I heard Canada is working on a deal to get Aldi here. It’ll get better if they do
Aldi is a German grocer chain everywhere in Europe and lots of locations in the states.
They have less choices. For example if you want apple juice , they have 2 kinds to pick from that’s it. And their prices are phenominal
That’ll never happen. The govt just asked / begged them but Aldi (etc) have zero interest or reason to enter a tiny market
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7188426
Edit: why it’s a pipe dream thinking Aldi (or its cousin Trader Joes) will be here any time soon
https://globalnews.ca/news/9799210/aldi-lidl-canada-discount-grocers-competition/amp/
That’s hard to understand. Aldi is in Australia, which has smaller population than Canada and has “similar” economics.
They even had talks with New Zealand years ago (didn’t work out tho).
Aldi is in Portugal, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. I don't believe it's due to a "tiny" market. Canada has more people than those five countries combined.
They also operate in Australia, smaller than Canada, and more isolated, so you can't use the "European Union" argument.
Something tells me there are bigger barriers to operate here than other countries.
Oh, what the hell is up with us not getting the cool corpo chains? Everyone else gets the cornucopia of neat restaurants and stores, then you come up here to Canada and it's like 5 stores and 10 restaurants, most of which are owned by the same holding companies. What's it gonna take for them to realize people actually live up here?
If it's anything like Target, they'd have too many issues to suffer through to reach a point of profitability.
They lasted three to four years and still would have had another four to five to start making money.
There was this beautiful breakdown of why they had so many issues. I can't remember where it was though.
Walmart prices are not lower than No Frills or Food Basics. You can't compare Walmart to Loblaws, Metro or Sobeys, which are full service, higher quality stores.
The boycott sub is full of rage-bait and falsehoods. Where I am Loblaws has the best prices (Maxi in Québec). Not only that, it wasn’t hard to google and see that Loblaws stores in the rest of Canada had the same or even better prices than Walmart. This boycott is absolutely misguided.
Ok Loblaws boycotter. In Toronto Food Basics is cheaper than Walmart. Cheese slices are double at Walmart for example. I shop for deals. So I know what costs are at different stores.
BTW, Walmart does not price match unlike the Loblaw stores. And Walmart has no loyalty program that earns me lots of $$ for food purchases. So suck on that thought for awhile.
>Ok Loblaws boycotter
Is that supposed to be an insult?
>I know what costs are at different stores
Congrats. You sound like a professional.
>Walmart does not price match
I don't care because where I am, they are the cheapest. Price matching would be pointless.
>So suck on that thought for a while.
Ok? Sorry you feel personally attacked by my preference to shop at Walmart. I truly believe you can overcome this and get a fucking a life.
I live in Germany. Aldi is a low end retailer, I’m not a big fan personally. Their business model here is also about maximizing their profit. The owners are just German Galen Westons.
Store layout will be familiar since it’s industrial, like Costco. They stock mostly their own no-name cheapo brands, which can sometimes be nice of course. But many really are low quality. Their produce sucks and they do use a lot of packaging.
But they are looking to expand and Canada desperately needs more competition/disruption. So I hope they come and don’t collude with our mobsters.
Yeah, it's really sad seeing people who are trying to boycott a greedy corporation being forced through the doors of another greedy corporation. The worst part is, as soon as Superstore is gone, Wally world will Jack up their prices. Unless some other, more responsible businesses come along. I'd open one, if they'd give poor people like me loans
Giant tiger is very good and Canadian. Their meat department is limited though. Produce is getting better. Dry goods are expanding with more Marche brand. You need to pair it with another store IMHO.
The real answer for Edmonton/calgary is the Italian centre. Some stuff is more expensive, but deli meat/cheese, produce, and bakery goods are the best prices and quality I’ve seen in a long time. I bought 350g of ham there for less than I paid for 4 slices (about 200g) at Sobeys
In addition to the prices, the additional competition would be great for the industry and would create more incentives which would inevitably lower the prices overall. Really hope they do this.
That might be kinda hard for people with gnarly food allergies, I hope aldi has some options for those people though. Walmart is already pretty limited.
We already have Aldi, ...its called No frills. Its pretty much the same as No Frills.
Some aspects of No frills was copied from Germany / The original Superstore was a direct copy from similar stores in Germany. There is an unknown guy named Dave Nichols who used to travel to Europe to get ideas for Loblaws in the 1970s and 80s
I hate to imagine how much food is getting thrown out at grocery stores. I walk past the bakery with all their 30-50$ small cakes, the meat department with 70$ packs of steak that never seem to move, the seafood department with fully stocked inventory that's not moving.
These things are priced so high and they expire quickly. I never see the prices go on sale as the food gets close to expiring. I don't even wanna know what they do with all that waste. The most infuriating thing is seeing them rather throw things out than price things at a point it will sell. It doesn't add up
I used to work at an Independent Grocer bakery/deli counter and I can confirm we threw out at least half of what was placed on shelves.
And this was before covid 19
There’s also an app called Too Good To Go that lets grocery stores and restaurants bundle up food that will be going to waste and sell it cheaply as sort off a mystery box.
They do that with lobsters too. They hold it to get premium price and if they do not get a buyer well now 1/2 the stock is rotten and they now have to sell at discount.
Why not just sell it at a resonable price in the first place when it is fresh 🥴🤦♀️ but nooo they gotta feed the garbages 🙄
We should have more strict laws when it comes to food wast
Yup, I have noticed this many many times. Which is why its totally wrong to say 'Its because of Capitalism'. Its not, its because of criminals in both the government and the companies working together to steal from the public.
I don’t personally understand how the elderly, non working single mothers and welfare recipients are actually surviving in Canada they must know something I don’t. Especially the ones that don’t heavily rely on food banks.
For real! My grandparents never had an issue with money, and now, after retirement, they have to use more than one food bank just to get by. Don't have anything to pay for as they own everything they have, so how tf can they not afford life and how tf is that even fair to them after spending years of time to have nothing in return.
I fear for myself and my child. I know this isn't going to end soon nor better itself in anyway.
Everyone is just silently struggling, letting this happen..
It wasn’t always like this, of course. But when we voted for free trade and deregulation in the 1980s it opened it up to allowing the bigger companies to bu the smaller ones. That took a while to complete but it’s happened now. Not just in groceries, there are only half as many companies on the stock market today as there were forty years ago (mostly because of mergers and acquisitions) but the ones that remain are much bigger.
We dug ourselves a very deep hole that’s going to be very hard to get out of.
It was short term gains for lang term pain. “Opening up the markets” did keep the cost of manufactured goods and food low for a while until the oligopolies were in place. Every time Loblaws, Sobeys, and Metro bought smaller grocery chains people warned this day was coming. But they were always dismissed as “anti-business lefties.” There is no right-wing solution to this but that’s the only kind of solution we want.
It's got to happen politically. We have to pressure politicians to change things but the majority who voted, voted for Ford and no doubt PP will be the next prime minister. I think NDP is our only hope and everyone laughs at them yet they are the only ones I see that stand up for the people making less than the median wage. I think lower wage earners feel shame so they just keep their mouth shut and that is absolutely nuts, we have to speak up and demand more!
That was during a time when it was common to have two or three generations living in the same house, and when properties were still commonly passed down between generations…so they didn’t have to worry as much about paying rent.
This generation, we have to worry about rising food prices AND rising mortgage rates/housing rent.
More than that, this is runaway capitalism, an end result of persistent growth. Free market doesn’t work in inelastic areas like food, and capitalism naturally leads to mergers, which leads to oligopolies, which leads to corporations controlling govt policy, which leads to now.
I don’t know what the way out is, but businesses are beginning to wake up and realize they pushed too hard and are suffering the consequences of raising prices too much. The Loblaws boycott IS working and showing people they do have the power to enact change.
I think this is the opposite of capitalism. It’s a new form of communism. Quiet government takeover of the GDP(at 64% currently) via regulation, taxes, bureaucracy, creation of artificial organizations, etc. Anchoring the entire country and economy on the real estate which only select top few profit from - the ones in the grossly expanded government, moving us away from natural resources trade which genuinely belong to the taxpayers and benefit them via jobs, infrastructure expansion, income, etc.
I’m from the former USSR and I’m recognizing all of the signs of neomarxism hiding in the sheep’s skin of current version of Canadian liberalism. It’s BS, it’s not liberalism, it’s quiet communism.
I’m from Putin’s Russia and for the second time in my life I’m witnessing a country spiralling towards authoritarian. I still think Canada is different because there is still official Opposition. I hope we see the change we need.
You don’t seem to be describing communism to me, but state capitalism or even authoritarianism/fascism. If you’re from the former USSR you know that it never actually achieved a state of communism; what we’re seeing is very much an end result of attaining growth and capital, are there overlaps with the later years of the Soviet Union? Sure, but that’s not communism.
The Westons own a big piece of the food supply pie, and have been gouging and price fixing for a long time. Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Mart and their other brands are definitely ripping us all off. They conspired and fixed the price of BREAD ffs
I buy my bread at a bakery, baked fresh every morning. 2 loafs for $5.00. If people didn't shop there they would have to compete like every other business. I have no sympathy for people that won't shop around for the best prices (exceptions of course). I have found 4 local businesses that undercut most of the bigger companies. Fresher and higher quality food is another bonus.
That's the point of the boycott, to not shop there and help others with various levels of access to food options figure out the best way to support themselves and their families
I never understood why people shop at Superstore l shopped there a couple of times to get some sale items. After seeing the prices of many other things I never went back there even for sale items because the parking lot and store was to crowded. Floor staff was non existent, shelves weren't stocked well cashiers weren't even friendly. The prices alone were enough to keep me from going back. I get what you mean about people having to learn something different though, if they never experienced a good store they don't know what they're missing.
Different people do what they can with what they can afford, and what is accessible to them. There are lots of places across the country that don't have the privilege of having good affordable healthy food options, and people are living alone or trying to support families on widely suppressed wages. I like my local bakery too, but it realistically isn't an option for everyone. Also, price fixing bread to gouge the Canadian population is just evil
I found a place that sells wholesale meat to restaurants, but if the cut or size isn’t perfect for them then they’ll sell it to the public. 10 lbs of wings for instance
Great find, I have a local butcher shop and he sells variety packs. $30 for 2 500g packs ground beef, 2 good cuts of steak, 500 gm stew beef or stir fry beef. Poultry packs too and he will do cut to order for a treat to BBQ
Most of my meals are cooked from scratch and l do bake but have never had much luck with baking bread. I really like the bread l get from this particular bakery
If bread doesn't mold in 3 to 4 days then l wouldn't eat it. I like buying Real bread, l just keep it in freezer and take slices as l need it. I don't believe that the majority of shoppers are dumb enough to think bread that lasts and stays fresh that long is a good thing.
I do often wonder what happens next. If the cost of everything keeps rising and they keep refusing to pay us a livable wage, what happens when nobody can afford anything anymore? Surely at that point the whole system falls apart
not conspiracy and not a new concept, just the basis of socialism.. a great idea but always unsuccessful because of capitalism. enter Marxist theory and communism. none have worked successfully, and certainly won't in 2024.
I shop at local ethnic grocers and food is as cheap as ever. 2$ for box of raspberries or strawberries, 49 cent per lb bananas. You get the idea. Haven’t been to a chain supermarket in years.
There’s definitely an obvious shift at this point. I pretty much stopped buying meat to keep my grocery budget the same as it was 2019. I’m lucky my work offers food a lot of the time at my job. The stuff that’s on sale is rotten/mouldy 60% of the time. There’s obvious shrinkflation. Lemons are 2.50$ each.. a LEMON. Those were 77 cents not too long ago. Anyways. We need radical solutions. Gorilla gardens anyone?
So in 20-22 this is what happened to food. I was in the food technology sector at the time, so kind of affected by all of this.
The pandemic. There weren't enough people to harvest the crops. In all countries. What was harvested didn't have reliable transportation to get it to the wholesaler. Wholesaler can't find truckers to get the produce to the port or rail hub. Ships and trains slower to move as manpower is reduced. Once product arrives in your local area, same problem, getting it distributed to local markets affected by shortage of drivers. Each of those problems took money to address. Oh, and the same non-harvesters became non-planters so the crop the following year wasn't even planted to its capacity.
In 2024, labour markets are stabilizing, yields are increasing, but demands for transportation and higher fuel prices remain. In the months ahead prices should stabiize, they already are, but they won't come down by as much as they could.
Canada is a vast country with a relatively small population. As a result we have few competitors in food retail, and allowing them to make uncontrolled and unregulated profits is obscene. Especially when they try to come out as victims.
Bigger plan? Participate in every boycott and every movement. Always buy local when you can. Make it an election issue. Food is as essential to life as air.
I promise you this, every single action in life, has a reason, a motive, emotions, underlying states and all sorts of things motivating it. It's getting to a point where people can really feel the underlying truth behind some of these things like the food prices, housing costs, etc.
It's going to get so bad, that eventually no one will believe whatever the fuck the government says about them trying their best to fix it all. All of this is caused on purpose. The government is creating this crisis and I know for a fact this will become more clear to people as time goes on.
Variety of beans and lentils.
Variety of whole grains and potatoes.
Fruits and vegetables.
Home cooked.
$200/month for 2 of us. Very healthy, should try it.
Good choices especially for health. Though which of the stuff you listed didn't also become much more expensive? The most egregious is effin oats! How come they are so expensive now? Used to be a cheap and nutritious staple,..
I just like when people vote with their active choices against price gouging...
OP said "how anyone is going to survive", so just listed options to survive, comfortably and healthy.
Good luck convincing the brain-dead brainwashed masses they don't absolutely need to waste hours of their week fucking around on a useless, wasteful monoculture lawn. my neighbour would probably kill himself if he couldn't mow his grass 3x per week.
It is weaponized incompetence, if it was by design or not is debatable. But it comes down to how greedy our cooperations are, and it turns out they are TWICE as greedy as our US counterparts, now couple that with the fact we only have a few massive gaints at the head of every industry, including food, and you get insanely high prices to drive their ever increasing profit. Now add our politicians who are bought and paid for by these corporations and you end up with the unsustainable endgame we are currently in.
Either the government gets their head out of their ass and fixes our country, or we are going to go through such a huge depression I seriously doubt Canada will survive unfractured.
I already do this. It's not helpful when everywhere is upping costs left right and center. Price match does shit and most places don't price match outside of certain km so really it's not helpful in anyway.
Coupons are where it's at lol but I ain't no extreme couponer🤣
I’ve gone to Langley Farm Market a couple of times now and they have an impressive selection.
But I was shocked to see that they charge *double* for cream cheese what Real Canadian Superstore and Walmart charge.
We are starting a mini garden co-op with relatives. It was my sister-in-laws idea. We have a few avid gardeners in our families. I’m not a big gardener, but I like doing yard work and eating. So I think I can enjoy gardening.
Yes. Food prices are ridiculous. Luckily, Canada has an abundance of fish, game birds and game animals and most back yards can accommodate a vegetable garden…. Just maybe your grandma and grandpa knew what they were doing by hunting and fishing every year and making preserves out of their garden every fall? I mean, they did survive the Great Depression (or at least your great grandparents did in order to raise them)…
Anyone thinking food prices will go down just have no idea how the alimentation market is like if anything it will keep on rising. The abundance we’ve been living in for the last 60-70 years isn’t coming back. Something will have to give and food isn’t something people will be able to cut on.
There is no 'bigger plan'. They call it "Value Pricing" when the sellers sell for the absolute most that the market will bear. If we think that ceiling is broken, we, THE CONSUMERS, need to speak with our wallets. A few picketed gas stations and grocery stores might be a start.
Very nice choices. The liberals who have partially destroyed the country due to their incompetence or the conservatives who send a loblaws lobbyist(one of the many companies responsible) to gather votes for them. No matter who you pick, Canada is kind of fucked either way.
Is there a bigger plan? Heck no, this isn't some sort of conspiracy. The plan is just to make as much profit as possible, which has always been the plan for most businesses.
What doesn't make sense? Companies make as much profit as their customers will bear; if we stop eating, grocery stores might have to drop their prices to entice customers. As long as we need to eat regularly, there will be grocery stores out to capture our dollars. I'm not aware of any non-profit grocery stores other than food banks. So, like any other business, grocery stores are out to make as much profit as they can. We are the unfortunate customers in that business practice.
Galen Weston Jr's mansions and yachts are the bigger plan. Mostly.
Incidentally, if you like conspiracies... The Weston family took part of the secretive Bilderberg meetings at least twice.
The plan was simple..
Whenever they saw a 2% increase in cost due to inflation, they raised the prices by 18%, said it was inflation and blamed Trudeau instead of Galen.
Part of the issue is that the “basket” of goods that they compare for inflation from housing to groceries has increased significantly. Grocery prices aren’t coming down, people’s wages are stagnant, a lot of people are being laid off because of a slower/sluggish economy. They’ve imported a plethora of international students/immigrants/refugees, keeping wages low, and creating a massive issue of having thousands of applicants for every single job opening from retail to food service to tech, etc. it’s across the entire job market, I’m sure. And most of the time they aren’t qualified, so good candidates get buried and people who lost their jobs are struggling to find work. Now add to this, housing starts are barely even moving, so no new housing being built. Rent is skyrocketing, people are spending a good portion of their income on housing needs. And the housing that is available are those crappy shoe-boxes in the sky (bachelor, jr one bedroom, and Uber tiny one bedrooms), and nothing that will house a small family (2-3 bedroom places). Plus no investment in infrastructure, such as hospitals, healthcare, education, etc.
I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but I’m sure interest rates were cut far too soon, and the BOC needs to do what’s best for the economy and not listen to outside political forces (who are desperately trying to get rates lower). It’s going to hurt (higher rates for longer), but I think it’s necessary at this point…. Or employers will need to significantly increase wages to allow for money to flow in the economy again. But they will never ever do that, that’s taking from their piece of the pie. But this is truly a clusterf*ck.
Honestly I don’t know why we haven’t collectively caused more of a stink irl over how ridiculous price of basics like food has become.
Take the Kenyans and the French. They’re actually mobilizing and organizing.
Honestly this is so Canadian that we’re all just suffering in silence and taking it.
Food is a basic human right, it is fundamentally immoral and should be illegal for corporations to profit off of stopping people from starving to death or simply going to an early grave due to malnutrition.
We need more competition in Canada period. A few companies control everything and it's all because of corrupt politicians taking payoffs. Now these companies have immense power and we all pay for it. Thanks Canadian Politicians.
Grocery Stores to avoid in Canada, Metro, Sobeys, anything Loblaws like Zehrs.
Also avoid any and all food at Shoppers.
Where I shop Walmart grocery pick up and mid week Freshco which is a discount chain of Sobeys and lower prices then Food Basics owned by Metro.
I worked at Metro many years I stopped full grocery shopping there over a decade ago too pricey.
Farmers market saved my wife and I, cut our produce costs by 1/4th. It’s cheaper, fresher, tastes better, and lasts longer. We go every other Saturday now, it was a major game changer.
>If they keep raising costs for everything idk how anyone is going to survive.
I see lots of people doing fine. I also know there are lots of people struggling too.
>Does anyone else feel there is a bigger plan at hand?
No, but conspiracy theories sure are exciting, aren't they?
Of course they are.
Upon what do you base this comparison?
Because we looked at our grocery bill from 5 years ago, and it's not very different at all. We have two teenage boys.
That can't be true. In 5 years just about everything you would possibly buy would have gone up 50% and somethings even 300%. I know because there's alot of things Ive been priced out of buying that used to be part of my regular diet
I was just in america and their food is fucking same price dollar for dollar before exchange rate.
There are some foods that are cheaper especially subsidized by the Feds but non subsidized foods are getting crazy.
I heard Canada is working on a deal to get Aldi here. It’ll get better if they do Aldi is a German grocer chain everywhere in Europe and lots of locations in the states. They have less choices. For example if you want apple juice , they have 2 kinds to pick from that’s it. And their prices are phenominal
Too bad there’s not some enterprising entrepreneurs who could come up with our own version…. Canaldi!
enterprising entrepreneurs tend to look outside canada
Lol at the name
Why? We hate people that make money in Canada.
Well, I guess there’s hate for certain people that make money… our politicians seem to be able to create a lot of wealth for themselves 🤷🏼♀️
That’ll never happen. The govt just asked / begged them but Aldi (etc) have zero interest or reason to enter a tiny market https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7188426 Edit: why it’s a pipe dream thinking Aldi (or its cousin Trader Joes) will be here any time soon https://globalnews.ca/news/9799210/aldi-lidl-canada-discount-grocers-competition/amp/
That’s hard to understand. Aldi is in Australia, which has smaller population than Canada and has “similar” economics. They even had talks with New Zealand years ago (didn’t work out tho).
Aldi is in Portugal, Ireland, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg. I don't believe it's due to a "tiny" market. Canada has more people than those five countries combined. They also operate in Australia, smaller than Canada, and more isolated, so you can't use the "European Union" argument. Something tells me there are bigger barriers to operate here than other countries.
Yeah, their name is the Weston family.
A tiny market with incredibly long supply chains*
Canada has some of the largest metro areas in North America though
They also doing a huge expansion in southern USA. ( Aldi)
Oh, what the hell is up with us not getting the cool corpo chains? Everyone else gets the cornucopia of neat restaurants and stores, then you come up here to Canada and it's like 5 stores and 10 restaurants, most of which are owned by the same holding companies. What's it gonna take for them to realize people actually live up here?
If it's anything like Target, they'd have too many issues to suffer through to reach a point of profitability. They lasted three to four years and still would have had another four to five to start making money. There was this beautiful breakdown of why they had so many issues. I can't remember where it was though.
"Beg" lmao as if the government cares about the welfare of us middle/working class peasants.
They care about votes. If enough people make an issue of this it will force them to do something, even if it’s window dressing
I found Trader Joe's to be expensive.
Crap, didn’t see that
Walmart and Costco both have better prices than the big 3.
Walmart prices are not lower than No Frills or Food Basics. You can't compare Walmart to Loblaws, Metro or Sobeys, which are full service, higher quality stores.
Walmart in my town is a lot less expensive than No Frills.
It's cheaper in my town too, just did a bunch of price comparisons the other day. Everything was a few cents less and better sales.
Walmart is definitely cheaper here
No Frills prices and Metros are on par, know that cause I've seen it for myself. Walmart is far cheaper, I used to work at Metro too
What? Where have you been? Fuck Loblaws.
The boycott sub is full of rage-bait and falsehoods. Where I am Loblaws has the best prices (Maxi in Québec). Not only that, it wasn’t hard to google and see that Loblaws stores in the rest of Canada had the same or even better prices than Walmart. This boycott is absolutely misguided.
Ok Loblaws boycotter. In Toronto Food Basics is cheaper than Walmart. Cheese slices are double at Walmart for example. I shop for deals. So I know what costs are at different stores. BTW, Walmart does not price match unlike the Loblaw stores. And Walmart has no loyalty program that earns me lots of $$ for food purchases. So suck on that thought for awhile.
>Ok Loblaws boycotter Is that supposed to be an insult? >I know what costs are at different stores Congrats. You sound like a professional. >Walmart does not price match I don't care because where I am, they are the cheapest. Price matching would be pointless. >So suck on that thought for a while. Ok? Sorry you feel personally attacked by my preference to shop at Walmart. I truly believe you can overcome this and get a fucking a life.
We don't need more international conglomerates. International conglomerates are the problem. We need Anti-Trust Lawsuits.
I live in Germany. Aldi is a low end retailer, I’m not a big fan personally. Their business model here is also about maximizing their profit. The owners are just German Galen Westons. Store layout will be familiar since it’s industrial, like Costco. They stock mostly their own no-name cheapo brands, which can sometimes be nice of course. But many really are low quality. Their produce sucks and they do use a lot of packaging. But they are looking to expand and Canada desperately needs more competition/disruption. So I hope they come and don’t collude with our mobsters.
Aldi is awesome for what it is, and more competition the better it breaks up supermarket oligopoly here.
The few places left that have a co-op grocery store are fortunate. The prices are the best
I just spent $350 at coop for scraps. I scoffed at every price.
Co-op in Calgary is consistently more expensive than superstore.
Unfortunately Walmart has been the best lately
Yeah, it's really sad seeing people who are trying to boycott a greedy corporation being forced through the doors of another greedy corporation. The worst part is, as soon as Superstore is gone, Wally world will Jack up their prices. Unless some other, more responsible businesses come along. I'd open one, if they'd give poor people like me loans
Giant tiger is very good and Canadian. Their meat department is limited though. Produce is getting better. Dry goods are expanding with more Marche brand. You need to pair it with another store IMHO.
The real answer for Edmonton/calgary is the Italian centre. Some stuff is more expensive, but deli meat/cheese, produce, and bakery goods are the best prices and quality I’ve seen in a long time. I bought 350g of ham there for less than I paid for 4 slices (about 200g) at Sobeys
What? Coop is easily the most expensive grocery store in atleast Alberta
This, that’s why they’re only in fancy neighbourhoods in Edmonton.
Not here. The closest Coop just closed. Their prices were horrible in comparison to Superstore and Walmart.
In addition to the prices, the additional competition would be great for the industry and would create more incentives which would inevitably lower the prices overall. Really hope they do this.
That might be kinda hard for people with gnarly food allergies, I hope aldi has some options for those people though. Walmart is already pretty limited.
Yeah IF it happened I think part of their low overheads is not serving inclusively , sadly
The Aldi in the US is nasty. Weird food. The ones in the Europe are good though.
[Oh boy are they ever the best](https://youtu.be/bKJXztteyJM?si=YUkxaOk9XUhPqwi-)
20 different brands of juices all come from the same umbrella brand and the same factory anyway
Right but instead of buying 200 juices from 8 brands , you get a better deal from buying 600 of 2 kinds and that saving is passed to the consumer.
I’m praying hard for the Aldi. That would be really cool. I also wish we could get Trader Joe’s.
choices is the problem. choices is related to climate change : so much waste to offer something that people doesn't like. 2 apple juice. Great !
We already have Aldi, ...its called No frills. Its pretty much the same as No Frills. Some aspects of No frills was copied from Germany / The original Superstore was a direct copy from similar stores in Germany. There is an unknown guy named Dave Nichols who used to travel to Europe to get ideas for Loblaws in the 1970s and 80s
No Frills is Loblaws owned and has been caught gouging and price fixing for a while now
Love ❤️ Dave Nichols.
That dude was sooo loved… and look at Galen… sooooooo hated.
I hate to imagine how much food is getting thrown out at grocery stores. I walk past the bakery with all their 30-50$ small cakes, the meat department with 70$ packs of steak that never seem to move, the seafood department with fully stocked inventory that's not moving. These things are priced so high and they expire quickly. I never see the prices go on sale as the food gets close to expiring. I don't even wanna know what they do with all that waste. The most infuriating thing is seeing them rather throw things out than price things at a point it will sell. It doesn't add up
They should be fined for everything they waste
I used to work at an Independent Grocer bakery/deli counter and I can confirm we threw out at least half of what was placed on shelves. And this was before covid 19
I think they write off the waste, I read that somewhere.
https://www.oddbunch.ca/
Check out Odd Bunch, they sell food grocery stores won't. The prices are better and it helps reduce waste. https://www.oddbunch.ca/
There’s also an app called Too Good To Go that lets grocery stores and restaurants bundle up food that will be going to waste and sell it cheaply as sort off a mystery box.
They do that with lobsters too. They hold it to get premium price and if they do not get a buyer well now 1/2 the stock is rotten and they now have to sell at discount. Why not just sell it at a resonable price in the first place when it is fresh 🥴🤦♀️ but nooo they gotta feed the garbages 🙄 We should have more strict laws when it comes to food wast
I know. It seems like the inventory is really high as well.
Yup, I have noticed this many many times. Which is why its totally wrong to say 'Its because of Capitalism'. Its not, its because of criminals in both the government and the companies working together to steal from the public.
I don’t personally understand how the elderly, non working single mothers and welfare recipients are actually surviving in Canada they must know something I don’t. Especially the ones that don’t heavily rely on food banks.
For real! My grandparents never had an issue with money, and now, after retirement, they have to use more than one food bank just to get by. Don't have anything to pay for as they own everything they have, so how tf can they not afford life and how tf is that even fair to them after spending years of time to have nothing in return. I fear for myself and my child. I know this isn't going to end soon nor better itself in anyway. Everyone is just silently struggling, letting this happen..
Silently struggling is a great term. Sometimes I feel like I’m the only one because no one talks about it anymore.
A lot of us are sadly in the same boat, friend
It wasn’t always like this, of course. But when we voted for free trade and deregulation in the 1980s it opened it up to allowing the bigger companies to bu the smaller ones. That took a while to complete but it’s happened now. Not just in groceries, there are only half as many companies on the stock market today as there were forty years ago (mostly because of mergers and acquisitions) but the ones that remain are much bigger. We dug ourselves a very deep hole that’s going to be very hard to get out of.
The older generations have fucked it up for the rest and everyone else is just stuck on the Rollercoaster.
It was short term gains for lang term pain. “Opening up the markets” did keep the cost of manufactured goods and food low for a while until the oligopolies were in place. Every time Loblaws, Sobeys, and Metro bought smaller grocery chains people warned this day was coming. But they were always dismissed as “anti-business lefties.” There is no right-wing solution to this but that’s the only kind of solution we want.
or even worse, the telecom oligopolies
It's got to happen politically. We have to pressure politicians to change things but the majority who voted, voted for Ford and no doubt PP will be the next prime minister. I think NDP is our only hope and everyone laughs at them yet they are the only ones I see that stand up for the people making less than the median wage. I think lower wage earners feel shame so they just keep their mouth shut and that is absolutely nuts, we have to speak up and demand more!
Unfortunately they are eating very poorly
We’re hungry but our kids are fed
Historically speaking people used to spend something like 70% of their income on food. Maybe we are experiencing reversion to the mean?
That was during a time when it was common to have two or three generations living in the same house, and when properties were still commonly passed down between generations…so they didn’t have to worry as much about paying rent. This generation, we have to worry about rising food prices AND rising mortgage rates/housing rent.
Depends on the specific time and place in history.
I mean kids are moving back to their parents place if they even had the opportunity to get their own home so...
And for those of us that can't?
This is unacceptable. I will riot before that happens
Oligopoly. When a few companies control everything they can set the prices wherever they want.
Canada is just a handful of large corporations wearing a trench coat pretending to be a country
💯 oligopolies never benefit the consumer. They give big business and government total control.
Neoliberalism in action
Neomarxism
MAGA-communism
More than that, this is runaway capitalism, an end result of persistent growth. Free market doesn’t work in inelastic areas like food, and capitalism naturally leads to mergers, which leads to oligopolies, which leads to corporations controlling govt policy, which leads to now. I don’t know what the way out is, but businesses are beginning to wake up and realize they pushed too hard and are suffering the consequences of raising prices too much. The Loblaws boycott IS working and showing people they do have the power to enact change.
I think this is the opposite of capitalism. It’s a new form of communism. Quiet government takeover of the GDP(at 64% currently) via regulation, taxes, bureaucracy, creation of artificial organizations, etc. Anchoring the entire country and economy on the real estate which only select top few profit from - the ones in the grossly expanded government, moving us away from natural resources trade which genuinely belong to the taxpayers and benefit them via jobs, infrastructure expansion, income, etc. I’m from the former USSR and I’m recognizing all of the signs of neomarxism hiding in the sheep’s skin of current version of Canadian liberalism. It’s BS, it’s not liberalism, it’s quiet communism. I’m from Putin’s Russia and for the second time in my life I’m witnessing a country spiralling towards authoritarian. I still think Canada is different because there is still official Opposition. I hope we see the change we need.
You don’t seem to be describing communism to me, but state capitalism or even authoritarianism/fascism. If you’re from the former USSR you know that it never actually achieved a state of communism; what we’re seeing is very much an end result of attaining growth and capital, are there overlaps with the later years of the Soviet Union? Sure, but that’s not communism.
r/loblawsisoutofcontrol
The Westons own a big piece of the food supply pie, and have been gouging and price fixing for a long time. Loblaws, Shoppers Drug Mart and their other brands are definitely ripping us all off. They conspired and fixed the price of BREAD ffs
I buy my bread at a bakery, baked fresh every morning. 2 loafs for $5.00. If people didn't shop there they would have to compete like every other business. I have no sympathy for people that won't shop around for the best prices (exceptions of course). I have found 4 local businesses that undercut most of the bigger companies. Fresher and higher quality food is another bonus.
Not everyone lives close to a bakery.
It wasn’t too many decades ago when they did.
That's the point of the boycott, to not shop there and help others with various levels of access to food options figure out the best way to support themselves and their families
I never understood why people shop at Superstore l shopped there a couple of times to get some sale items. After seeing the prices of many other things I never went back there even for sale items because the parking lot and store was to crowded. Floor staff was non existent, shelves weren't stocked well cashiers weren't even friendly. The prices alone were enough to keep me from going back. I get what you mean about people having to learn something different though, if they never experienced a good store they don't know what they're missing.
Different people do what they can with what they can afford, and what is accessible to them. There are lots of places across the country that don't have the privilege of having good affordable healthy food options, and people are living alone or trying to support families on widely suppressed wages. I like my local bakery too, but it realistically isn't an option for everyone. Also, price fixing bread to gouge the Canadian population is just evil
I found a place that sells wholesale meat to restaurants, but if the cut or size isn’t perfect for them then they’ll sell it to the public. 10 lbs of wings for instance
Great find, I have a local butcher shop and he sells variety packs. $30 for 2 500g packs ground beef, 2 good cuts of steak, 500 gm stew beef or stir fry beef. Poultry packs too and he will do cut to order for a treat to BBQ
I make my own bread, and it works out to a few cents a loaf. With no-knead methods like Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day it's super easy too.
Most of my meals are cooked from scratch and l do bake but have never had much luck with baking bread. I really like the bread l get from this particular bakery
I buy Wonderbread st Walmart 2 for 5 dollars with my pick up order no extra driving and wasting gas.
A majority of shoppers want bread that lasts 10-14 days,you're not getting that from a small boutique bakery.
If bread doesn't mold in 3 to 4 days then l wouldn't eat it. I like buying Real bread, l just keep it in freezer and take slices as l need it. I don't believe that the majority of shoppers are dumb enough to think bread that lasts and stays fresh that long is a good thing.
I get that. Most consumers don't want that. 15 year bread ordering,delivery sales and merchandising company owner.
Bet you don't eat your products
I do.
Are you the breadwinner in your family?
For a small business I do fairly well. However,my small integrated family pulls their own weight.
There’s a correlation between uprising and the price of bread, historically speaking. Stay tuned.
I've drastically reduced meat consumption.
It’s not like veggies are cheaper
Yes and no. Fresh veggies are still costly. However lentils chickpeas beans are much cheaper than beef chicken or pork.
I do often wonder what happens next. If the cost of everything keeps rising and they keep refusing to pay us a livable wage, what happens when nobody can afford anything anymore? Surely at that point the whole system falls apart
Maybe universal basic income? It’s always been a conspiracy theory but who knows at this point. It’s very strange and concerning.
not conspiracy and not a new concept, just the basis of socialism.. a great idea but always unsuccessful because of capitalism. enter Marxist theory and communism. none have worked successfully, and certainly won't in 2024.
I shop at local ethnic grocers and food is as cheap as ever. 2$ for box of raspberries or strawberries, 49 cent per lb bananas. You get the idea. Haven’t been to a chain supermarket in years.
Oats, protein powder, milk, chicken, brown rice, frozen broccoli and yogurt on loop this is the only way to survive with these prices.
I consider it mandatory to do most of my grocery shopping at Costco.
So we will follow every candidate, make informed decisions and vote in 2025, yes?
There’s definitely an obvious shift at this point. I pretty much stopped buying meat to keep my grocery budget the same as it was 2019. I’m lucky my work offers food a lot of the time at my job. The stuff that’s on sale is rotten/mouldy 60% of the time. There’s obvious shrinkflation. Lemons are 2.50$ each.. a LEMON. Those were 77 cents not too long ago. Anyways. We need radical solutions. Gorilla gardens anyone?
So in 20-22 this is what happened to food. I was in the food technology sector at the time, so kind of affected by all of this. The pandemic. There weren't enough people to harvest the crops. In all countries. What was harvested didn't have reliable transportation to get it to the wholesaler. Wholesaler can't find truckers to get the produce to the port or rail hub. Ships and trains slower to move as manpower is reduced. Once product arrives in your local area, same problem, getting it distributed to local markets affected by shortage of drivers. Each of those problems took money to address. Oh, and the same non-harvesters became non-planters so the crop the following year wasn't even planted to its capacity. In 2024, labour markets are stabilizing, yields are increasing, but demands for transportation and higher fuel prices remain. In the months ahead prices should stabiize, they already are, but they won't come down by as much as they could. Canada is a vast country with a relatively small population. As a result we have few competitors in food retail, and allowing them to make uncontrolled and unregulated profits is obscene. Especially when they try to come out as victims. Bigger plan? Participate in every boycott and every movement. Always buy local when you can. Make it an election issue. Food is as essential to life as air.
I promise you this, every single action in life, has a reason, a motive, emotions, underlying states and all sorts of things motivating it. It's getting to a point where people can really feel the underlying truth behind some of these things like the food prices, housing costs, etc. It's going to get so bad, that eventually no one will believe whatever the fuck the government says about them trying their best to fix it all. All of this is caused on purpose. The government is creating this crisis and I know for a fact this will become more clear to people as time goes on.
Absolutely
Boycott Loblaws and the others will follow suit.
I think this will work but it may take some time.
I swear they want us all starving and homeless. It's not even secret anymore.
Yes, kill your customers!
That's the agenda.
Not the plan?
Sure seems to be.
Fully agree
Try living in the north.
It’s riot time. Unfortunately we are pushovers
I've said this. If we all just stop complying, they have no control.
And the quality.
Variety of beans and lentils. Variety of whole grains and potatoes. Fruits and vegetables. Home cooked. $200/month for 2 of us. Very healthy, should try it.
I'd much rather never adjust my eating habits based on price fluctuations and complain endlessly about it on reddit if it's alright with you.
Good choices especially for health. Though which of the stuff you listed didn't also become much more expensive? The most egregious is effin oats! How come they are so expensive now? Used to be a cheap and nutritious staple,..
Oof you aren't wrong but need the meat
Science says we don't need meat. We might want meat though, which is fine. Just listing alternative options, what works for me :-)
Yeah for sure it's not a life or death situation I don't disagree with you there
I just like when people vote with their active choices against price gouging... OP said "how anyone is going to survive", so just listed options to survive, comfortably and healthy.
Healthily for sure comfortable hell no man life without a nice ribeye is one I don't wanna live
If you completely refuse to cut back when prices rise, why would grocery stores ever cut their prices? You're a golden goose for them.
Somebody's hell is Heaven for me, lol Steak was Haven for me too, but after watching "Cowspiracy" - live thing's hell can't be my haven anymore, NO...
Return of the victory gardens.
Good luck convincing the brain-dead brainwashed masses they don't absolutely need to waste hours of their week fucking around on a useless, wasteful monoculture lawn. my neighbour would probably kill himself if he couldn't mow his grass 3x per week.
That would be incredible, except we should keep them forever
It is weaponized incompetence, if it was by design or not is debatable. But it comes down to how greedy our cooperations are, and it turns out they are TWICE as greedy as our US counterparts, now couple that with the fact we only have a few massive gaints at the head of every industry, including food, and you get insanely high prices to drive their ever increasing profit. Now add our politicians who are bought and paid for by these corporations and you end up with the unsustainable endgame we are currently in. Either the government gets their head out of their ass and fixes our country, or we are going to go through such a huge depression I seriously doubt Canada will survive unfractured.
Shop the sales, use coupons, price match. There are steps you can take to keep your necessary groceries affordable.
I already do this. It's not helpful when everywhere is upping costs left right and center. Price match does shit and most places don't price match outside of certain km so really it's not helpful in anyway. Coupons are where it's at lol but I ain't no extreme couponer🤣
I’ve gone to Langley Farm Market a couple of times now and they have an impressive selection. But I was shocked to see that they charge *double* for cream cheese what Real Canadian Superstore and Walmart charge.
We are starting a mini garden co-op with relatives. It was my sister-in-laws idea. We have a few avid gardeners in our families. I’m not a big gardener, but I like doing yard work and eating. So I think I can enjoy gardening.
Great idea!
Word. I just spent $300 on groceries for just me
Yes.
Yes. Food prices are ridiculous. Luckily, Canada has an abundance of fish, game birds and game animals and most back yards can accommodate a vegetable garden…. Just maybe your grandma and grandpa knew what they were doing by hunting and fishing every year and making preserves out of their garden every fall? I mean, they did survive the Great Depression (or at least your great grandparents did in order to raise them)…
Anyone thinking food prices will go down just have no idea how the alimentation market is like if anything it will keep on rising. The abundance we’ve been living in for the last 60-70 years isn’t coming back. Something will have to give and food isn’t something people will be able to cut on.
The price of beef is wack
There is no 'bigger plan'. They call it "Value Pricing" when the sellers sell for the absolute most that the market will bear. If we think that ceiling is broken, we, THE CONSUMERS, need to speak with our wallets. A few picketed gas stations and grocery stores might be a start.
Vote accordingly
Very nice choices. The liberals who have partially destroyed the country due to their incompetence or the conservatives who send a loblaws lobbyist(one of the many companies responsible) to gather votes for them. No matter who you pick, Canada is kind of fucked either way.
I haven’t eaten since Wednesday at lunch. So, that solved my grocery problem.
Even the prices on no-name shit are out of control.
Is there a bigger plan? Heck no, this isn't some sort of conspiracy. The plan is just to make as much profit as possible, which has always been the plan for most businesses.
Yeah, we're all well aware of that! But it doesn't make sense.
What doesn't make sense? Companies make as much profit as their customers will bear; if we stop eating, grocery stores might have to drop their prices to entice customers. As long as we need to eat regularly, there will be grocery stores out to capture our dollars. I'm not aware of any non-profit grocery stores other than food banks. So, like any other business, grocery stores are out to make as much profit as they can. We are the unfortunate customers in that business practice.
8 dollars for a 10 pound bag of moldy potatoes that should be going to livestock
For real! The meat on those shelves are gonna kill people and it's sale price is fucking barely 1$ off for expired meats.
Galen Weston Jr's mansions and yachts are the bigger plan. Mostly. Incidentally, if you like conspiracies... The Weston family took part of the secretive Bilderberg meetings at least twice.
Slightly alarmist, but I hear you! Join the Loblaws boycott and send the message!!
The plan was simple.. Whenever they saw a 2% increase in cost due to inflation, they raised the prices by 18%, said it was inflation and blamed Trudeau instead of Galen.
Part of the issue is that the “basket” of goods that they compare for inflation from housing to groceries has increased significantly. Grocery prices aren’t coming down, people’s wages are stagnant, a lot of people are being laid off because of a slower/sluggish economy. They’ve imported a plethora of international students/immigrants/refugees, keeping wages low, and creating a massive issue of having thousands of applicants for every single job opening from retail to food service to tech, etc. it’s across the entire job market, I’m sure. And most of the time they aren’t qualified, so good candidates get buried and people who lost their jobs are struggling to find work. Now add to this, housing starts are barely even moving, so no new housing being built. Rent is skyrocketing, people are spending a good portion of their income on housing needs. And the housing that is available are those crappy shoe-boxes in the sky (bachelor, jr one bedroom, and Uber tiny one bedrooms), and nothing that will house a small family (2-3 bedroom places). Plus no investment in infrastructure, such as hospitals, healthcare, education, etc. I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future, but I’m sure interest rates were cut far too soon, and the BOC needs to do what’s best for the economy and not listen to outside political forces (who are desperately trying to get rates lower). It’s going to hurt (higher rates for longer), but I think it’s necessary at this point…. Or employers will need to significantly increase wages to allow for money to flow in the economy again. But they will never ever do that, that’s taking from their piece of the pie. But this is truly a clusterf*ck.
Honestly I don’t know why we haven’t collectively caused more of a stink irl over how ridiculous price of basics like food has become. Take the Kenyans and the French. They’re actually mobilizing and organizing. Honestly this is so Canadian that we’re all just suffering in silence and taking it.
Food is a basic human right, it is fundamentally immoral and should be illegal for corporations to profit off of stopping people from starving to death or simply going to an early grave due to malnutrition.
We need more competition in Canada period. A few companies control everything and it's all because of corrupt politicians taking payoffs. Now these companies have immense power and we all pay for it. Thanks Canadian Politicians.
BOOOOO
What are the principle reason for the rises?
Stop eating so much then.
Mostly only eat once a day 😂 should I not eat then?
Grocery Stores to avoid in Canada, Metro, Sobeys, anything Loblaws like Zehrs. Also avoid any and all food at Shoppers. Where I shop Walmart grocery pick up and mid week Freshco which is a discount chain of Sobeys and lower prices then Food Basics owned by Metro. I worked at Metro many years I stopped full grocery shopping there over a decade ago too pricey.
Farmers market saved my wife and I, cut our produce costs by 1/4th. It’s cheaper, fresher, tastes better, and lasts longer. We go every other Saturday now, it was a major game changer.
>If they keep raising costs for everything idk how anyone is going to survive. I see lots of people doing fine. I also know there are lots of people struggling too. >Does anyone else feel there is a bigger plan at hand? No, but conspiracy theories sure are exciting, aren't they?
Yes I agree it isn’t a “big plan” by the government it’s just the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer
Damn. So, life.
Check out Odd Bunch. Prices are better and it reduces *food waste 👍 https://www.oddbunch.ca/
Of course they are. Upon what do you base this comparison? Because we looked at our grocery bill from 5 years ago, and it's not very different at all. We have two teenage boys.
That can't be true. In 5 years just about everything you would possibly buy would have gone up 50% and somethings even 300%. I know because there's alot of things Ive been priced out of buying that used to be part of my regular diet
Yeah that's literally impossible no way price hasn't increased everywhere across Canada
I was just in america and their food is fucking same price dollar for dollar before exchange rate. There are some foods that are cheaper especially subsidized by the Feds but non subsidized foods are getting crazy.