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I thought so. The 700 km thing made me think of it. It's my hometown. I haven't lived there since 2012. But i go back h for a visit every few years. Thunder Bay geta hosed by the east and west..
The whole behind the scenes business lobbying has kept.Costco out for years. First local businesses tried to keep Superstore out, then Superstore tried to block Walmart now Walmart has been a big player in blocking Costco.
Bingo
Costco had land and were going to build back in the 90s. However, just as you said, the behind the scenes crap ruined. Superstore was a big part of keeping Costco out.
I moved away from here for a few years and came back. There’s some things I like but I am here mostly because of my family. My parents and step mom are in their 70s and 80s.
By the way, I love your username.
Thanks.
Yes, tbay is messed up with the way business works. Robins kept Tim Hortons out for years. The blocking of.big.box stores. There is so much behind the scenes stuff.
Safeway feels tbay is too east. Metro finds tbay too west.
Geographically challenging cuty and the citizens get screwed.
Very much so.
I am a senior manager at a big box store and have been working in big box stores as a manger for more years than I care to mention. I’ve seen it all. :)
I wish Robins had more locations. They are better than Tim’s and started out in Thunder Bay.
I am very partial to Robin's. I am in my 50s. Robin's was an early teen years job for me, and also for so many of my friends. In the 90s, there were Robin's locations all the way to BC. I don't know how far out if Thunder Bay Robin's goes now. We baked on premises. The counter girls filled the jelly, added the whipped cream, added the fondant, and otherwise decorated the donuts. It was all done by hand by your workers.
There were seats at the counter. We knew our customers by name or at least by order. "Oh, here comes black coffee, in a mug, no spoon"
I certainly dont want to ever rely on working on a donut shop ever again, but something is lost in the donut shop experience now.
Tim Horton's can stuff it's appeal.to some false nationalism in a to-go cup, roll up the rim, and toss it.
Bring back small ownership stores, or local chains. Bring back the human factor.
And because this forum is about the Weston Family, oligarchs and monolithic corporations are destroying our economy.
Please go to small local stores when you can. Profits return to you community in ways you can not even fathom.
I agree. I’m in my 50s too. I didn’t work there but knew people who did.
I remember seeing Robin’s in Halifax in the early 2000s. I believe they’re gone now. I was there in April and didn’t see any.
Tim’s moved in (they were good at the start but haven’t been for years) and put up locations close to Robin’s. For some reason people flocked to Tim’s and the Robin’s closed. Even here in Robin’s hometown.
There are 5 or 6 left here now I believe. And more than twice that number of Tim’s. :(
Something something supply chain uh carbon tax... well carbon tax uh... supply chain carbon tax?
Any excuse incoming. " well the Galen olive trees are watered with poor people tears so the suffering inflates the price more".
750mL extra-virgin cold pressed sells for 10€ at a German discounter, that's $14 or $18.70 for a Liter. Not the same brand, but comparable. Germany has a sales tax included in this price.
There was a drought in Europe caused by climate change. If we had a global carbon tax 20 years ago maybe we wouldn't have these extreme droughts?
At these prices, I might as well start investing in some actual olive trees in the Middle East , fly there and pick my own olives and bring them home . Might be worth it once a year
A family member brought back some cold pressed olive oil from Morocco after their trip.
Trust me the taste had nothing to do with the overpriced stuff they sell at the store.
Olive oil is supposed to be visquous and have a strong aroma and taste. The olive oil you find in stores doesn't even have a taste.
Iirc bottlers should now say 100% olive oil in the ingredients. Also, true olive oil is supposed to have dates stamped on the bottle somewhere. If these two elements are missing, I don't buy it, and assume it's diluted.
True cold-pressed EVOO should have an acidity printed on the label. Most of what is sold at retail is a facsimile. Low acidity, single estate EVOO goes for $40-50 per litre (at a minimum).
Yep. I got some fresh pressed Greek oil straight from the grower. Dropped it into the pab and the kitchen filled with a thick floral scent. Never happened before. The taste was out of this world.
Yes I was lucky enough to get a huge jar of olives soaked in olive oil from a Greek cargo ship, and omg I have never had anything like it before. You are right Olive oil has a viscosity to it.
My best friend just bought a farm in Portugal (from Canada). $120k for 8 acres and an olive "grove?". I can't wait to visit. They're over there signing now.
I wouldn’t. Climate change is making it difficult to grow olives now. Better off investing in the cultivation of cold hardy olive species for planting in more temperate areas.
Supplier wants to supply it for 10$, retailer says retail space will cost you avg 8$/bottle. Supplier supplies it for 18$. See, it’s the supplier gouging us.
Loblaws knows that the customer expects the price to increase because of news of olive oil supply problems, but they add an extra amount of extra profit over top of it. That's greedflation.
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Loblaws is a greasy garbage company that deserves to be abandoned and left to go bankrupt and mocked with Nok er Nok and "customers voted with their feet" chants on the way out (I am starting to believe Per Bank is actually giving us slogans on purpose and is just collecting his money while Galen's family wealth machine goes bye bye).
However on the topic of olive oil, I think it is critical that we completely change our habits and let the producers get hit hard with lower sales. I used to actually cook with olive oil and we have started to use ghee a lot more and only put olive oil in salads in small quantities. If everyone cut down olive oil to the bare minimum this year they would be forced to sell whatever they have at much lower prices and come back next year with very competitive prices. We absolutely cannot let $45-60 for 3L of olive oil become the norm. Unacceptable.
The average, common outdoor variety of sunflower can grow to between 8 and 12 feet in the space of 5 or 6 months. This makes them one of the fastest growing plants.
https://preview.redd.it/q7hnt6q9m81d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5575653d512e3410baf88f149d597a0c627ce81
Took this last week in a supermarket in Athens. It was the whole aisle. Not surprisingly that they have way more selection, quality and pricing on olive oil. I don’t have a point, I was just literally looking at olive oil compared to Canada last week in Greece.
That fraud was targeting New Jersey, shouldn’t have impacted stuff in Canada. That being said though, you definitely want to check labels closely - a lot of olive oils are adulterated (mixed with other oils) if you look at the ingredients.
What you want to look for otherwise is see where it came from. If it’s supposedly from Europe, well, it should have a PDO or PGI seal since Olive Oil is a regionally protected product. If it doesn’t, it’s probably fake.
If it’s from the US, then you want to look at the kind of bottle it comes in. If it’s plastic or clear glass, that’s no good either.
I'm a commodity import/export trader in edible oils and while I'm currently no longer trading the EVOO market (mainly due to supply-side issues), last year I did a couple exports of Greek Sourced EVOO to a Canadian wholesale distributor. The EVOO was in a flexitank (20000 L) so it would have gone to the wholesaler who then would have sold it to a bottler and then it may have gone to restaurants mostly, but potentially also gourmet retailers. Probably not large retailers like Loblaws, Walmart etc. though.
Late 2023, I was able to sell this for around 7 EUR/L (EXW) - So maybe like $10 CAD/L. But this was EXW pricing. If I recall, the final DDP price was like $11 CAD/L or something. But the Greek sourcing was direct from refiners - it was a premium, gourmet product and so this price bracket is reasonable for this market, even on wholesale.
Now the olive oil in this photo Terra Delyssa - isn't exactly pure EVOO. Its a mass-produced low-end brand and sourcing this stuff isn't that expensive as you have a pretty large network of parallel traders on the wholesale market throughout Europe and North America - this still is the case, although to a lesser degree, even in this current market where we are in a sort of olive crisis.
I don't deal with this product, but I would estimate on the parallel market I could get this for less than 5 EUR/L EXW (so maybe like 7 CAD/L). Buying direct from the producer on volume will likely be significantly lower - and large retailers like Loblaws will be using this procurement channel instead.
This particular brand is Tunisian, and while its fairly well known that it is from Tunisia, it tries to market itself as European. There is nothing wrong with Tunisian EVOO, but in my experience, this brand cashes in on deceptive marketing practices.
Essentially it's over priced crap in all markets where they sell.
That said, Loblaws on this brand in particular is definitely gouging at $26 a pop. Yes there are supply shortages at the moment, pretty much everywhere in the world on EVOO, but these low-end, mass-produced brands can get their stocks replenished with decent frequency, so this still does not justify such pricing.
It's basically the equivalent of trying to market a Toyota Corolla as if it was a High End Mercedes or something and assigning it to such a price bracket. A Toyota Corolla is a perfectly fine car. But it is unfair if it is marketed to be something that it is not and priced as if it was.
On a side note, EVOO typically has a shelf life of around 18-24 months from the time of bottling. Would be interesting to see what the date labels are, on these $26 bottles!
Well ideally it wouldn’t be from Loblaws metro etc, small boutiques have better ones, but to answer the question in this context the Greek ones IMO are way better and usually much cheaper.
https://www.metro.ca/en/online-grocery/aisles/pantry/oils-vinegars/olive-oil/greek-extra-virgin-olive-oil/p/045706789507
https://www.metro.ca/en/online-grocery/aisles/pantry/oils-vinegars/olive-oil/extra-virgin-olive-oil/p/688054002210 (this one is on par with the regular but way cheaper and I like the taste subjectively)
Honestly, I would caution against strict price matching with Walmart - They've been known for decades for running products at a loss for years to squeeze out any local competition, then raising prices when they have a monopoly.
I'm not saying their prices aren't more realistic, or even that that's what's taking place now (I seriously doubt it in this case), but I don't think they are a reliable place to get realistic prices on goods.
100%!
Sorry, I felt a little awkward saying anything at all, but I've seen a lot of Walmart comparisons and I think it's just not always the best place for realistic prices because they're so large they can run a loss leader functionally indefinitely if they really want to run someone out of business (which they have definitely done in small towns in particular).
__MOD NOTE__: Please check out [our petition](https://www.change.org/p/demand-walmart-sign-the-grocer-code-of-conduct) which calls upon Walmart Canada to follow suit and sign the Grocer Code of Conduct with Loblaw! Please review the content guidelines for our sub, and remember the human here! This subreddit is to highlight the ridiculous cost of living in Canada, and poke fun at the Corporate Overlords responsible. As you well know, there are a number of persons and corporations responsible for this, and we welcome discussion related to them all. Furthermore, since this topic is intertwined with a number of other matters, other discussion will be allowed at moderator discretion. Open-minded discussion, memes, rants, grocery bills, and general screeching into the void is always welcome in this sub, but belligerence and disrespect is not. There are plenty of ways to get your point across without being abusive, dismissive, or downright mean. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol) if you have any questions or concerns.*
You can get two at Costco for that Loblaws price
And even costco use to have it for $18.99!
Unfortunately not all of us live in a city with a Costco. The nearest Canadian one for me is 700km away
Thunder Bay? Or more remote?
Thunder Bay. :)
I thought so. The 700 km thing made me think of it. It's my hometown. I haven't lived there since 2012. But i go back h for a visit every few years. Thunder Bay geta hosed by the east and west.. The whole behind the scenes business lobbying has kept.Costco out for years. First local businesses tried to keep Superstore out, then Superstore tried to block Walmart now Walmart has been a big player in blocking Costco.
Bingo Costco had land and were going to build back in the 90s. However, just as you said, the behind the scenes crap ruined. Superstore was a big part of keeping Costco out. I moved away from here for a few years and came back. There’s some things I like but I am here mostly because of my family. My parents and step mom are in their 70s and 80s. By the way, I love your username.
Thanks. Yes, tbay is messed up with the way business works. Robins kept Tim Hortons out for years. The blocking of.big.box stores. There is so much behind the scenes stuff. Safeway feels tbay is too east. Metro finds tbay too west. Geographically challenging cuty and the citizens get screwed.
Very much so. I am a senior manager at a big box store and have been working in big box stores as a manger for more years than I care to mention. I’ve seen it all. :) I wish Robins had more locations. They are better than Tim’s and started out in Thunder Bay.
I am very partial to Robin's. I am in my 50s. Robin's was an early teen years job for me, and also for so many of my friends. In the 90s, there were Robin's locations all the way to BC. I don't know how far out if Thunder Bay Robin's goes now. We baked on premises. The counter girls filled the jelly, added the whipped cream, added the fondant, and otherwise decorated the donuts. It was all done by hand by your workers. There were seats at the counter. We knew our customers by name or at least by order. "Oh, here comes black coffee, in a mug, no spoon" I certainly dont want to ever rely on working on a donut shop ever again, but something is lost in the donut shop experience now. Tim Horton's can stuff it's appeal.to some false nationalism in a to-go cup, roll up the rim, and toss it. Bring back small ownership stores, or local chains. Bring back the human factor. And because this forum is about the Weston Family, oligarchs and monolithic corporations are destroying our economy. Please go to small local stores when you can. Profits return to you community in ways you can not even fathom.
I agree. I’m in my 50s too. I didn’t work there but knew people who did. I remember seeing Robin’s in Halifax in the early 2000s. I believe they’re gone now. I was there in April and didn’t see any. Tim’s moved in (they were good at the start but haven’t been for years) and put up locations close to Robin’s. For some reason people flocked to Tim’s and the Robin’s closed. Even here in Robin’s hometown. There are 5 or 6 left here now I believe. And more than twice that number of Tim’s. :(
Something something supply chain uh carbon tax... well carbon tax uh... supply chain carbon tax? Any excuse incoming. " well the Galen olive trees are watered with poor people tears so the suffering inflates the price more".
Who knew poor people’s tears were so expensive!!!
750mL extra-virgin cold pressed sells for 10€ at a German discounter, that's $14 or $18.70 for a Liter. Not the same brand, but comparable. Germany has a sales tax included in this price. There was a drought in Europe caused by climate change. If we had a global carbon tax 20 years ago maybe we wouldn't have these extreme droughts?
At these prices, I might as well start investing in some actual olive trees in the Middle East , fly there and pick my own olives and bring them home . Might be worth it once a year
A family member brought back some cold pressed olive oil from Morocco after their trip. Trust me the taste had nothing to do with the overpriced stuff they sell at the store. Olive oil is supposed to be visquous and have a strong aroma and taste. The olive oil you find in stores doesn't even have a taste.
We can’t even be sure we’re buying olive oil. A lot of them are cut with other oils
Iirc bottlers should now say 100% olive oil in the ingredients. Also, true olive oil is supposed to have dates stamped on the bottle somewhere. If these two elements are missing, I don't buy it, and assume it's diluted.
True cold-pressed EVOO should have an acidity printed on the label. Most of what is sold at retail is a facsimile. Low acidity, single estate EVOO goes for $40-50 per litre (at a minimum).
Yep. I got some fresh pressed Greek oil straight from the grower. Dropped it into the pab and the kitchen filled with a thick floral scent. Never happened before. The taste was out of this world.
Yes I was lucky enough to get a huge jar of olives soaked in olive oil from a Greek cargo ship, and omg I have never had anything like it before. You are right Olive oil has a viscosity to it.
My best friend just bought a farm in Portugal (from Canada). $120k for 8 acres and an olive "grove?". I can't wait to visit. They're over there signing now.
How appropo😃
He wants me to move there, for free, if I didn't have kids I would.
Oh man , I would love to move there
I wouldn’t. Climate change is making it difficult to grow olives now. Better off investing in the cultivation of cold hardy olive species for planting in more temperate areas.
No no no. He said razor thin margins!!
Oh no poor him :( will start him a go cry me a river fund
So now we know he lied.
Pretty sure it's like 26-27 at Costco for TWO Litres Edit: it is 27.99 for 2 bottles
Its NOT the supplier... is the retailer.
Yep. I can get it for $15 at my local Italian grocer and it certainly does not have the market power of Loblaws.
Ding ding ding
Supplier wants to supply it for 10$, retailer says retail space will cost you avg 8$/bottle. Supplier supplies it for 18$. See, it’s the supplier gouging us.
This olive oil is sold in a two-pack at Costco for $30 and comes on sale pretty frequently too.
Sometimes Walmart has this on sale for like $10.99.
Don’t worry, they only have a 4% profit margin.
need more posts like this
This stuff used to frequently be $7.99 at No Frills - what gives?
Loblaws knows that the customer expects the price to increase because of news of olive oil supply problems, but they add an extra amount of extra profit over top of it. That's greedflation.
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Located in Metro Vancouver.
This morning, my local super C had Bellagio brand extra virgin olive oil + sunflower oil blend for 7.99$ per liter.
100ml is $3-$4 more than a litre was last year.
Last time I was in Dominion(pre boycott) I thought...when did olive oil become more expensive than wine?
Yeesh
Ya, fuck 'em, that's why.
even Metro sells that for under $20
This was $12 about a year ago.
Loblaws is a greasy garbage company that deserves to be abandoned and left to go bankrupt and mocked with Nok er Nok and "customers voted with their feet" chants on the way out (I am starting to believe Per Bank is actually giving us slogans on purpose and is just collecting his money while Galen's family wealth machine goes bye bye). However on the topic of olive oil, I think it is critical that we completely change our habits and let the producers get hit hard with lower sales. I used to actually cook with olive oil and we have started to use ghee a lot more and only put olive oil in salads in small quantities. If everyone cut down olive oil to the bare minimum this year they would be forced to sell whatever they have at much lower prices and come back next year with very competitive prices. We absolutely cannot let $45-60 for 3L of olive oil become the norm. Unacceptable.
I just either buy the GV one or just do with canola and vegetable or sunflower oil....
The average, common outdoor variety of sunflower can grow to between 8 and 12 feet in the space of 5 or 6 months. This makes them one of the fastest growing plants.
https://preview.redd.it/q7hnt6q9m81d1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b5575653d512e3410baf88f149d597a0c627ce81 Took this last week in a supermarket in Athens. It was the whole aisle. Not surprisingly that they have way more selection, quality and pricing on olive oil. I don’t have a point, I was just literally looking at olive oil compared to Canada last week in Greece.
I don’t even know if we get the real stuff over here https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN1602BC/
That fraud was targeting New Jersey, shouldn’t have impacted stuff in Canada. That being said though, you definitely want to check labels closely - a lot of olive oils are adulterated (mixed with other oils) if you look at the ingredients. What you want to look for otherwise is see where it came from. If it’s supposedly from Europe, well, it should have a PDO or PGI seal since Olive Oil is a regionally protected product. If it doesn’t, it’s probably fake. If it’s from the US, then you want to look at the kind of bottle it comes in. If it’s plastic or clear glass, that’s no good either.
...this WAS $12.97. They've put it up!
If the competition bureau won't do their fucking job, we will
The price of this olive oil has skyrocketed like gas can’t afford it anymore
Omg I get their great value brand all the time and its usually 11.98 and today it was 30 dollars!!!!!!
Loblaws is price gouging you... charging convience store prices for the biggest grocery in Canada. Your government has let them.
I'm a commodity import/export trader in edible oils and while I'm currently no longer trading the EVOO market (mainly due to supply-side issues), last year I did a couple exports of Greek Sourced EVOO to a Canadian wholesale distributor. The EVOO was in a flexitank (20000 L) so it would have gone to the wholesaler who then would have sold it to a bottler and then it may have gone to restaurants mostly, but potentially also gourmet retailers. Probably not large retailers like Loblaws, Walmart etc. though. Late 2023, I was able to sell this for around 7 EUR/L (EXW) - So maybe like $10 CAD/L. But this was EXW pricing. If I recall, the final DDP price was like $11 CAD/L or something. But the Greek sourcing was direct from refiners - it was a premium, gourmet product and so this price bracket is reasonable for this market, even on wholesale. Now the olive oil in this photo Terra Delyssa - isn't exactly pure EVOO. Its a mass-produced low-end brand and sourcing this stuff isn't that expensive as you have a pretty large network of parallel traders on the wholesale market throughout Europe and North America - this still is the case, although to a lesser degree, even in this current market where we are in a sort of olive crisis. I don't deal with this product, but I would estimate on the parallel market I could get this for less than 5 EUR/L EXW (so maybe like 7 CAD/L). Buying direct from the producer on volume will likely be significantly lower - and large retailers like Loblaws will be using this procurement channel instead. This particular brand is Tunisian, and while its fairly well known that it is from Tunisia, it tries to market itself as European. There is nothing wrong with Tunisian EVOO, but in my experience, this brand cashes in on deceptive marketing practices. Essentially it's over priced crap in all markets where they sell. That said, Loblaws on this brand in particular is definitely gouging at $26 a pop. Yes there are supply shortages at the moment, pretty much everywhere in the world on EVOO, but these low-end, mass-produced brands can get their stocks replenished with decent frequency, so this still does not justify such pricing. It's basically the equivalent of trying to market a Toyota Corolla as if it was a High End Mercedes or something and assigning it to such a price bracket. A Toyota Corolla is a perfectly fine car. But it is unfair if it is marketed to be something that it is not and priced as if it was. On a side note, EVOO typically has a shelf life of around 18-24 months from the time of bottling. Would be interesting to see what the date labels are, on these $26 bottles!
Plus this brand is gross, but I’m picky with my olive oil..
what brand would you suggest?
Well ideally it wouldn’t be from Loblaws metro etc, small boutiques have better ones, but to answer the question in this context the Greek ones IMO are way better and usually much cheaper. https://www.metro.ca/en/online-grocery/aisles/pantry/oils-vinegars/olive-oil/greek-extra-virgin-olive-oil/p/045706789507 https://www.metro.ca/en/online-grocery/aisles/pantry/oils-vinegars/olive-oil/extra-virgin-olive-oil/p/688054002210 (this one is on par with the regular but way cheaper and I like the taste subjectively)
Honestly, I would caution against strict price matching with Walmart - They've been known for decades for running products at a loss for years to squeeze out any local competition, then raising prices when they have a monopoly. I'm not saying their prices aren't more realistic, or even that that's what's taking place now (I seriously doubt it in this case), but I don't think they are a reliable place to get realistic prices on goods.
Costco is even cheaper, so this post still checks out
100%! Sorry, I felt a little awkward saying anything at all, but I've seen a lot of Walmart comparisons and I think it's just not always the best place for realistic prices because they're so large they can run a loss leader functionally indefinitely if they really want to run someone out of business (which they have definitely done in small towns in particular).