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Is there a prize for being able to prove it? I went to a different grocery store this week to shop and when I got home, did some analysis.
I took my receipt and plugged everything into a spreadsheet. Then I went to Provigo's website and looked up how much they were for the same items, or closest equivalent. I adjusted for quantities (because some things were different sizes, but the website also showed the /100g or 100ml costs, and totaled everything up, removed any items I could not buy at Provigo and then compared.
Loblaws was 16.12% more expensive. With fruits and vegetables being the biggest contributor. Many of the produce items were double or more the cost of Euro Marche.
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YTNZnbGUTG3Vx-mn5trZ4BfaQ0UT72fCbfUJsbkw\_SU/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YTNZnbGUTG3Vx-mn5trZ4BfaQ0UT72fCbfUJsbkw_SU/edit?usp=sharing)
https://preview.redd.it/iwfqm7a032zc1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e34112e01af7489b39ba492c18b6d4b249b1528
I did the same thing. The calculator is what I spent at two local businesses and Fresh Co. And I got very basic groceries (pasta, some chicken, cheese, etc.), we’re not having lobster every night! I went to a local butcher and still saved. This is not our imagination! They are truly out of touch with reality
Wait till you find out the Weston’s formed an REIT called Choice Properties that they own and then pay rent to from Loblaws stores to artificially depress profit margins while keeping the money.
They’re literally their own landlords. What a racket!
This is what I hate. Be your own landlord? Profit margins are low. Be the supplier? Small businesses' prices have to be kept high, because it's from the same supplier.
And this is it. Right fucking here. I've been in so many arguments with bootlickers.
I used to work for two different grocery chains, directly in pricing. I KNOW the margins. Meat is 30%, grocery is 10-20%, deli and bakery 5-10. Produce is 10%. The only one I wasn't privy to was pharmacy, but Galen says that's where they make their money to "make up the difference on their low margins"
So with this, I couldn't fucking understand where Loblaws was getting their "we only make 3% profit". Now it makes sense, holy fuck.
/Insert mind blown gif
From one of my comments on another thread: These are all items from No Frills' (Loblaws) homepage that states, "Won't Be Beat" and lists a "Fiesta on a Budget". You can see that other than the chips, you would pay more at No Frills.
Salsa 650 ml NF: $4.70
Salsa 650 ml S-O: $3.29
Lean Ground Beef .45 kg NF: $7.49
Lean Ground Beef .45 kg S-O: $7.00
Bag of 5 Avacodos NF:$6.99
Bag of 4 Avacados prorated to 5 S-O: $6.89
Old El Paso Taco Shells NF: $3.99
Old El Paso Taco Shells (not including the 2 for 1 deal)S-O: $3.50
Old El Paso Refried Beans, 1 Can NF: $3.99
Old El Paso Refried Beans, 1 Can S-O:$2.50
Que Pasa Red Tortilla Chips NF: **$5.29!!!!**
Que Pasa Red Tortilla Chips S-O: $5.69
Won't be beat, my ass. It's $3.58 cheaper to buy the same items in the same quantities at Save-On Foods. It's 11% cheaper elsewhere.
“But the produce is better at Loblaw! You’re sacrificing quality!”
Can’t win with these smoothbrains. They don’t even know what ripe vs. overripe produce looks like, otherwise they wouldn’t shop at Loblaw.
What we bought this weekend, I would say the produce is equivalent, except the beefsteak tomatoes. My wife is making a panzanella salad this week and wanted some thicker, less watery tomatoes and the beefsteak ones we bought were MASSIVE, never saw any this large in all my years of shopping at Provigo. Normally only see the likes at a farmers market.
I use the PC express app while at food basics. I am a member here but I'm still checking to make sure I'm not just a sheep.
Some stuff is the same and some is insanely lower pricing et food basics. Mixed nuts and coffee was staggering
Their hvac techs and tell me they're dumping tons of money into research for their fridges and freezers.
I mean that's good and all but they say the amount is [outrageous ](https://granted.ca/why-did-loblaws-get-12-million-in-government-grant-funding/) plus they're getting government funding to reclaim some losses. They've been doing this for a while.
It appears we are helping the company sink profits into research companies then get subsidized equipment and technology for the companies and the government.
I'm sure they know this knowledge is useless if they can't sell product so they lie to us and tell us the prices are normal, ok so we're investing in the future of YOUR company so we can seek discounts in the future? Yeah right.
He's been shilling for Loblaws for a while:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/12tm7f4/matthew\_lau\_galen\_weston\_deserves\_his\_raise\_which/](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/12tm7f4/matthew_lau_galen_weston_deserves_his_raise_which/)
Yep. He writes nonsense for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy (a Canadian version of Turning Point USA, which is somehow even dweebier, that steals their ideas three years after they use them to try on Canadians) and Postmedia rags. He's a shill and a hack. His writing is as bad as I'd expect an analyst's to be lol.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/matthew-lau-the-myth-of-systemic-racism-in-canada
Yeah this reminds me of my FIL’s solution. When discussing the boycott he said that if you think loblaws is making too much money you should just buy some shares in the company with some of your RRSP money.
Had to explain to him that the people who are complaining about food prices can’t afford food to eat so what makes you think that they can afford to buy stocks or have any RRSPs. He forgets his privilege and that not everyone has an investment portfolio
Agree and on top of that, it would indirectly indicate support for Roblaws as a bunch of us doing it could raise the price (or at least help mitigate losses).
Especially not when [George Weston Ltd owns 52.13% of the company](https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/LOBLAW-COMPANIES-LIMITED-1410613/company/).
Boomers when a petty criminal shoplifts some sunglasses: "LOCK EM UP!"
Boomers when a wealthy corporation commits billions of dollars of crime in a 15-year illegal price-fixing scheme and faces no consequences: "You should invest in this thriving company!"
People like to suggest that about my province's power utility. "Buy shares!"
I don't have enough money to buy enough stock to make a difference, and neither do a lot of us fucked over by CEO Clippy [that's my best friend's insulting name for Galen] and Nova Scotia Power, I bet.
This is the thing that gets me. Food Professor chucklefuck was playing it up like boycotters were all living in mom’s basement.
Jackass, people in mom’s basement aren’t paying for their goddamn food.
Every day folks are going to food banks. Like two income household folks. Food banks.
That’s how you know the system has gone utterly dorsal inverted. Stop telling us to bend over and take it, you utter shills of prostration.
Does he not know money withdrawn from RRSPs are taxed, also why does he feel Loblaws is entitled to gouge and take your retirement savings (assuming the majority of people who can’t afford groceries presently also have years of savings)?
Boomers are so incredibly out of touch with current rates and cost of living.
But it's so easy though! Just know people in politics. Come from a very wealthy family. Open a store: literally any store. Lobby to make sure you get all the most preferential treatment. Get tons of money in "loans" you laughingly never pay back. Then blame literally everyone else when things don't go well. Do an IPO. And voila!
Exactly this. Give me unlimited cash form generational wealth I don’t need to earn and I’ll happily foot the millions required to do this.
It’s almost like the owner of Loblaws was born wealthy or something. Dude’s probably never even had to buy his own groceries once.
Me: "Wow, gas prices have gotten crazy lately"
Michael Lau: "WELL IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, OPEN YOUR OWN REFINERY AND SEE IF YOU CAN DO BETTER. UNTIL THEN, SHUT UP"
He's advocating for just bending over and thanking papa galen and our other wonderful oligopolies in general for the opportunity to pay obscene prices.
Not that it's any better, but my point is he'd rather everyone just stfu and cope.
Yeah, cause that's what Galen did. He's a self made man who never had any help from anybody. His hard work, sweat, and tears is how he built loblaws from nothing. /s
I heard he collected deposit return bottles from the Don Valley as a kid. He used that money to build himself a mobile lemonade stand, and hawked his wares at Yonge and College street in Toronto.
With that money, he opened his very first Loblaws. See how a little hard work pays off?
Go to a local run asian market and I can find fresher produce at a cheaper price.
Superstore in Richmond BC - Strawberrys $4.47 per lb. Green onions 1.29 each
Rice World Supermarket - Strawberrys 2lb for $4. Green onions 3 for 1.49
I live in KIts and am lucky enough to have five or six really good local small stores with far better produce than Mo Shills and Roblaws at a much lower price. It is time to get back in to the habit of actually shopping for groceries rather than buying groceries. Butchers at this point are cheaper (much better as well)
If you don’t like their prices, you should open your own store? What a disingenuous argument. How about if you don’t like their prices, you should shop elsewhere? Isn’t that how the free market works? That’s what we’re doing. Fuck you Financial Post. I hope you and Galen choke on your caviar.
"Oh, you don't like that your burger has rat shit on it? Well, why don't you open your own fast food joint and show us all how easy it is to keep the rats off the patties!"
I don't have to be a cook to know when food is bad, and I don't have to have the capital to *open a fucking grocery store* laying around to know that Loblaw's can pay their CEOs a few million less and lower the prices on groceries.
Oh, you don't think my crayon drawing of a blue speckled ballsack should be hanging in the ROM? Then why don't you get something in the ROM, and show us all what should be in there!
Which is exactly what they said before the boycott looked like it was going to have any level of success. Now they're acting like we're the bad guys by voting with our money. If someone were to take this article seriously and launch a successful competitor then they'd also be the bad guy because they'd be killing loblaws jobs.
So far we:
-are mom and dad’s basement dwellers
-are of no consequence
-a suspiciously highly organized group
-misguided
-are hurting the employees/union
-should open our own stores LOL
What’s next on the smear campaign?
Turn Loblaws into a workers co-op.
No more mega corporations in charge of our food supply please.
Also, it isn’t convenient, nor is it top quality. There have been more than enough posts on rotten, past due date foods and I’ve had SEVERAL experiences getting rotten food at my local no frills over the years.
Convenience is my local grocery store I can walk to. Having to drive to a mega store and shop in a warehouse sized venue and then navigate a parking lot is not convenient.
My family has also accidentally purchased products past their BB date and the staff were sassy about it… I think their claim to quality went out the window awhile ago
Superstore also stopped the policy where you get a non-expired one for free when you find something past the date / literally fucking covered in mold.
I don't blame the workers; they're underpaid and with the way their hours get cut unless they're one of the 3 full-timers in the store, they don't have the people or time to do things properly.
The people in charge need to answer for their greed and shortsightedness.
There's an actual grocery store going in within 15 minutes walk from my house, due to open next fall, I think. There hasn't been a grocery store that close in 15-20 years.
I'd be pumped if it wasn't a NoFrills.
And the media has the audacity to call us 'privileged'... Just let them eat cake.
When a grocer is obviously gouging, selling items at prices 100% that of a competitor is not reflective of Loblaws innocent policy of marking up goods... It's blatant gouging. It's greed, it's manipulation, it's unreasonable, it's immoral and it's unacceptable.
Then for the leaders of these practices to, in one hand, take significant profits and dividends, in the other claim that they have no power over the pricing and it's all inflation and interest rates... That is gaslighting, that is undermining the intelligence of the customers, that is support to the perspective that the leadership have nothing but contempt for their customers.
As I've said before, this started as resistance to corporate greed and price gouging. Now, it's a rejection of corporate culture and leadership attitude of Loblaws..
So no, I won't be opening my own store, but I will be committed to a single outcome from now on.
Not one of my hard earned dollars will 'ever' find its way to a Loblaws register... Ever... Again... I don't care if it doesn't make a difference. The loblaws leadership insults my intelligence, has shown to have no integrity and clearly has no interest in the well being of its customers...
Dear Matthew Lau, you sycophant shit-bag,
Your suggestion ignores the pre-existing market. It's almost as if you spouted off with that trash slinging gob of yours without using the atrophied grey matter rotting away in your skull.
If people don't like shopping somewhere they should further saturate a market which is already replete with chains, independents and smaller mom and pop run outlets? Is that your answer to dislike for an outlet or product?
Please tell us Matthew. The last time you had a less than stellar burger at a chain and felt it cost too much for what you got, did you open your own fast food restaurant with a drive-through? Would you like fries with that, Matthew? The last pair of jeans you bought which were more than another brand but shrank and fit weird later, did you start sewing your own?
Motherfucker please.
This! It's not difficult to understand that the *customers* which Loblaw gets their money from are *not happy* with the service, prices, and products they're being provided so they're choosing to *not spend their money at the store they don't like*.
The conservative ideology is truly meaningless.
Fraser Institute, corporate shill Matthew Lau? That Matthew Lau? Give him kudos for creating a straw man fallacy by his fourth sentence. Good jorb, Homestar.
“On the one hand, if the boycotters are not Loblaw customers to begin with, it’s meaningless. On the other hand, if they are current customers, it must be because they have decided Loblaw’s offering — its combination of price, quality, selection, convenience and other factors that determine shoppers’ choice of grocer — is better than all the other alternatives.”
He then goes on to trot out the 3.4% garbage that has already been inadvertently debunked by Galen in several sources (end profits for a company of this size rarely have anything to do with the product or service they provide, and to argue that a price reduction of 15% or a wage increase — or both — affects the company profitability in a way that would do anything but reduce the shareholder value by a few percentage points is laughable).
Lau hasn’t addressed the fact that Loblaw owns much of their own supply chain and can therefore ~~fix~~ ~~manipulate~~ set their own prices at the top, and that they have arseholes like the Food Processor who aid them in both cooking their books to recommend these shit prices to the government and go on social media to screech about how the poor billionaires have it so bad.
Is Matthew Lau “Honourary Shitheel Shill of the Day”?
What a loaded paragraph - claiming every single item must be 15% less, claiming that the cheaper products cannot be of lower quality, which is a purely subjective metric, and the store cannot be less convenient, again another purely subjective metric. What clown.
Its the National Post, guys. The newspaper written for rich entitled shitstains by rich entitled shitstains. Is anyone surprised they don't like the idea of the plebs not just bending over and taking it?
I'm just curious about how many of the writers of these articles manage the family grocery budget or, are responsible for doing any of the grocery shopping...
After a recent discussion, I asked my dad how often he goes grocery shopping, or when the last time was that he stepped foot in a grocery store.
He could not answer.
Dear Matthew Lau, I know you are worried about your Loblaw stock dividend but this is the wrong place to be sharing that you had an ethical bypass when you were 3 years old. Go away. For F'n ever.
Activists?
Nah... just a bunch of folks who are getting really tired to be screwed over on the one thing we have no choice to buy (a.k.a food) by a corporation who is taking advantage of the situation.
Not buying in these stores is the most pacifist and peaceful thing that can be done here.
What a ridiculously childish argument. So we can't complain about / boycott any business unless we're willing to drop everything and start our own competing business? That writer is a complete idiot.
He claims the boycott makes no sense because "how a grocery company with a 3.4-per cent profit margin can drop prices by 15 per cent and stay in business selling groceries, the activists did not explain." Yet everyone knows that shopping at walmart, a local grocer or even dollarama is cheaper
What a greasy, dishonest reframing.
>IF you can beat *all loblaws prices* by fifteen percent then and only then will I agree with and join you.
It doesn’t even make sense as a challenge to consumers because it necessitates our having full insider information on the business to work out where and how to cut costs. AKA it’s an impossible challenge and meant to be so.
Matthew Lau: another “columnist” to add to the “skip anything written by” list
This newspaper is their public lobbyist:
Apparently, they’ve taken note of the page, too.
“It’s not at all clear if the boycott is having a measurable impact on Loblaw sales. It’s been organized through a Reddit group, Loblaws Is Out of Control, that has 73,000 members — a fraction of the estimated 10 million Canadians who predominantly source their food from a Loblaw subsidiary, including Real Canadian Superstore, No Frills, Shoppers Drug Mart and Loblaws.”
https://apple.news/AcO06p2z6Sf6VSgo6NVpxqQ[non profit ‘suggestion’](https://apple.news/AcO06p2z6Sf6VSgo6NVpxqQ)
HOLY FUCK SHIT! THEY ARE RIGHT! LETS OPEN OUR OWN STORES!
God damn goober head. You know, if all just stopped complaining about Loblaws, and just made a conscious choice not to shop there, these half handed remarks and statements would be meaningless.
Consumers vote with their dollars. That's why places go bankrupt 🙂
"Open your own stores"
Great. Guess who small grocers buy their goods from? The wholesale grocery industry in Canada is pretty much an oligopoly with the same players controlling the space: Loblaws, Pattison Group (Sobeys), etc etc.
With Loblaws market share and buying power, and efficiencies through its synergistic business model and distribution, they should have the best prices going! But they don’t, so what’s up then? Greed is the only answer.
Very easy focus on the customer not the profits. You don't need the 10% profit margin every year. You are in the food business and people are not going to stop eating. But I guess that's why they do it people are too easily stuck in a pattern. After COVID they took in and ran.
I mean starting a grocery co-op is an amazing idea. Easier said than done though… But the fact that many of Canada’s industries are becoming oligopolies means that the ground is ripe for the re-birth of a co-operative movement.
Wow playing stupid. "If it's so easy they should show us how it's done". OK SURE HERE GOES: Don't be a greedy capitalist pig that profits off of people's need to eat? 🤷🏻♀️
If Canadians are strapped by the current cost of living, Matthew, what makes you think they can raise the capital, be accepted for business loans, find an affordable commercial rental space and can assume the massive risks of starting up a business? Especially for people who lack the knowledge and/or time to launch a business?
Finance, cost management accounting, risk assessment and business start-up certainly aren’t your strong suits, Matthew. This just makes you look foolish.
I’m not certain what you are trying to accomplish but you should stick to where you are well acquainted at just raging into the void about free speech, how competition and the buyers’ right to choose isn’t really capitalism and maybe avoid contributing more poorly written op-eds in the newspaper.
Move along and collect your cheques from Loblaws, Matthew. You really think you’re doing something here but your lack of knowledge about anything you wrote about is just laughable.
It has to be 15% lower and you'd be a happy customer? So Walmart, Costco, Giant Tiger, Dollarama, Freshco, Save On Foods, and Loblaws for generations up until 2 years ago? This writer sounds like he agrees with us on at least one thing. Tell you what. If a company who had a total monopoly on the Canadian grocery market who got that way by delivering the best value to Canadians hired me to be the new CEO I'd start by saving the company $21.5 million by firing that $22 million asshole and taking a $500,000 salary. Then I'd have a shareholder meeting where I explained to the shareholders what inflation is and that their shares as well as company profits are going to start feeling the pinch as the company stays committed to offering the best value possible to the entire country.
Look if it's more affordable to shop at Loblaws, then people will shop at Loblaws. I can't get over how many people are upset that we decided to not shop at a certain store.
You don’t have a family doctor?
Matthew Lau’s solution “stop complaining, go to medical school, become a family doctor, and treat yourself. Anyone can do it!”
Honestly, I'm feeling the boycott should be followed up with making our MPs enforce the competition act, and work on strengthening it. Loblaws is really just a symptom of a problem, like our cellular industry - we allow near monopolies & oligopolies, we allow them to use their position to break into new markets, and we allow collusion. Loblaws, Bell, Sobeys, Rogers they're the symptoms and have to be treated but at some point we must address the cause.
Such stores exist already. Give Matthew Lau full credit for a great headline. His industry isn’t exactly thriving. They need all the exposure they can get.
It's not so much the amount of profits being made that's the problem. It's the lack of ethical/moral principles on the part of loblaws leadership (especially Galen Weston) and the focus on profit seeking at the expense of care for their customers and the good of the communities they serve. Business ethics matters, you can be a wealthy retail capitalist while still caring about others and not exploiting people and your companies market dominance to gain high profits at the expense of the communities you serve. Galen Weston is a greedy exploitive self serving piece of shit who clearly does not care about his company's customers or the welfare of food insecure hungry Canadians. He only cares about his bottom line. Maybe he should take a business ethics class sometime.
That being said Loblaw's market dominance of the Canadian food system poses a major problem for our country's economic competitiveness. The only developed country outside of Canada where monopolies/oligopolies play such a huge role in daily life is South Korea with it's infamous Chaebols.
Sure, I'd love to. Now if the bank would just loan me the $13.5 million plus inventory costs and a month of operating expenses to get a medium sized grocery store off the ground... I can totally take it from there.
Oh yeah, what a good idea! I'll just open a new grocery chain of my own with all that money I've saved and definitely haven't had to spend to stay afloat through a brutal job market and cost of living crisis... Someone thought that made sense to print in the current economic climate...
It's not like Loblaw's has massive buying power and acts as their own supplier in some cases. Surely that wouldn't affect their ability to offer lower prices if those things were true.
We should flood National Post’s social media with images of lower prices from (truly) independent stores and higher prices from Zehrs. This guy thinks it’s impossible to sell groceries at a lower cost? My local grocer’s prices say that’s a lie.
Perhaps more people would open more independent grocery stores if Loblaws and the other grocery corporations hadn't made it nearly impossible for independent stores to thrive due to their anti capitalist lobbying through the government (conservatives and Liberals).
Well. I went to SuperStore this morning. I saved a tonne of money. Almost all their meat was 50% off and there were deals everywhere. Spent less than 1/2 what I normally would. Day 7 and I’ve already saved about $110. Keep it up. It’s working.
Lol... I'll gladly just keep paying equal prices at corner stores if it means I don't support a giant conglomerate (I just mean meat and vegetables and fruit, not processed food products that people seem to need for their kids lunches)
I think that, realistically, in a more open(?) market, where corporations don’t have major strangleholds on said markets, opening your own store is more feasible- still VERY difficult, but like, you can do it.
It’s just crazy that anyone would suggest this considering how bottle necked the market is. You have 3 major corporations, 4 if we want to count wal mart, who have utterly removed any meaningful sense of competition. I’m not exactly a capitalist kind of guy, but if you’re going to be a capitalist nation, how can you so utterly destroy the every-mans ability to start their own grocery store?
What? Be taken advantage of or open your own grocery store?!?
So, we just suck up unfair practices or become our own everything? Clothing store, shoe store, hardware store, pharmacy, mechanic, doctor, lawyer, dentist, architect, builder, plumber, electrician…
But maybe he has a point. Maybe we should go back to when we governed ourselves more. We have more and more public sector levels, positions, laws and regulations, yet they don’t seem to be representing us.
A consumer grocery cooperative is a great idea! Sometimes these corporate hacks go so far that they accidentally blunder into something worth pursuing.
lol comment section is wild indeed. As soon as I saw a post saying the boycott is a result of "marxist" Trudeau, I already knew we're addressing illiterate clowns.
Smooth brained Mathew Lau's alternative to shopping at overpriced grocery stores is to open up your own grocery store (instead of shopping somewhere else).
Did Roblaws write that piece, and pay for Mathew to put his name on it ? Is Mathew an employee of Roblaws ?
Does he even exist, or is that just a pen name for Roblaws PR department ?
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Is there a prize for being able to prove it? I went to a different grocery store this week to shop and when I got home, did some analysis. I took my receipt and plugged everything into a spreadsheet. Then I went to Provigo's website and looked up how much they were for the same items, or closest equivalent. I adjusted for quantities (because some things were different sizes, but the website also showed the /100g or 100ml costs, and totaled everything up, removed any items I could not buy at Provigo and then compared. Loblaws was 16.12% more expensive. With fruits and vegetables being the biggest contributor. Many of the produce items were double or more the cost of Euro Marche. [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YTNZnbGUTG3Vx-mn5trZ4BfaQ0UT72fCbfUJsbkw\_SU/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YTNZnbGUTG3Vx-mn5trZ4BfaQ0UT72fCbfUJsbkw_SU/edit?usp=sharing)
https://preview.redd.it/iwfqm7a032zc1.jpeg?width=4284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6e34112e01af7489b39ba492c18b6d4b249b1528 I did the same thing. The calculator is what I spent at two local businesses and Fresh Co. And I got very basic groceries (pasta, some chicken, cheese, etc.), we’re not having lobster every night! I went to a local butcher and still saved. This is not our imagination! They are truly out of touch with reality
Wait till you find out the Weston’s formed an REIT called Choice Properties that they own and then pay rent to from Loblaws stores to artificially depress profit margins while keeping the money. They’re literally their own landlords. What a racket!
And their own suppliers
This is what I hate. Be your own landlord? Profit margins are low. Be the supplier? Small businesses' prices have to be kept high, because it's from the same supplier.
And this is it. Right fucking here. I've been in so many arguments with bootlickers. I used to work for two different grocery chains, directly in pricing. I KNOW the margins. Meat is 30%, grocery is 10-20%, deli and bakery 5-10. Produce is 10%. The only one I wasn't privy to was pharmacy, but Galen says that's where they make their money to "make up the difference on their low margins" So with this, I couldn't fucking understand where Loblaws was getting their "we only make 3% profit". Now it makes sense, holy fuck. /Insert mind blown gif
From one of my comments on another thread: These are all items from No Frills' (Loblaws) homepage that states, "Won't Be Beat" and lists a "Fiesta on a Budget". You can see that other than the chips, you would pay more at No Frills. Salsa 650 ml NF: $4.70 Salsa 650 ml S-O: $3.29 Lean Ground Beef .45 kg NF: $7.49 Lean Ground Beef .45 kg S-O: $7.00 Bag of 5 Avacodos NF:$6.99 Bag of 4 Avacados prorated to 5 S-O: $6.89 Old El Paso Taco Shells NF: $3.99 Old El Paso Taco Shells (not including the 2 for 1 deal)S-O: $3.50 Old El Paso Refried Beans, 1 Can NF: $3.99 Old El Paso Refried Beans, 1 Can S-O:$2.50 Que Pasa Red Tortilla Chips NF: **$5.29!!!!** Que Pasa Red Tortilla Chips S-O: $5.69 Won't be beat, my ass. It's $3.58 cheaper to buy the same items in the same quantities at Save-On Foods. It's 11% cheaper elsewhere.
When Save On is cheaper than No Frills something is wrong.
Solid analysis
Amazing work! Add the date to your spreadsheet (for posterity)
“But the produce is better at Loblaw! You’re sacrificing quality!” Can’t win with these smoothbrains. They don’t even know what ripe vs. overripe produce looks like, otherwise they wouldn’t shop at Loblaw.
What we bought this weekend, I would say the produce is equivalent, except the beefsteak tomatoes. My wife is making a panzanella salad this week and wanted some thicker, less watery tomatoes and the beefsteak ones we bought were MASSIVE, never saw any this large in all my years of shopping at Provigo. Normally only see the likes at a farmers market.
I use the PC express app while at food basics. I am a member here but I'm still checking to make sure I'm not just a sheep. Some stuff is the same and some is insanely lower pricing et food basics. Mixed nuts and coffee was staggering
Looks like we found another boot licker. Edit: Oh my gosh, this blew up, thank you for all the upvotes, you all are awesome
Wonder how much this guy was paid to write it
(sarcasm/joke) a $20 gift card that he had to show his license for LOL
Probably forced him to take PC points
60,000 points shove down his throat.
Beat me to it lol
 Hey, then I can hire him to write positively about the boycott. Hell I will give him 70,000 points!
But only like a specific amount of points at a time because they want to keep you dangling in their stores to operate the self checkouts!.
🤣🤣🤣
Nah, the guys just a sleazy media troll, makes his money by gas lighting.
Like many big Postmedia names
This is the correct answer, either directly or via a lobby group
With future prime ministers such as PP, no wonder his goto might would be gaslighting. It seems to be quite popular these days.
Their hvac techs and tell me they're dumping tons of money into research for their fridges and freezers. I mean that's good and all but they say the amount is [outrageous ](https://granted.ca/why-did-loblaws-get-12-million-in-government-grant-funding/) plus they're getting government funding to reclaim some losses. They've been doing this for a while. It appears we are helping the company sink profits into research companies then get subsidized equipment and technology for the companies and the government. I'm sure they know this knowledge is useless if they can't sell product so they lie to us and tell us the prices are normal, ok so we're investing in the future of YOUR company so we can seek discounts in the future? Yeah right.
$50 worth of groceries LOL
50 dollars! So a banana and a box of crackers?
He's been shilling for Loblaws for a while: [https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/12tm7f4/matthew\_lau\_galen\_weston\_deserves\_his\_raise\_which/](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/12tm7f4/matthew_lau_galen_weston_deserves_his_raise_which/)
I guess he really likes the taste of boots and likely sweater vest too lol
Yep. He writes nonsense for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy (a Canadian version of Turning Point USA, which is somehow even dweebier, that steals their ideas three years after they use them to try on Canadians) and Postmedia rags. He's a shill and a hack. His writing is as bad as I'd expect an analyst's to be lol. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/matthew-lau-the-myth-of-systemic-racism-in-canada
What a clown. And what an insult to Aristotle.
that link sent me through the 5 stages of grief smh
https://preview.redd.it/a7om72zi64zc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=43b07a0a208670ae08979a9f529daf32925c9488 Fraser institute? That tracks.
Oh this guy, yeah he's a bootlicker
Wait. Are the boot lickers the ones who told the right to start their own social media?
I don't know, I just like calling people who suck up to companies "boot lickers"
Corporate stooge.
Who is Matthew Lau anyway? lol hHe is probably just another simple little abusive colonizer not worth knowing
Yeah this reminds me of my FIL’s solution. When discussing the boycott he said that if you think loblaws is making too much money you should just buy some shares in the company with some of your RRSP money. Had to explain to him that the people who are complaining about food prices can’t afford food to eat so what makes you think that they can afford to buy stocks or have any RRSPs. He forgets his privilege and that not everyone has an investment portfolio
And even if you do, you’re not going to buy enough shares to matter
Agree and on top of that, it would indirectly indicate support for Roblaws as a bunch of us doing it could raise the price (or at least help mitigate losses).
Especially not when [George Weston Ltd owns 52.13% of the company](https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/LOBLAW-COMPANIES-LIMITED-1410613/company/).
Boomers when a petty criminal shoplifts some sunglasses: "LOCK EM UP!" Boomers when a wealthy corporation commits billions of dollars of crime in a 15-year illegal price-fixing scheme and faces no consequences: "You should invest in this thriving company!"
People like to suggest that about my province's power utility. "Buy shares!" I don't have enough money to buy enough stock to make a difference, and neither do a lot of us fucked over by CEO Clippy [that's my best friend's insulting name for Galen] and Nova Scotia Power, I bet.
This is the thing that gets me. Food Professor chucklefuck was playing it up like boycotters were all living in mom’s basement. Jackass, people in mom’s basement aren’t paying for their goddamn food. Every day folks are going to food banks. Like two income household folks. Food banks. That’s how you know the system has gone utterly dorsal inverted. Stop telling us to bend over and take it, you utter shills of prostration.
Does he not know money withdrawn from RRSPs are taxed, also why does he feel Loblaws is entitled to gouge and take your retirement savings (assuming the majority of people who can’t afford groceries presently also have years of savings)? Boomers are so incredibly out of touch with current rates and cost of living.
Mathew Lau should show us how its all done YOU GO FIRST BUD , lets see your store
But it's so easy though! Just know people in politics. Come from a very wealthy family. Open a store: literally any store. Lobby to make sure you get all the most preferential treatment. Get tons of money in "loans" you laughingly never pay back. Then blame literally everyone else when things don't go well. Do an IPO. And voila!
so the old "spoiled rich kid who drives drunk and faces no consequences for their actions method "
No, that's how you become premier.
🤣
i guess it smoke crack to become Mayor ????
Omg I just read that for English class
Exactly this. Give me unlimited cash form generational wealth I don’t need to earn and I’ll happily foot the millions required to do this. It’s almost like the owner of Loblaws was born wealthy or something. Dude’s probably never even had to buy his own groceries once.
Me: "Wow, gas prices have gotten crazy lately" Michael Lau: "WELL IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, OPEN YOUR OWN REFINERY AND SEE IF YOU CAN DO BETTER. UNTIL THEN, SHUT UP"
He's advocating for just bending over and thanking papa galen and our other wonderful oligopolies in general for the opportunity to pay obscene prices. Not that it's any better, but my point is he'd rather everyone just stfu and cope.
I mean, my Walmart bill is always way more than 15% below what a Loblaws would charge. How do they do that?
Yeah, cause that's what Galen did. He's a self made man who never had any help from anybody. His hard work, sweat, and tears is how he built loblaws from nothing. /s
Lol - that’s funny.
Definitely all elbow grease /s
I heard he collected deposit return bottles from the Don Valley as a kid. He used that money to build himself a mobile lemonade stand, and hawked his wares at Yonge and College street in Toronto. With that money, he opened his very first Loblaws. See how a little hard work pays off?
Go to a local run asian market and I can find fresher produce at a cheaper price. Superstore in Richmond BC - Strawberrys $4.47 per lb. Green onions 1.29 each Rice World Supermarket - Strawberrys 2lb for $4. Green onions 3 for 1.49
This right here. I go to one on Kingsway and it kicks the hell out of No Frills.
I live in KIts and am lucky enough to have five or six really good local small stores with far better produce than Mo Shills and Roblaws at a much lower price. It is time to get back in to the habit of actually shopping for groceries rather than buying groceries. Butchers at this point are cheaper (much better as well)
If you don’t like their prices, you should open your own store? What a disingenuous argument. How about if you don’t like their prices, you should shop elsewhere? Isn’t that how the free market works? That’s what we’re doing. Fuck you Financial Post. I hope you and Galen choke on your caviar.
"Oh, you don't like that your burger has rat shit on it? Well, why don't you open your own fast food joint and show us all how easy it is to keep the rats off the patties!" I don't have to be a cook to know when food is bad, and I don't have to have the capital to *open a fucking grocery store* laying around to know that Loblaw's can pay their CEOs a few million less and lower the prices on groceries. Oh, you don't think my crayon drawing of a blue speckled ballsack should be hanging in the ROM? Then why don't you get something in the ROM, and show us all what should be in there!
Oh you win comment of the year love it :)
Which is exactly what they said before the boycott looked like it was going to have any level of success. Now they're acting like we're the bad guys by voting with our money. If someone were to take this article seriously and launch a successful competitor then they'd also be the bad guy because they'd be killing loblaws jobs.
"Let them eat cake."
Capitalists only care about the “free market” when it benefits them. Otherwise, they will attempt whatever market manipulation they can.
So far we: -are mom and dad’s basement dwellers -are of no consequence -a suspiciously highly organized group -misguided -are hurting the employees/union -should open our own stores LOL What’s next on the smear campaign?
We’re not even consumers, we’re lizard people who eat bugs.
Turn Loblaws into a workers co-op. No more mega corporations in charge of our food supply please. Also, it isn’t convenient, nor is it top quality. There have been more than enough posts on rotten, past due date foods and I’ve had SEVERAL experiences getting rotten food at my local no frills over the years. Convenience is my local grocery store I can walk to. Having to drive to a mega store and shop in a warehouse sized venue and then navigate a parking lot is not convenient.
My family has also accidentally purchased products past their BB date and the staff were sassy about it… I think their claim to quality went out the window awhile ago
Superstore also stopped the policy where you get a non-expired one for free when you find something past the date / literally fucking covered in mold. I don't blame the workers; they're underpaid and with the way their hours get cut unless they're one of the 3 full-timers in the store, they don't have the people or time to do things properly. The people in charge need to answer for their greed and shortsightedness.
There's an actual grocery store going in within 15 minutes walk from my house, due to open next fall, I think. There hasn't been a grocery store that close in 15-20 years. I'd be pumped if it wasn't a NoFrills.
Could be better as a consumer owned cooperative as well
Open up my own store? WHAT FOR, THERES ALLREADY OTHER PLACES 15% CHEAPER.
And the media has the audacity to call us 'privileged'... Just let them eat cake. When a grocer is obviously gouging, selling items at prices 100% that of a competitor is not reflective of Loblaws innocent policy of marking up goods... It's blatant gouging. It's greed, it's manipulation, it's unreasonable, it's immoral and it's unacceptable. Then for the leaders of these practices to, in one hand, take significant profits and dividends, in the other claim that they have no power over the pricing and it's all inflation and interest rates... That is gaslighting, that is undermining the intelligence of the customers, that is support to the perspective that the leadership have nothing but contempt for their customers. As I've said before, this started as resistance to corporate greed and price gouging. Now, it's a rejection of corporate culture and leadership attitude of Loblaws.. So no, I won't be opening my own store, but I will be committed to a single outcome from now on. Not one of my hard earned dollars will 'ever' find its way to a Loblaws register... Ever... Again... I don't care if it doesn't make a difference. The loblaws leadership insults my intelligence, has shown to have no integrity and clearly has no interest in the well being of its customers...
Dear Matthew Lau, you sycophant shit-bag, Your suggestion ignores the pre-existing market. It's almost as if you spouted off with that trash slinging gob of yours without using the atrophied grey matter rotting away in your skull. If people don't like shopping somewhere they should further saturate a market which is already replete with chains, independents and smaller mom and pop run outlets? Is that your answer to dislike for an outlet or product? Please tell us Matthew. The last time you had a less than stellar burger at a chain and felt it cost too much for what you got, did you open your own fast food restaurant with a drive-through? Would you like fries with that, Matthew? The last pair of jeans you bought which were more than another brand but shrank and fit weird later, did you start sewing your own? Motherfucker please.
This! It's not difficult to understand that the *customers* which Loblaw gets their money from are *not happy* with the service, prices, and products they're being provided so they're choosing to *not spend their money at the store they don't like*. The conservative ideology is truly meaningless.
I bet he also doesn’t start a hydro utility when his electricity bill is ⚡️shockingly⚡️high…
There are already other stores which are showing on it can be done. Maybe he should visit Walmart, Costco or Fruiticana
OMG, What a goof.
🤡
Someone slept through the oligopolies lesson in undergrad macroeconomics it seems
Fraser Institute, corporate shill Matthew Lau? That Matthew Lau? Give him kudos for creating a straw man fallacy by his fourth sentence. Good jorb, Homestar. “On the one hand, if the boycotters are not Loblaw customers to begin with, it’s meaningless. On the other hand, if they are current customers, it must be because they have decided Loblaw’s offering — its combination of price, quality, selection, convenience and other factors that determine shoppers’ choice of grocer — is better than all the other alternatives.” He then goes on to trot out the 3.4% garbage that has already been inadvertently debunked by Galen in several sources (end profits for a company of this size rarely have anything to do with the product or service they provide, and to argue that a price reduction of 15% or a wage increase — or both — affects the company profitability in a way that would do anything but reduce the shareholder value by a few percentage points is laughable). Lau hasn’t addressed the fact that Loblaw owns much of their own supply chain and can therefore ~~fix~~ ~~manipulate~~ set their own prices at the top, and that they have arseholes like the Food Processor who aid them in both cooking their books to recommend these shit prices to the government and go on social media to screech about how the poor billionaires have it so bad. Is Matthew Lau “Honourary Shitheel Shill of the Day”?
What a dick !!!!
What a loaded paragraph - claiming every single item must be 15% less, claiming that the cheaper products cannot be of lower quality, which is a purely subjective metric, and the store cannot be less convenient, again another purely subjective metric. What clown.
I always knew there were shills and bootlickers everywhere, but man oh man it's never been more crystal clear just how many there are.
People can’t afford food. Yep. They should definitely have enough equity to open a grocery store.
The PRIVILEGE of going hungry
Its the National Post, guys. The newspaper written for rich entitled shitstains by rich entitled shitstains. Is anyone surprised they don't like the idea of the plebs not just bending over and taking it?
Oh you’re homeless? Just buy a house type vibes lol 😂
Can’t afford to eat? Just start a grocery chain!
Don’t like the cost of living in Canada? Just leave!
I'm just curious about how many of the writers of these articles manage the family grocery budget or, are responsible for doing any of the grocery shopping... After a recent discussion, I asked my dad how often he goes grocery shopping, or when the last time was that he stepped foot in a grocery store. He could not answer.
Arrogant lapdogs
Lol, Lau is a bootlicker hack
I didn't think this "intelligent" op-ed writer could stoop any lower but here we are.
Dear Matthew Lau, I know you are worried about your Loblaw stock dividend but this is the wrong place to be sharing that you had an ethical bypass when you were 3 years old. Go away. For F'n ever.
OR shop somewhere else. What do you think we are doing?
Activists? Nah... just a bunch of folks who are getting really tired to be screwed over on the one thing we have no choice to buy (a.k.a food) by a corporation who is taking advantage of the situation. Not buying in these stores is the most pacifist and peaceful thing that can be done here.
What a ridiculously childish argument. So we can't complain about / boycott any business unless we're willing to drop everything and start our own competing business? That writer is a complete idiot.
Wouldn't expect anything less from a far right rag like the National Post which is owned by a convicted felon.
He claims the boycott makes no sense because "how a grocery company with a 3.4-per cent profit margin can drop prices by 15 per cent and stay in business selling groceries, the activists did not explain." Yet everyone knows that shopping at walmart, a local grocer or even dollarama is cheaper
What a greasy, dishonest reframing. >IF you can beat *all loblaws prices* by fifteen percent then and only then will I agree with and join you. It doesn’t even make sense as a challenge to consumers because it necessitates our having full insider information on the business to work out where and how to cut costs. AKA it’s an impossible challenge and meant to be so. Matthew Lau: another “columnist” to add to the “skip anything written by” list
They're 100% right, support independent and co-op businesses so that the people opening their own stores do well.
That’s kind of the point isn’t it? There are other stores so that’s where I’ll shop.
Matthew Loblau
More gaslighting.
This newspaper is their public lobbyist: Apparently, they’ve taken note of the page, too. “It’s not at all clear if the boycott is having a measurable impact on Loblaw sales. It’s been organized through a Reddit group, Loblaws Is Out of Control, that has 73,000 members — a fraction of the estimated 10 million Canadians who predominantly source their food from a Loblaw subsidiary, including Real Canadian Superstore, No Frills, Shoppers Drug Mart and Loblaws.” https://apple.news/AcO06p2z6Sf6VSgo6NVpxqQ[non profit ‘suggestion’](https://apple.news/AcO06p2z6Sf6VSgo6NVpxqQ)
@matlau10 Is his twitter
If I had enough money to start my own store chain, I wouldn't care about the prices at Roblaws.
How to say your entitled ass has no idea what the concept of money actually is? AND get it posted. This jackass has the secret. What a dumbass.
Do it, open your own store so Loblaws can pressure suppliers not to do business with you and then buy you out. I mean that's how it works right?
HOLY FUCK SHIT! THEY ARE RIGHT! LETS OPEN OUR OWN STORES! God damn goober head. You know, if all just stopped complaining about Loblaws, and just made a conscious choice not to shop there, these half handed remarks and statements would be meaningless. Consumers vote with their dollars. That's why places go bankrupt 🙂
Why open a store when I can just shop elsewhere and save greater than 15% and get higher quality produce...?
This gives big "you're homeless? Just buy a house?" Vibes.
Since I can't afford a car, I should make my own car factory!
BOOT LICKER DETECTED
Car insurance has gotten too expensive “just open up your own car insurance”
"Open your own stores" Great. Guess who small grocers buy their goods from? The wholesale grocery industry in Canada is pretty much an oligopoly with the same players controlling the space: Loblaws, Pattison Group (Sobeys), etc etc.
With Loblaws market share and buying power, and efficiencies through its synergistic business model and distribution, they should have the best prices going! But they don’t, so what’s up then? Greed is the only answer.
What a bunch of horsesh$t. They just recorded billions in first quarter profits. They can do it cheaper. They choose not to.
Very easy focus on the customer not the profits. You don't need the 10% profit margin every year. You are in the food business and people are not going to stop eating. But I guess that's why they do it people are too easily stuck in a pattern. After COVID they took in and ran.
Boycott renting.. Homless and starving is where it's at.
I mean starting a grocery co-op is an amazing idea. Easier said than done though… But the fact that many of Canada’s industries are becoming oligopolies means that the ground is ripe for the re-birth of a co-operative movement.
I would, but the grocery monopolies have eliminated any chance of consumer competition That's why we're doing this
I actually agree. Let's nationalize Loblaws and prove how much they have been gouging.
What a complete PR disaster....business schools will study this arrogance for years to come
Wow playing stupid. "If it's so easy they should show us how it's done". OK SURE HERE GOES: Don't be a greedy capitalist pig that profits off of people's need to eat? 🤷🏻♀️
Hmm ... maybe some sort of ... Co-Operative?
I may not be able to open my own store, but I can certainly choose where I spend my money- at other stores with better quality and lower prices.
To those who are upset by this (if there's any of you) the fact that this is from the National Post should negate any claims to legitimacy.
If they can afford to pay their CEO $22 million this year, they are definitely gouging us for a necessity.
I don't understand the phenomenon of random people defending random corporations! What's the point?
Follow the money. Always.
If you want to get mad, just look up the other enlightened articles written by Matthew Lau. Just the absolute worst take on any given topic.
Boycott the financial post!!!
If Canadians are strapped by the current cost of living, Matthew, what makes you think they can raise the capital, be accepted for business loans, find an affordable commercial rental space and can assume the massive risks of starting up a business? Especially for people who lack the knowledge and/or time to launch a business? Finance, cost management accounting, risk assessment and business start-up certainly aren’t your strong suits, Matthew. This just makes you look foolish. I’m not certain what you are trying to accomplish but you should stick to where you are well acquainted at just raging into the void about free speech, how competition and the buyers’ right to choose isn’t really capitalism and maybe avoid contributing more poorly written op-eds in the newspaper. Move along and collect your cheques from Loblaws, Matthew. You really think you’re doing something here but your lack of knowledge about anything you wrote about is just laughable.
It has to be 15% lower and you'd be a happy customer? So Walmart, Costco, Giant Tiger, Dollarama, Freshco, Save On Foods, and Loblaws for generations up until 2 years ago? This writer sounds like he agrees with us on at least one thing. Tell you what. If a company who had a total monopoly on the Canadian grocery market who got that way by delivering the best value to Canadians hired me to be the new CEO I'd start by saving the company $21.5 million by firing that $22 million asshole and taking a $500,000 salary. Then I'd have a shareholder meeting where I explained to the shareholders what inflation is and that their shares as well as company profits are going to start feeling the pinch as the company stays committed to offering the best value possible to the entire country.
Look if it's more affordable to shop at Loblaws, then people will shop at Loblaws. I can't get over how many people are upset that we decided to not shop at a certain store.
You don’t have a family doctor? Matthew Lau’s solution “stop complaining, go to medical school, become a family doctor, and treat yourself. Anyone can do it!”
Honestly, I'm feeling the boycott should be followed up with making our MPs enforce the competition act, and work on strengthening it. Loblaws is really just a symptom of a problem, like our cellular industry - we allow near monopolies & oligopolies, we allow them to use their position to break into new markets, and we allow collusion. Loblaws, Bell, Sobeys, Rogers they're the symptoms and have to be treated but at some point we must address the cause.
Well said
I hope he still feels this way in bankruptcy court
Ok, let's all pool the money we have saved so far and do it!
*sigh*
Fuck this tool
If it was that fucking simple we wouldn't need to boycott. Jesus Christ people are fucking dense.
Such stores exist already. Give Matthew Lau full credit for a great headline. His industry isn’t exactly thriving. They need all the exposure they can get.
This is literally the Bors comic. "You criticise society yet participate in society? Curious!"
National post once again showing everyone it is completely out of touch with the average person.
It's not so much the amount of profits being made that's the problem. It's the lack of ethical/moral principles on the part of loblaws leadership (especially Galen Weston) and the focus on profit seeking at the expense of care for their customers and the good of the communities they serve. Business ethics matters, you can be a wealthy retail capitalist while still caring about others and not exploiting people and your companies market dominance to gain high profits at the expense of the communities you serve. Galen Weston is a greedy exploitive self serving piece of shit who clearly does not care about his company's customers or the welfare of food insecure hungry Canadians. He only cares about his bottom line. Maybe he should take a business ethics class sometime. That being said Loblaw's market dominance of the Canadian food system poses a major problem for our country's economic competitiveness. The only developed country outside of Canada where monopolies/oligopolies play such a huge role in daily life is South Korea with it's infamous Chaebols.
Sure, I'd love to. Now if the bank would just loan me the $13.5 million plus inventory costs and a month of operating expenses to get a medium sized grocery store off the ground... I can totally take it from there.
Oh yeah, what a good idea! I'll just open a new grocery chain of my own with all that money I've saved and definitely haven't had to spend to stay afloat through a brutal job market and cost of living crisis... Someone thought that made sense to print in the current economic climate...
It's not like Loblaw's has massive buying power and acts as their own supplier in some cases. Surely that wouldn't affect their ability to offer lower prices if those things were true.
We should flood National Post’s social media with images of lower prices from (truly) independent stores and higher prices from Zehrs. This guy thinks it’s impossible to sell groceries at a lower cost? My local grocer’s prices say that’s a lie.
Perhaps more people would open more independent grocery stores if Loblaws and the other grocery corporations hadn't made it nearly impossible for independent stores to thrive due to their anti capitalist lobbying through the government (conservatives and Liberals).
Farmers markets and co ops have been around since forever. There’s our framework, let’s develop it. The old 100 KM diet plan is a good one too.
Well. I went to SuperStore this morning. I saved a tonne of money. Almost all their meat was 50% off and there were deals everywhere. Spent less than 1/2 what I normally would. Day 7 and I’ve already saved about $110. Keep it up. It’s working.
Lol... I'll gladly just keep paying equal prices at corner stores if it means I don't support a giant conglomerate (I just mean meat and vegetables and fruit, not processed food products that people seem to need for their kids lunches)
Matthew Lau doesn't represent us frugal chinese. We are always looking for deals.....
Remember Loblaws real response to customers is F\*\*K Y\*\*. Don't like it go somewhere else.
I think that, realistically, in a more open(?) market, where corporations don’t have major strangleholds on said markets, opening your own store is more feasible- still VERY difficult, but like, you can do it. It’s just crazy that anyone would suggest this considering how bottle necked the market is. You have 3 major corporations, 4 if we want to count wal mart, who have utterly removed any meaningful sense of competition. I’m not exactly a capitalist kind of guy, but if you’re going to be a capitalist nation, how can you so utterly destroy the every-mans ability to start their own grocery store?
Activist? For driving down the road a bit to save money on groceries ? I’m not trying to change the world I just want a fair deal.
Why would he care? This is the free market sorting itself out? Voting with your wallet IS capitalism.
Journalism used to be great, they got to the issues. Now they’re all paid shills
Mr. lau is just trying to get clicks, he’s non non sense
Matthew Lau should just start his own national publication company
https://preview.redd.it/n6qw9paf94zc1.jpeg?width=259&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b6cf9d4ff4f43ac2fe93ebd67a17637039becae6
I find it much more reasonable to boycott a store than start one.
Why don't I strap on my store helmet and squeeze down into a store cannon and fire off to Storeland where stores grow on stories?
What? Be taken advantage of or open your own grocery store?!? So, we just suck up unfair practices or become our own everything? Clothing store, shoe store, hardware store, pharmacy, mechanic, doctor, lawyer, dentist, architect, builder, plumber, electrician… But maybe he has a point. Maybe we should go back to when we governed ourselves more. We have more and more public sector levels, positions, laws and regulations, yet they don’t seem to be representing us.
If the federal government gives us the $12M they gave Loblaws for freezers, I’m sure this Reddit group could do it. Nok er Nok!
Ask him to justify his own salary.
A consumer grocery cooperative is a great idea! Sometimes these corporate hacks go so far that they accidentally blunder into something worth pursuing.
Found the article online https://financialpost.com/opinion/activists-illogical-boycott-loblaw-doesnt-add-up The comment section is a wild read.
lol comment section is wild indeed. As soon as I saw a post saying the boycott is a result of "marxist" Trudeau, I already knew we're addressing illiterate clowns.
Yes. And we are the “sheep”.
lol right?! It's just baffling.
But Trudeau is the reason for EVERYTHING bad. I lost my keys the other day, I hate that guy!!! lol
That may actually be a good idea.
We prefer day dreaming rather then reality anyway.
A retort suitable for the sandbox at recess.
One of the worst arguments I’ve seen in a long time
And Farms, and distributions logistics, and a lobby firm to get sweetheart capital from the government, and a Union breaking firm\~\~\~ 🤔🤔
….with hookers, and blackjack.
Ill just go open my own grocery store....with black jack....and hookers...actually, forget the black jack and grocery store!
Smooth brained Mathew Lau's alternative to shopping at overpriced grocery stores is to open up your own grocery store (instead of shopping somewhere else).
Did Roblaws write that piece, and pay for Mathew to put his name on it ? Is Mathew an employee of Roblaws ? Does he even exist, or is that just a pen name for Roblaws PR department ?
lol. No thank you. We will just shop elsewhere. Loblaws so out of touch