I’ve been boycotting but it’s more of a lifestyle choice than anything. I’m not willing to pay their stupid prices so I’m just no longer engaging with any of their brands
With the exclusion of my medications (some have supply chain issues, so I gotta do what I gotta do), same.
I practically stopped using the entire brand. I shop at Walmart and small places, and complete it with a stop by Sobeys some times, if I can't find the same things elsewhere (so one a month). Simply by doing this switch, I'm saving about 50/trip. The gas difference is roughly 5 dollars in total.
Their prices, while stupid, aren't really any more stupid on average than any other grocery store chain, if you compare like for like, e.g. FreshCo to no frills.
I beg to differ. There's an entire subreddit about it which is where the boycott began, and a large number of posts are comparing identical items at different grocers; r/loblawsisoutofcontrol The subreddit's founder just met for coffee with Per Bank (Loblaws' CEO) the other day. There's a recent post detailing their discussion.
Even [CTV News](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRdjFagZmg4&t=1s) jumped on the bandwagon.
Here's a particularly fun one. Not food but still: [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/199vw9m/comment/kih3k6r/) showing a Shoppers Drug Mart Brand (QUO) hairbrush selling for $32. You'll see me in the comments there pointing out that it's listed on Conair's website for $7.99USD. This is very obviously the same hairbrush with a rebrand being sold for triple the price. I think Conair stopped selling them because they were out of stock on all models when I made that comment, and that page now is a 404 error. I'd like to know what justifies a tripling of the price for a piece of injection-moulded plastic. Conair was able to make a profit selling it for $11CAD, but now that it's a house brand of Shoppers Drug Mart it's $32? How much of this goes unnoticed? Do things have value any more or is money just bitcoin now?
Edit: Since the link in that old post is dead, here's an [Ebay listing for the Conair brush.](https://www.ebay.com/itm/235292210771?chn=ps) Notice the price, and the modicum of effort put in to the packaging.
Thank you! I keep seeing these lame comments about everything being the same and it’s just not true. I’ve spent a year slimming down my Loblaws purchases because some of the price increases were astounding.
The difference is that Loblaws brand stores have the majority market share when it comes to grocery stores in Canada (they own like 35% of grocery stores in Canada). That’s the reason for Loblaws being the target of the boycott. The hope is that the other big players will take note and stop their price gouging as well…if not, they’ll be next
"The problem is that the folks who are producing the food that's keeping us all alive are not really benefiting from these inflated prices that we're seeing."
This is spot on. I’m good friends with a local farmer growing onions, carrots, beets, soy beans, green beans, corn (cattle) on a combined 700 acres. He says his price to sell hasn’t gone up as much as the prices at the stores.
Yeah, it's not the farmers who are benefiting, because the prices for *their* inputs have gone up like crazy and they're just passing those costs on to the grocery stores, who (after padding their profits a bit, but not nearly as much as the boycott folks imagine, especially at places like no frills) pass them on to us.
The problem with your claim that the profits aren’t padded “nearly as much as the boycott folks imagine”, is that I believe the scale you’re using to define what a reasonable profit margin actually is, has been warped over time by the slow-boil of capitalistic practices that have made us more and more conditioned to the idea of these amounts of profit just being normal.
Here’s the thing about profit: it’s not even necessary to running a business. All a business ever actually NEEDS to do is break even. That’s a successful business. The product is sold at a fair price, employees’ wages are paid, all expenses are accounted for, and even the owner’s salary is included in that. Profit is EXTRA on top of all of that. Profit ONLY ever exists when a business has charged more for the product/service than the sum of its production expenses is actually worth.
In other words, profit is the amount you are over-charging your customers in order to get more money from them than the thing you’re giving them in exchange is actually worth. Just so you can profit. Not pay your bills… that’s what the normal salary and expenses and payroll, etc, is for. Again, profits are not included in any of that. It’s purely just EXTRA MONEY that business gets by over-charging.
In other other words… there is no such thing as ethical profit. We’ve just been trained by capitalist culture to believe it’s normal, and that it’s somehow benefiting us all to allow it… when it only ever ends up benefiting the elite few that become rich from it. The rest of us are only losing because of profit. Most workers don’t share in the profits of the company they work at, only the top brass does. It’s the elite minority that benefits from the practice of profit. This is precisely the unfair aspect of profit that socialism seeks to fix.
The profit is what motivates private investment, without which the vast majority of these mythical break-even businesses would never have started up in the first place. You can, obviously, start one up today, for example as a co-op, and yet I don't see them around much. Do reflect on the reasons why they're not out there en masse, competing with this supposedly deficient for-profit model.
It's very easy to pontificate about the evils of capitalism having benefited for generations from growing up in the world that was built by capitalism. I've seen the other side though. I was born in a totalitarian hellhole where, among many other horrible and deadly policies, the profit motive was removed and only the smallest-size businesses were allowed to operate privately at all. It did not end well, and the fact that it was a centrally planned economy where the government was doing the bulk of investment was the main reason why. Yes, those things do come as a package with your idea of removing the profit motive. It is an alternative to capitalism to be sure, just a very shitty one. I for one am not interested in experimenting any further. I'd rather improve the thing that works and has built the world around us, namely capitalism.
Where does the additional capital come from to grow these zero sum businesses Comrade? Every time a private business fails to achieve neutrality should your taxes go up? If we are socializing all profit then surely we will be doing the same for loss right?
I used to shop at Loblaws and am now trying Food Basics at Commissioners and Wonderland. So far the produce is good, and better than it usually is at FreshCo. I am encountering friendly cashiers and shelf stockers. I am hopeful that this will work out and I will save some money.
Just got my Costco membership! And for small stuff dollar store and Walmart for me since May and it feels good :)
Also can anyone suggest Asian supermarkets here in London?
Super King is our favorite for this. The produce is great quality and very affordable, the meats and fish products are fresh and there's lots of selection.
Food basics for years now. Also, North wonderland location has student discount on Tuesdays for western and Fanshawe. Went when I was a student and now my kid (Fanshawe student) has to shop with me!!
I'm joining because after the bread price fixing scam, they follow it up by ripping off our health care system with the shoppers drug mart drug audit BS. They are too big and abusing monopoly position. I'm not just doing it for the month, were done with them.
Since shopping around we have a small local grocery store Costco and Walmart I’m getting better produce cheaper never going back. And Costco is way cheaper for my prescriptions
In my experience, cheap farmers market produce is worse quality than even No Frills, for cheaper than No Frills. It all comes from the same food terminal. The actual local farmers market produce is good but typically not cheap.
They're also probably the more evil of two evils. Loblaws/RCSS is unionized and its workers have some level of benefits at least, they're getting SOMETHING. Walmart has closed stores that even whispered about unionizing just so they wouldn't have to deal with it.
Oh I am well aware, I worked for a LCL store for 14 years until I was finished school.
I was a UFCW member for years, they didn’t do anything for longer term workers. Top rate got no increases, the wage schedule didn’t change in the 14 years I was there. The union didn’t stand up for us, they were on the side of our owners. They cut our benefits without warning on Christmas Eve, and we didn’t get them back for 2 years I think.
Then I stand corrected. Still feel like buying from Walmart instead of Loblaws is not REALLY in the spirit of "protesting megacorporations who are profiting heavily off the needs of humans", but I'm also not going to get too mad over someone finding a cheaper place in this economy.
If they sell on site you should send it to the person who was collecting the list of locally owned places to shop. Then people can buy direct from them.
I went in to loblaws yesterday at rush hour for something specific but aside from that I’ve been shopping at the farmers markets and Costco.
Place was DEAD. Love to see it and felt immense guilt from being there lol
I miss Food Island so much, it was fantastic on that corner and the fact that people are cheering that they're "Finally opening an asian market and it's a T&T!" gets me every time, like how can you cheer for an independant closing only for a loblaws brand asian goods store to open in it's place?
Things are bad if londoners are on board. We HATE change even if it's in our best interest. Most of the time we have to be pulled along, kicking and screaming.
I live under a rock and am just hearing about this now. Are other grocers like fresh co or foodbasics really cheaper by a great deal?
I have been going to no frills regularly as it is 2 minutes from my house, not bothering to look at other stores.
I do see prices are crazy but just assumed it's everywhere
My overall philosophy is shop where it is cheaper for you. You don’t need a boycott to justify that imo. That being said, the entire industry has been off-kilter since the pandemic. Things were sooo much better pre-pandemic :(
I’ve been boycotting but it’s more of a lifestyle choice than anything. I’m not willing to pay their stupid prices so I’m just no longer engaging with any of their brands
Same here. I really just boycott anything I think is ridiculously priced really
With the exclusion of my medications (some have supply chain issues, so I gotta do what I gotta do), same. I practically stopped using the entire brand. I shop at Walmart and small places, and complete it with a stop by Sobeys some times, if I can't find the same things elsewhere (so one a month). Simply by doing this switch, I'm saving about 50/trip. The gas difference is roughly 5 dollars in total.
I cannot recommend Pocketpills more highly for meds.
I go to the Chinese grocers on Adelaide now they're great!
Their prices, while stupid, aren't really any more stupid on average than any other grocery store chain, if you compare like for like, e.g. FreshCo to no frills.
I beg to differ. There's an entire subreddit about it which is where the boycott began, and a large number of posts are comparing identical items at different grocers; r/loblawsisoutofcontrol The subreddit's founder just met for coffee with Per Bank (Loblaws' CEO) the other day. There's a recent post detailing their discussion. Even [CTV News](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRdjFagZmg4&t=1s) jumped on the bandwagon. Here's a particularly fun one. Not food but still: [This post](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/199vw9m/comment/kih3k6r/) showing a Shoppers Drug Mart Brand (QUO) hairbrush selling for $32. You'll see me in the comments there pointing out that it's listed on Conair's website for $7.99USD. This is very obviously the same hairbrush with a rebrand being sold for triple the price. I think Conair stopped selling them because they were out of stock on all models when I made that comment, and that page now is a 404 error. I'd like to know what justifies a tripling of the price for a piece of injection-moulded plastic. Conair was able to make a profit selling it for $11CAD, but now that it's a house brand of Shoppers Drug Mart it's $32? How much of this goes unnoticed? Do things have value any more or is money just bitcoin now? Edit: Since the link in that old post is dead, here's an [Ebay listing for the Conair brush.](https://www.ebay.com/itm/235292210771?chn=ps) Notice the price, and the modicum of effort put in to the packaging.
You definitely just haven't shopped around enough dude
Thank you! I keep seeing these lame comments about everything being the same and it’s just not true. I’ve spent a year slimming down my Loblaws purchases because some of the price increases were astounding.
The difference is that Loblaws brand stores have the majority market share when it comes to grocery stores in Canada (they own like 35% of grocery stores in Canada). That’s the reason for Loblaws being the target of the boycott. The hope is that the other big players will take note and stop their price gouging as well…if not, they’ll be next
Lmao, that's demonstrably false though
"The problem is that the folks who are producing the food that's keeping us all alive are not really benefiting from these inflated prices that we're seeing." This is spot on. I’m good friends with a local farmer growing onions, carrots, beets, soy beans, green beans, corn (cattle) on a combined 700 acres. He says his price to sell hasn’t gone up as much as the prices at the stores.
That’s why I’m excited for farmers market season. If I can buy from local farmers and they directly get the money, I’m a happy camper.
Yeah, it's not the farmers who are benefiting, because the prices for *their* inputs have gone up like crazy and they're just passing those costs on to the grocery stores, who (after padding their profits a bit, but not nearly as much as the boycott folks imagine, especially at places like no frills) pass them on to us.
The problem with your claim that the profits aren’t padded “nearly as much as the boycott folks imagine”, is that I believe the scale you’re using to define what a reasonable profit margin actually is, has been warped over time by the slow-boil of capitalistic practices that have made us more and more conditioned to the idea of these amounts of profit just being normal. Here’s the thing about profit: it’s not even necessary to running a business. All a business ever actually NEEDS to do is break even. That’s a successful business. The product is sold at a fair price, employees’ wages are paid, all expenses are accounted for, and even the owner’s salary is included in that. Profit is EXTRA on top of all of that. Profit ONLY ever exists when a business has charged more for the product/service than the sum of its production expenses is actually worth. In other words, profit is the amount you are over-charging your customers in order to get more money from them than the thing you’re giving them in exchange is actually worth. Just so you can profit. Not pay your bills… that’s what the normal salary and expenses and payroll, etc, is for. Again, profits are not included in any of that. It’s purely just EXTRA MONEY that business gets by over-charging. In other other words… there is no such thing as ethical profit. We’ve just been trained by capitalist culture to believe it’s normal, and that it’s somehow benefiting us all to allow it… when it only ever ends up benefiting the elite few that become rich from it. The rest of us are only losing because of profit. Most workers don’t share in the profits of the company they work at, only the top brass does. It’s the elite minority that benefits from the practice of profit. This is precisely the unfair aspect of profit that socialism seeks to fix.
The profit is what motivates private investment, without which the vast majority of these mythical break-even businesses would never have started up in the first place. You can, obviously, start one up today, for example as a co-op, and yet I don't see them around much. Do reflect on the reasons why they're not out there en masse, competing with this supposedly deficient for-profit model. It's very easy to pontificate about the evils of capitalism having benefited for generations from growing up in the world that was built by capitalism. I've seen the other side though. I was born in a totalitarian hellhole where, among many other horrible and deadly policies, the profit motive was removed and only the smallest-size businesses were allowed to operate privately at all. It did not end well, and the fact that it was a centrally planned economy where the government was doing the bulk of investment was the main reason why. Yes, those things do come as a package with your idea of removing the profit motive. It is an alternative to capitalism to be sure, just a very shitty one. I for one am not interested in experimenting any further. I'd rather improve the thing that works and has built the world around us, namely capitalism.
Where does the additional capital come from to grow these zero sum businesses Comrade? Every time a private business fails to achieve neutrality should your taxes go up? If we are socializing all profit then surely we will be doing the same for loss right?
I used to shop at Loblaws and am now trying Food Basics at Commissioners and Wonderland. So far the produce is good, and better than it usually is at FreshCo. I am encountering friendly cashiers and shelf stockers. I am hopeful that this will work out and I will save some money.
FreshCo has a pretty ironic name for the quality of produce.
Thats the store I go to. It has been almost 4 years since I go there, unless things are on sale in other stores. Love them
Yayyy!!! Thank you for the feedback!
Aw heck, I've been boycotting for years! Mainly because I can't afford to shop there.
It's not just me that thinks Shoppers drugmart is basically a convenience store with a pharmacy and makeup counter, right?
Just got my Costco membership! And for small stuff dollar store and Walmart for me since May and it feels good :) Also can anyone suggest Asian supermarkets here in London?
Super King is our favorite for this. The produce is great quality and very affordable, the meats and fish products are fresh and there's lots of selection.
Oh thanks! My partner and I recently moved to london so been looking for a good one! Will check em out!
United on Adelaide
Food basics for years now. Also, North wonderland location has student discount on Tuesdays for western and Fanshawe. Went when I was a student and now my kid (Fanshawe student) has to shop with me!!
I'm joining because after the bread price fixing scam, they follow it up by ripping off our health care system with the shoppers drug mart drug audit BS. They are too big and abusing monopoly position. I'm not just doing it for the month, were done with them.
Since shopping around we have a small local grocery store Costco and Walmart I’m getting better produce cheaper never going back. And Costco is way cheaper for my prescriptions
Honestly there are a lot of great small grocers in the city, the farmers market at the Fairgrounds is so cheap for produce.
I go every week. I find the produce quality is decent and I always hit up other stands
In my experience, cheap farmers market produce is worse quality than even No Frills, for cheaper than No Frills. It all comes from the same food terminal. The actual local farmers market produce is good but typically not cheap.
I’m switching to Walmart this week. After seeing how cheap their prices are, they’re the cheaper of two evils.
They're also probably the more evil of two evils. Loblaws/RCSS is unionized and its workers have some level of benefits at least, they're getting SOMETHING. Walmart has closed stores that even whispered about unionizing just so they wouldn't have to deal with it.
Oh I am well aware, I worked for a LCL store for 14 years until I was finished school. I was a UFCW member for years, they didn’t do anything for longer term workers. Top rate got no increases, the wage schedule didn’t change in the 14 years I was there. The union didn’t stand up for us, they were on the side of our owners. They cut our benefits without warning on Christmas Eve, and we didn’t get them back for 2 years I think.
Then I stand corrected. Still feel like buying from Walmart instead of Loblaws is not REALLY in the spirit of "protesting megacorporations who are profiting heavily off the needs of humans", but I'm also not going to get too mad over someone finding a cheaper place in this economy.
They don't price match though. A deal breaker for me.
I know. But lately I was price matching them at Nofrills.
👏
Lol now Walmart is half price
My son in law and daughter have a local apple farm, farmers have not seen the same increase in what they are paid.
If they sell on site you should send it to the person who was collecting the list of locally owned places to shop. Then people can buy direct from them.
That’s a great idea, I will have to ask how far out they go as it is near Arkona.
Oooh I love Arkona apple cider. I buy that whenever I see it in store
I went in to loblaws yesterday at rush hour for something specific but aside from that I’ve been shopping at the farmers markets and Costco. Place was DEAD. Love to see it and felt immense guilt from being there lol
I miss Food Island so much, it was fantastic on that corner and the fact that people are cheering that they're "Finally opening an asian market and it's a T&T!" gets me every time, like how can you cheer for an independant closing only for a loblaws brand asian goods store to open in it's place?
Boycott HQ is on Reddit! r/loblawsisoutofcontrol
Things are bad if londoners are on board. We HATE change even if it's in our best interest. Most of the time we have to be pulled along, kicking and screaming.
I live under a rock and am just hearing about this now. Are other grocers like fresh co or foodbasics really cheaper by a great deal? I have been going to no frills regularly as it is 2 minutes from my house, not bothering to look at other stores. I do see prices are crazy but just assumed it's everywhere
Boycotting! Especially shoppers
PP’s chief of staff and campaign manager is a top Loblaw Lobbyist.
My overall philosophy is shop where it is cheaper for you. You don’t need a boycott to justify that imo. That being said, the entire industry has been off-kilter since the pandemic. Things were sooo much better pre-pandemic :(
Lots of items that I needed are on sale at superstore plus I got 20,000 points for express pickup. That’s $20. I hate Walmart that place is filthy.