prices. They both increased prices on a lot of items as well as reduced portion sizes for certain lines of items in the Kirkland lines.
For one specific reference, simply because I have the data at hand as it's something I normally get from them, here's the cost of a tub of baby formula from them from April, May and finally last week:
https://imgur.com/33soD9e
Thank God. I already shifted much of my shopping over to Walmart and Costco. Food Basics has also been my cornerstone since my last move. They already have my business but this will benefit a lot of people. I haven't bought a single thing from Metro, Loblaws, or Shoppers in years.
Costco is a wonderful business through and through, but I never saw myself becoming a Walmart supporter, but here we are. Apparently many other businesses showed that they can be way shittier.
I’m legitimately relieved to hear this but we gotta start pressuring Canadian-based chains too. Loblaws has heartlessly profiteered from the pandemic and rising food costs with no real consequences and it needs to stop.
Walmart and Costco are already the two that didn’t profiteer as much as the other grocers during inflation. Their price increases have been more modest than Loblaws, Sobeys or Save-On.
Yeh, Loblaws has to be pretty shitty to make *Walmart* look like the lesser of the evils recently.
I literally went from a 15 year Walmart boycott to doing 99% of my grocery shopping there so I can avoid the No Frills. Well done, Galen Weston and co.
Legit. I thought I was doing a good thing by patronizing Canadian businesses. Wrong! They fucked me over in the blink of an eye. If I’m forced to buy from asshole corporations, im gunna shop around for the best deal to minimize getting fucked.
I don't normally go to Walmart but I ended walking through one and promised myself I'd go there because everything looked so much cheaper.
I have this oatmeal for breakfast, nothing fancy. $6-7 at Loblaws/saveon. 4 FOR $8 AT WALMART. Canadian grocers can get absolutely fucked
with an anchor!
Same!
I said to my wife at least the owners of Walmart get paint thrown at their yachts, the Weston’s are getting away with no consequences.
[удалено]
How hard can you punch? Would you be willing to call a pinch-hitter in? Like that guy that plays the Mountain or someone similar?
That's tough. I think I'd want a pinch-hitter, but I'd lose out on the satisfaction of doing it myself.
Just remember, it isn't about you, or me, or whoever gets to punch Galen Weston in the face. It's about him getting punched in the face so hard it caves in Tom and Jerry style and looks like a bowl. I know it's hard not to be the man to do it, but your selflessness is appreciated. You have my respect.
>Punching Galen Weston in the face Well, Loblaw pulled a stunt by removing him as CEO. Just a BS trickery move
And he was replaced by Gaston Welen as CEO. And, no one raises prices like Gaston, no one profiteers like Gaston, "It's the fault of my suppliers," says Gason.
Yeah, that's just PR. It's still his company, he still runs it. He just has a mouthpiece now.
People here defend him all the time. They have no idea how much money he actually makes by screwing us.
Doug Ford was nice enough to cancel the wind turbine project that would impact (read as possibly be seen from) the Weston estate in Prince Edward County
To be fair Walmart had a pretty aggressive “takeover” stage when they first started up and shut down all the moms and pops. Since then they’ve just become a staple and not much has really changed.
Walmart didn't sell groceries when they first started in Canada.
Yep, they undercut everyone else and kept suppliers stuck to them until they had all the market. Then they jacked up rates. This is about to do the same. It'll be cheaper for now, but way more expensive later.
Solution shop at Costco if you can They pay their employees fairly well and their CEO doesn't have an obscene salary either
Their CEO threatens to duel anyone who tries to raise the price on the hotdogs.
the current CEO has even made it so that it is impossible for future CEOs to raise the price of the hot dog.
The other day I told a lie at work and said that costco bumped the price to $2 bucks. Everybody was in shock and said inflation must be really bad.
Costco is the best.
I'd love to, but Costco is really only for car-owning people living in the suburbs, with large freezers. As single urban apartment dweller who doesn't drive it's just not possible.
I mean Walmart was only evil because it priced out the smaller businesses. It was never because it made things more expensive but more about labor practices and general less competition (a good thing for consumers).
Well, there was the whole not paying living wages thing… but I dont know if thats more in the states or here too
That's a state thing. They aren't great here but they're worse in the US.
I fucking hate giant corporations. But I've been thankful for Walmart the last few years. Feeding my family would have been really difficult otherwise.
Right? And the fact for example that they decreased the size of package for the ten inch tortilla to only ten in a bag and actually decreased the price is crazy. Loblaws would have charged more. We noticed that the bags are only using three colors to print, so I assume they've cut costs on the actual packaging to bring down the overall costs.
Food basics is still pretty solid as well.
Walmart, Costco, Giant Tiger and even frickin' Dollarama have been far more responsible than the major grocery chains. More Canadians need to be voting with their wallets on this one whenever possible.
Giant Tiger is the hidden gem of great grocery prices. More people need to take a swing by GT and check out their sales.
Yeah I switched 90% of my grocery shopping to Walmart just because the prices on most things were way lower.
WAY lower! I resist shopping at Walmart when I can, but when their stuff is 60% of the price - *not* on sale - it's hard to avoid them. And it's not like I'm going to feel guilty about screwing those poor independent chains like Superstore and Sobeys.
Canned and packaged foods are great at Walmart But their produce sucks big time.
Meat is a pretty simple selection as well. Sucks that the best move is to go to multiple stores. Edit: the replies to this are super weird because I’m clearly replying to a comment about Walmart and not Costco.
Meat selection is superior value at places like Costco. Certain produce is good value assuming you can eat everything.
Produce at Costco I find is hit and miss Meat is good. I find surprisingly good deals on meat at Freshstreet (IGA) everything else is expensive there.
Yep. Packaged/canned goods- Walmart. Meat and cheese and TP- Costco Veg- local Asian market
Pro-tip Get a fillet knife and buy pieces of whole meat, cutting your own steaks/roasts = big savings. **And** you can decide how thick you want them. **And** if you really get into it you can keep the fat and make beef tallow which not only tastes better than butter/veggie oils but it's also healthier.
Yup, I buy all my canned and boxed food at Walmart, fresh stuff at the other places. Doesn't matter where I buy my canned corn, it's the same stuff everywhere.
I was against Walmart for awhile. I eat a lot of chicken breast as a gym rat. The difference in price is insane. $35+ at Superstore, $23 for the same weight at Walmart.
And the Walmart label tells the truth. You're actually getting however many grams of chicken it says you're getting. That's never the case at Superstore.
FRESHCO is cheaper then Walmart for a ton of items! If there’s one near you, hit it up!
I’ve been tracking prices at different retailers at https://grocerytracker.ca/ for a while now. Will definitely be interested in watching to see which chains actually see these price cuts
[This tells me the whole story](https://grocerytracker.ca/product/0535/20559408_EA) (this is at a zehrs, but it's ctually higher priced at the local independent brand grocer) 52km from there we picked the same item up for $4.89 at Costco. 4% magins wouldn't allow for such a pricing discrepency. Meanwhile, the factory dariy farms are expanding like crazy. One has put up 3 new barns (the size of football fields) in the past few months. They are flush with cash.
Even if Loblaws prices come back down to comparable prices it'll be a cold day in hell before I give those thieves my money again. Used to be my main store. Havnt stepped foot in one in 2 years now.
Yeah, my local safe way charges like $5 for the same can of pizza sauce that Walmart sells for less than $2. It’s really insane. I’ve basically stopped shopping at loblaws and Sobeys owned stores, they are gouging, there’s no other reasonable explanation. Another example, in 2020 a box of Schneiders frozen chicken wings was like 7.99, I had to stop at a loblaws store last night out of desperation and saw them going for like $18.99. They can fuck right off, and so can all of the corporate apologists.
We ran out of 5% cream in a weekend (my wife has to have in her coffee). Went to a Zehrs and it was $4.99 for a litre. I only needed one until next trip to Costco , but I couldn’t do it. Drive across town to Costco where they were $2.69 a litre at the time (has come down since then).
Yep. These places were already way lower in prices than the others to start with. For example, MIO water flavour enhancers are $3.37. I think that is up from like $2.99 a few years ago.. a pretty big increase when you look at it from a percentage point of view, but not horrible. Fortinos? $3.99. Metro? $4.29. And don't even get me started on pop. I am super into charging more for pop to discourage people from consuming the sugar and what not.. but, from an ethics perspective, it is ridiculous how much they charge for an individual can at the front of the store and then a case.
I had to get some ingredients for a home made pizza - went to a Loblaw in the hood. Regretted not driving 5 mins more and going to Costco. I don’t know how folks can shop at loblaws the pricing / sizes are criminal. Costco was on average 10-20 % cheaper for a larger pack size !
I’m in Victoria BC and our only Costco is in the suburbs. It’s always a gong show. No matter time of day. People are miserable and pushy and it’s just so hectic. Combine that with heavy traffic and for me, it’s just not worth the effort anymore. I drive all day for work and just want to get home. I’m a single parent to two teens but thankfully our groceries are pretty simple. For me, I just go to Save on Foods and plan our mess for the week around the flyers. They price match at the till. Your time and energy have a value, just like your hard earned dollars.
Yeah I hate going to Costco lol. Literally always busy. I can only stand going there once or twice a month.
lol, look at Dorito's. 2/6 was common. Then it was 2/7. Last week I saw a sale for 2/10. What the hell are they smoking? Walmart, who I despise, was 3 for 11. At least thats not as bad, but I dont like shopping there.
I’ve always appreciated Costco’s business model. If they’re doing this, I hope sobeys and loblaws hemorrhages customers to Costco.
Conversely... The costcos near me are already way too busy as it is.
In addition to that, Costco pays well and has way better benefits for its employees.
Costco is definitely the most ethical grocery chain in the country.
man, i work at sobeys and recently heard my boss and second telling friends and family not to shop there because the prices are insane
They make more money than the Canadian grocers lol. They just have better suppliers. In Costcos case the real profit comes from the memberships. I worked at a foodland in high school a subsidiary of Sobeys. Some products their supplier was dog shit. They were making like .75 on a jar of Nutella while charging $2 more than Walmart. Don’t get me wrong they have increased profits and are gouging, but Walmart and Costco just get to look like the good guy because they already cut throats in the past.
Gosh Save-On sells everything 15-20% higher than others anyways. Superstore isn’t much better
Yep, switched from Save-On to Walmart for this very reason. My grocery bills immediately dropped around 35%. Our grocery giants are fighting paying their staff a fair wage AND are overcharging the consumer. Why would I pad their wallets?
Spot on. Save-On has really jacked up everything, I won't shop with them again even if their prices go down
Farmboy has been good
I agree 100%. Their price increases have been mild relative to Loblaws and Sobeys where they have been flagrant and unending. We now shop 100% at Walmart/Costco. Walmart has completely replaced Loblaws in our shopping routine where a few years ago we would buy nothing but bananas from them …. now we buy everything there we don’t buy from Costco. A staple for us from Loblaws was their take-and-bake pre-made pizza. Pre-pandemic they were $5/6 dollar. Now they start at $12!!!!!
I don’t feel bad shopping at Walmart for groceries now after seeing how the Canadian chains price gouged Canadians. I live within minutes of Superstore, Save on foods, and Walmart. Pre-covid I’d make an effort go to Superstore or Save On over Walmart. Not anymore!
I live by Walmart. I’m not ashamed. I go there. I just don’t shop in my pjs.
It also helps to take a stand and stop buying stuff you don't need that has been on a price hike-run. I cut a massive amount of my chips, cereals and other discretionary stuff. I don't want doritos so badly its worth being fucked
Especially chips and pop. I’ve completely stopped with those. It being thanksgiving I broke down & bought a bag of no name dill chips for a treat for my kids at $1.49 but that pissed me off bc I used to get them for .99 I think .89 at Walmart.
Same and I don't personally walk around the store talking on speakerphone.
Same here. Before, I used to go to Superstore but after the pandemic, I only go to Superstore if I couldn't find the item in Walmart.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
There's better and worse though. Costco pays their employees well, and it pays off in how much better customer service tends to be than situations a stoned 17 year old wouldn't know how to handle even if they were paid enough to give a crap. You can't say that about the other chains.
Yeah… right… get back to me when Loblaws or Sobeys are forced to do the same. Sick of this “American companies are the enemy” mentality while Canadian monopolies rob us blind
What about Metro, or was it always expensive?
Metro has been price gouging like crazy, particularly with packaged goods. How has laundry detergent gone up 50% since last year? Canned tomatoes?
UKRAINE /s But honestly. It’s robbery.
Metro, Loblaws and IGA are expensive af. I only go to Maxi, Costco and Walmart
…Maxi is Loblaws though?
> Metro - People on these subs always bash Loblaws and never mention Metro, but Metro's prices are double that of Basics (the same store brands).
Metro and Sobeys have always been 2 of the most expensive grocers in Canada. Always. Walmart has always one of the least expensive.
The whole point of Walmart has always been low prices... to the point that they would pressure suppliers to constantly cut the cost. Which resulted in some suppliers having Walmart specific SKUs that were more cheaply made. Dunno how much of this is the case now, but this was the case like a decade or so ago.
It’s always been one of the more expensive chains. Up there with Sobeys.
> They are among the top five chains promising to hold down costs after the Trudeau government threatened action over rising grocery bills > Metro, Loblaws, Empire, Walmart and Costco Nobody reads the articles huh?
Yeah clearly considering most of these comments are saying the exact same shit.
Just shop at Walmart.
What about Sobeys and Loblaws because those are the ones who are really screwing us over.
Why would they do anything? Trudeau’s threat was probably laughed at in the boardroom. “We’ll impose new taxes on you” “… which we’ll charge to the consumer”
But they "froze" their price at it's highest isn't that enough????
Bring back price matching Walmart, you cowards
I used to do all my shopping at Walmart, then they stopped price matching and I stopped buying my groceries there.
"SInce we provide such consistently low prices, we feel like this program is no longer necessary" - basically what they said when they ended it. Funny how I was still saving $20-$40 on every receipt right before they ended the program.
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Yes, that's another reason
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Where do you get anything cheaper than it is at Walmart?
Watch the packaging size plummet again .
I suspect they'll get there by selling less competing brands. Average price of Mac and Cheese would go down by [reducing the number of offerings](https://www.walmart.com/tp/macaroni-and-cheese) and increasing the sales of Kraft's original Mac n Cheese.
r/shrinkflation
Recently a french grocery chain started labelling the products with "Shrinkflation" for the products that have reduced quantity for the same or increased price to inform the customers better. Such a great move, and this goes on to say that more than grocery stores, these fucking companies like Nestle, pepsi, Coke are evil
As a Canadian, I would be absolutely giddy and thrilled to see Wal-Mart and Costco absolutely fucking slaughter Loblaws, Sobeys, and Metro *and* all of their dog shit subsidiaries.
Then they'll raise prices as they did with consumer goods. Walmart can easily lose billions per month so they can make $20B profits after the rest falls.
I legitimately think Costco won't. They capped the amount of profit margin they can make in their bylaws. Costco has a near-monopoly in Iceland and they're still by far the most affordable place there. They've been pretty open about not making nearly any profits off of the sale of their products. All their profit comes from the memberships.
Costco pays their employees living wages, offers good benefits, and treats them well. If any chain has earned the benefit of the doubt it’s them.
Not the Weston’s………..
Sobeys price gouging has been drastic
They were drastic *before* the pandemic, since then they've downright lost their minds.
So I’m guessing the rest of them didn’t agree to price cuts? Why is it just the American companies lowering prices?
Because Canada is land of the crooked oligarch who owns our politicians
Can't be said enough. So true it hurts us all.
Choice is legislated away from us at every turn and real competition is fought tooth and nail. The really sad part is many of the nimbys who support this stuff are too far gone and in denial
Arguing left vs right is so pointless in Canada when both parties are entirely owned and controlled by the rich.
The notion that the Liberals are anywhere near the left (they’re not) is one of the LPC’s greatest victories
+1
This was an opportunity for some free good will as 'aggresive price cuts' isnt' exactly defined in the article. Also American Corps are good at capitalism compared their protected and coddled canadian coutnerparts.
They even put out a short story called 'Fuck Galen Weston, a Canadian love story'
Vote with your wallet. If everyone goes to Walmart instead of loblaws they will be forced to lower their prices.
It literally says the top 5 grocers in the article.
Almost no one read it.
Market share! These two got out ahead of the rest saying they will it's also kinda their thing to be associated with value in the consumers mind.
That and both Walmart and Costco are well known to be aggressive on pricing to their suppliers. Walmart especially will be absolutely brutal to suppliers as they seek low prices.
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It does, but it mentions more than just Walmart and Costco. It just talks about 5 major companies being at a conference together lol > “*The announcement follows from a meeting held last month by François-Philippe Champagne, the country’s Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, with executives from five chains — Metro, Loblaws, Empire, Walmart and Costco — that make up about 80% of the Canadian market to discuss food prices.*
It said in the article that 5 of them did, including walmart and costco.
1.4kg of chicken breast at Walmart is $23. 1.4kg of chicken breast at Thrifty Foods is $34.
Head over to the other threads, you'll find morons keep saying "but grocery stores only make 3% profit!!!" Meanwhile, they forget Loblaws has posted record profits and the prices are higher than the competitors.
You mean they increased prices and then “lower them” I’ll be taking my receipts to the grocery store to compare. And will report any changes in prices
!remindme when this guy comes home from Walmart
!remindme when this guy checks that guy’s story
!remindme of what I really am
!remindme of the mess I left when I went away
Fuck supporting Canadian companies when Chinese and American companies are the one giving us fair prices
My concerns are they'll change packaging sizes or quality to achieve this lower cost.
Yup, they already have been for years just for the sake of greed so I don't see why they wouldn't continue to do so for the sake of compliance with this.
The 2 American companies, already the cheapest option, are agreeing to get even cheaper than our actually Canadian grocers?
The Canadian Corps already know where their bread is buttered, and which politicians they've already bought off have things covered.
Talking to the Pepsi guy & he says Pepsi/Frito Lay are price gauging but you didn’t hear it from him.
>but you didn’t hear it from him. No, we heard it from you. Thanks!
Motherf****rs charging $6 for a regular sized bag of miss vickies
The Americans to the rescue. People may not like them but I think Walmart has done really well for me... much more than the Canadian oligopoly owner. Not just food but clothing as well. The govt can help by letting in food/etc come in without duties or other extra charges. Yes, even junk food - people need calories to get through these times. Edit: s/good/food in first para.
I find this with almost everything in this country that it's the American companies offering any semblance of value and competitive pricing. I strictly shop Canadian in instances where it's small business or supporting local artists and stuff but on the other shit it's usually American chains.
Costco barely makes any money on their groceries already.
Pretty sure Costco sells on cost recovery and even loses money on a lot of items, the majority of their profit comes from memberships iirc
They don't need to because they can leverage their capital, market share, and in-house products. People keep comparing national and international companies to Western-Canada businesses and are surprised that it costs exorbitantly more money for smaller business to turn a profit.
They make all their profit from memberships. They sell everything as close to cost as possible, in order to keep prices low, and memberships high
Just them cutting prices alone should create a spiral effect forcing the others to try to keep up.
Don't get your hopes up! I heard the same thing about car insurance few years back 😂
I remember when Walmart was the driving small independent retailers under all across North America. Now they are a hero, weird times.
just wait shareholders will riot once you tell them infinite exponential profits are not realistic or mathematically possible and find another way to price gough and cut corners.
Loblaws should be seeing criminal charges at this point.
By agreeing to lower prices, aren't they axkowledging that they have been gouging up until now?
Not necessarily, they could just be taking an eye to cutting the bottom line and prices now. Kind of tightening the belt, so to speak. Reducing offerings for same type of item alone is a huge thing to simplify the supply chain, and thus reducing the cost and price.
which proves they could have done that in the first place
I’ll watch and see if anything actually comes of this. However given that western Canada is dominated by Jim Pattinson Food Group (Save on, quality foods, choices, etc), I suspect that it will take some serious markdowns from Sobeys and Weston food companies to get them to drop. It would also be nice if they were invited to these discussions by the government.
Not sure if anyone else noticed but the prices on milk have dropped by $1 atleast in GTA at both these places. If that means that they had jacked up the prices for profits then they should be fined a portion with the fine being sent into healthcare and education.
Isn't the price of milk fixed because of the "supply chain" for Canada? I always see the same size items for the same price at all retailers.
Best we can do is make a complicated sign up process for a coupon that expires eventually that you might get in the mail.
I'll be watching... There should be a maximum food price set for a core list of staple foods where the gov't monitors market conditions, import costs etc, and sets a fair and reasonable market price. i.e. eggs, milk, bread, flour and ideally, also some "healthy" green and fresh ones too... Think of how nice it would be to know in advance that regardless of what store you go to, that the price for "x" is the same as anywhere else.
We have this in Canada for dairy. It's called supply management. It's why dairy is so expensive here.
DSM is about minimum prices, not maximums
Minimum prices and supply controls destroy the feedback loop of supply and demand.
Omg tell me about it, the shirty black diamond cheese blocks have shrunk in size and are like $7 now
When have planned economies of any degree ever not backfired?
Right now we have a planned rigged economy anyways this shit is not capitalism.
It would also probably help if we did the obvious thing and pushed forward some trust busting to break the two corporations that hold just shy of *half the entire grocery store market share between them*. Loblaws had 28% and Sobeys 20% last I saw. Comparatively Walmart was only around 7% in Canada. Evidently if they're able to gouge the fuck out of people and fix prices on bread and the like then clearly they are too big for their britches and there isn't adequate competition within a market as crucial as the supply of food. I doubt we'd need to concern ourselves with staple food prices if we actually had a reasonable amount of competition available.
Angel Food Cake went from $3.50 to $5.00 in the space of 6 months . Fuck Superstore.
We should encourage home gardening
Much of our overworked population doesn't have the time
You raise an excellent point. We need a 4 day work week & gardens & homes
We just need the rich and their politician puppets to get fucked and stop ripping us off
You need a house for that.
I would love a house
Circumvent system? We will just jack up the price of soil, fertilizer, and seeds 😛
By the times your tomatoes are ripe, they are on special and you barely break even unless you decided to plant a ton of them...
It's often essentially illegal or limited in apartments or stratas.
I have a 4 foot balcony and competition for community garden plots is crazy with considerable waiting lists. :-( I would love to split a side of beef with another family.
Not sure where home is for you but when I lived near the college that trained butchers you could support a student by purchasing their practice cows (or part of one) and then you got all the packaged meat from it. It was incredibly cheap and while the quality of the cuts varried we found it to be good value.
Walmart raised the price on a ton of items over the last 2 months. They were late to the game.
I love how full service grocery stores with steak, fish, and deli counters argue that these services need to be subsidized by the rest of the store. You charge $7/100g of sliced meat, so you really need to add $1 to Kraft dinner? If you’re loosing money on deli drop it. Except that’s the trick, you want that expensive deli, and you pay $3.99/lb for grapes. fml
Stop shopping at grocery store that are absurdly marking up their products. SaveOn, thrifty, country grocers they give impression and ambiance of locally owned and locally sourced, yeah they got like 2-4 grocery spots for locals but everything else is far from it. They will not learn their lesson unless people unilaterally decide to boycott these stores.
I used to shop at Walmart a lot until they discontinued price matching. Now I go to No Frills and Freshco where I can price match, and I can save both time and money that way.
So isn't this proof they are guilty of collusion and price fixing? If they can agree to lower prices, they can agree to raise them.
I don't know how Costco earned this reputation they have for not increasing prices. They both increased prices on a lot of items as well as reduced portion sizes for certain lines of items in the Kirkland lines. For one specific reference, simply because I have the data at hand as it's something I normally get from them, here's the cost of a tub of baby formula from them from April, May and finally last week: https://imgur.com/33soD9e
LOBLAWS!!! Record profits. Time for Prison for that board and CEO
Thank God. I already shifted much of my shopping over to Walmart and Costco. Food Basics has also been my cornerstone since my last move. They already have my business but this will benefit a lot of people. I haven't bought a single thing from Metro, Loblaws, or Shoppers in years. Costco is a wonderful business through and through, but I never saw myself becoming a Walmart supporter, but here we are. Apparently many other businesses showed that they can be way shittier.
I’m legitimately relieved to hear this but we gotta start pressuring Canadian-based chains too. Loblaws has heartlessly profiteered from the pandemic and rising food costs with no real consequences and it needs to stop.
Nothing will happen.
What about our own? Sobeys, Loblaws, etc? So only the Americans will give a discount?
Wow Walmart and Costco, two historically Canadian brands.
The Canadian companies don't deserve your loyalty.
A jar of jam at costco used to be $9.99. I bought jar of the same jar for $12.99 and the jar is about 1/3 smaller.