News   May 14, 2024
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Downtown Grocery Store List (current + proposed)

They reached a tentative deal, so these stores are still open for now.
 
Was on Wellington yesterday and I think that Summerhill Markets would be a great fit for retail at Portland Commons.
 
Metro has a Black Friday special on their six-month unlimited deliveries package for $25.74. It's apparently available all weekend.
You cannot buy it alone, you must make a grocery delivery order ($50 minimum) to buy it.

Even if you only have delivery once per month, that's $4.29 each time, and it's for any time slot on any day (they do one hour blocks seven days a week). They have a handful of $3.99/delivery slots each week, but those go fast and are usually at odd hours, like noon on a Tuesday or 10 p.m. on Sunday night.
If you get delivery twice a month that's definitely worth the cost.
 

Feds trying to encourage a new grocer to enter the market. Aldi, anyone?

That would be nice but what really needs to be done is to break up what we already have.

If Loblaws, Empire and Metro were forced to break up their holdings it would immediately provide the competition required to lower prices.
 

Feds trying to encourage a new grocer to enter the market. Aldi, anyone?

I offered my thoughts on this in the Federal Politics thread;


Aldi Sud or Aldi Nord (Trader Joe's in the U.S. ) are the most likely players the feds would solicit, but not the only options.

That would be nice but what really needs to be done is to break up what we already have.

I agree that this is an essential part of the mix; its also what would attract a foreign player, in part.

If Loblaws, Empire and Metro were forced to break up their holdings it would immediately provide the competition required to lower prices.

I wouldn't go quite that far.

I do think it would be helpful.

But when you think of reasons for grocery prices being what they are in Canada, its important to look at some other factors:

1) Supply management in Dairy, Chicken and Pork.

2) Listings Fees to get into national grocers protect incumbent suppliers. For clarity, if you came up with a new chocolate chip cookie to sell to a national grocer, you require to be a listed vendor with them before they will even consider buying from you. That will be a base fee of ~$40,000 w/no purchase order in hand. That fee increases for each store you want access to and can run into the millions.

Additionally, fees vary based on whether your product is at eye level. So if you pay the base fee, you're on the bottom or top shelf where customers are less likely to notice you.

3) Shelf monopolization. Lays controls about 1/2 of the snack aisle in most major grocers. I don't mean they have 50% of the space, I mean they 'own' (rent) that space and have control of everything that goes into it, the point that its usually their own staff who come in to refill the shelves, not store staff.

Coke/Pepsi similarly dominate soft drink aisles and use their own staff to restock.

This leaves very little room for a competitor to challenge them.

4) Beef: This country has only 3 major beef slaughterhouses. Together they have an 85% marketshare. Two are in Alberta and a smaller player can be found in Guelph. That's it.

This oligopoly constrains price and innovation.
 
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What @Northern Light has posted above hits the nail on the head. Everyone wants a simple boogeyman to blame (ie Gailen Weston) and not thinking that it is a multi facited explanation.
Even government needs to share blame with still allowing supply management, and unnecessary taxes, fees and duties. Just wait to see the price of steak after the cow fart tax is implemented.
 
What @Northern Light has posted above hits the nail on the head. Everyone wants a simple boogeyman to blame (ie Gailen Weston) and not thinking that it is a multi facited explanation.
Even government needs to share blame with still allowing supply management, and unnecessary taxes, fees and duties. Just wait to see the price of steak after the cow fart tax is implemented.
Yep the whole thing is a lot more complicated than something that fits in a catchy headline. That said, Loblaws kinda brought a lot of their current bad press upon themselves by having their billionaire owner talk about food affordability, something that obviously does not impact him personally at all, and was done in a way that was, as such, entirely unrelatable to the average consumer. Tbh, it's hard to think of a company who has been quite as disastrously bad at PR as Loblaws has been the last 2 years. They unintentionally led themselves into being the obvious villain in this story, even if the truth is more complicated.

Also the bread price fixing scandal definitely helped prime the general public to blame them for price increases. So in that way, they didn't exactly help themselves either.
 
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A quick photo of the inside construction going on for the upcoming T&T at Panda Condos. Sorry for the reflections!

PXL_20240104_002714436.jpg
 
It's not downtown, but Summerhill market will be opening another location on Dundas near Scarlett, just a block to the east of the big Loblaws. Do they purposely seek out sites near railways? 😆

This location opens in February.
 

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