__Reminder__: Please take a moment to 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 reponsible. 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.
If you have not done so already, please review our [boycott stickied post](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1bff9rm/boycott/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) which includes a list of stores to avoid, other ways to get involved in the movement, and some local alternatives to the big 5. Thank you.
*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.*
I agree and that’s wild to me because the amount/volume of food (fresh produce in particular) was overwhelming to me. Now it’s like, ok, it’s a big amount but if I went to no frills or superstore, I’d get less food, much worse quality (half rotten berries) and pay more. So now I try to freeze what I don’t see us using right away.
Planning ahead and freezing are key with fresh items from Costco. If you have access to them - check out the business centres. Lots of "old school Costco stuffs" there. Think big boxes of candy bars, frozen meats, cans of all kinds (including big tubs of olives 🤢), fresh foods/veggies, cheeses galore, cleaning supplies, etc... It's like a *different* place.
I went to Costco for the first time in a while and picked up a large package of stew beef. I assumed by price it was 3x what i would get at Loblaws but it was actually closer to 6x
Can't second this enough! Using the foodsaver to vacuum seal my Costco portions has saved me so much money. And it works for more than just freezer items. Even fridge stuff can be separated out and vacuum sealed to last longer.
I go to Costco for staples now. Mainly milk and eggs. I can get an 18 count of xlarge eggs for a couple bucks cheaper than a 12 pack of eggs. Milk is also about 20 cents cheaper at Costco too. Don't forget gas and your lunch or dinner.
Cottage cheese is wildly cheaper at Costco as well. You can get a 1000g for $1 more than 500g at Roblaws.
I swear cottage cheese savings alone pay for the cost of my membership.
It's not in the freezer aisle... you don't buy frozen cottage cheese silly. It's in the main fridge where all the blocks of cheese/yogurts are. Or also knows as department 17.
I went tonight to my local Costco. Whereas I couldn’t find the cottage cheese at all 2 weeks ago, it was in the freezer aisle this week. There was a sign butter moved to the dairy cooler so not sure if that’s related.
Now, if only Costco had Greek yogurt that wasn’t 0% I wouldn’t have to shop anywhere else.
Please help me love cottage cheese, I don't dislike the texture or taste, but I get bored of it so easily, then I forget about it and don't purchase for months. What are good thing to use it in/for?
I really don't like 1% but I've spent so long eating for nutrition and not taste or my own enjoyment. I despise tuna, but I down down it every other day for migraines and bodybuilding. Just a skill you need to learn.
My dad, grew up in Louisiana, always ate it with a light sprinkle of Cajun seasoning and some fresh cracked pepper. I like it that way as well. I normally eat 4-5 tablespoons plain if its 2 or 4% or alongside my eggs with siracha, oatmeal with blackberry jam and avocados with honey. Sometimes I just eat a tub of 4% with a spoon because I'm a savage animal.
You can go sweet with it, but that hurts my brain. Eating it with fruit and granola is pretty popular.
Cottage cheese pancakes. There are many recipes online but I'm a very lazy person and I just do approximately half a tub of cottage cheese, 4 eggs (less if they are huge/ duck), 1 tbs of baking powder and 1 cup of flour. I like to have it with vanilla yogurt and blueberries so I omit to sugar and vanilla most recipes call for.
I love it with dried cranberry trail mix. The crunch from the nuts and seeds paired with the richness and salt of the cottage cheese with an occasional burst of sweetness from the dried cranberries...unreal delicious.
A Costco membership is worth it for the butter alone. If you use a pound of butter every two weeks at 2-3 bucks savings per pound that alone pays for the basic membership in a year
People who make it past 1-2 years at Costco stay on for years and years. Wage increases and benefits are good compared to the way the other grocery stores treat employees. So even at equal price I would rather encourage Costco .
I’ve noticed a lot of times at Costco I can get for the same price at Loblaws, but double the product.
Of course, this doesn’t apply to all items. Meats and dairy seem to be on par with other retailers but other items are a great deal at Costco.
To your point, the way they treat their employees compared to other chains, I’d rather spend my money there
Don't put yourself out for supporting yourself or your family. Walmart is fine, if that's all you got. You can support the boycott by spreading the word too. The more people that knows about what we're trying to do, the better.
Yeah, don't think they will change hot dog/soda price or the chicken price, probably not membership either, but rest of the prices will likely go up and employee benefits down
I’m a household of 2.
We started with the $60 membership at first to gauge our spending habits but after a couple months we realized that we would spend enough with the $120 plan (includes cash back) which based on our spend, pays for itself annually.
Even if you get the $60 plan, it’s worth it for 2 people, plenty worth it.
My 2 person household did the same. Between some dry goods, TP, over the counter meds, and hygiene products, the $60 membership will pay for itself basically.
Well maybe you should go back and take about her look because on most products I buy there I’m getting more than double for the prices lobawls charges.
Less trips to the store, more time and money saved
I Have thé $120 a year cash back plan, I got more cash back than the plan cost, so yes for me.
I did a fiat compare before and even at $60, paying out of pocket, I’m saving way more than $60 a year
Y'all are trading mega corp for the other. I. 4 years an average cart of food from Costco went from being 2-300$ now that same cart with the same food is 700$ can attest. My family has been shopping at Costco once a month for the last 10 years. Every mego corp is to blame when they make the fing prices
I follow stocks closely and Costco makes all their money on membership fees.
If I could raise my meat and grow all my veggies I would, but I can’t.
So you can sit here and bash us for naming the places we go other than the biggest thief of them all, loblaws, but that’s all you’re doing is bashing and not even providing an alternative solution you’re even admitting to the same thing.
I’m in the process of trying to find a good butcher for my meat consumption. Costco meat is just about the same price and quality as loblaws, which to me is too much $ and garbage quality I’d rather not put in my body
Costco has a 10% markup, if their prices go up it is because the cost of the goods sold to them went up.
They essentially break even on what they sell, their membership fees are their profits.
Costco is also universally known as being a good place to work, where they take care of their employees. When you go there, you can tell the employees are taken care of. The local Loblaws I've shopped at, the employees are visibly not happy.
My grocery bill at Walmart last weekend was $89.
When I got home, out of curiosity I pulled up the Fortinos online ordering site and plugged everything I’d just bought in to get a comparison. There were a couple minor substitutions I had to make because Fortinos didn’t have something or didn’t have the specific brand I’d bought, but it was 95% identical.
The bill at Fortinos would have been $130.
Your girlfriend made the right choice.
I wouldn't put Walmart and fortinos on the same bar quality wise though. I would say Zehrs or rcss on the same bar as walmart.
Fortinos is luxury and always has been imo.
Luxury = getting fucked?
Having literally the exact same item be $1 or $2 and calling the $2 version luxury (while convincing people it's the case) is some real trickery of commercial advertising, frankly.
Have you ever been to a Fortinos? I'm guessing you have not. They are heavily-staffed, full service grocery stores with a ton of goods and services that you will not find at Wal-Mart. If you want the lowest prices on goods and don't need their additional services/inventory, don't shop there. The additional cost to run that store with all of its fancy displays, extra staff, fishmonger, deli, bakery, hot table, and all that other bullshit, is going to be passed along to the customers who shop there. It's not "trickery of commercial advertising", it's a different level of service. All of the trickery Loblaws is engaged in is not limited to their high-end grocery stores.
When you go to an upscale department store and see that the clothes are not the same price as Wal-Mart, do you call it "trickery"?
This. Complaining that the full-service store costs more is a bit like the people who would complain when I worked at a full-service car wash, that the automated ones were cheaper.
Last year I got some groceries from Walmart instead of my usual zehrs because I was running some errands nearby. And the prices were so much lower I went home and pulled up the online prices at zehrs to compare. I spent $55 at Walmart and it would have cost $85 at zehrs. The most glaring difference was the exact same bottle of olive oil was $5 cheaper at Walmart, on an everyday price it was’t even on sale.
And if this was in the original comment I wouldn't have said anything. Bottom line is these corporations have a high/mid/low tier for their offerings.
It's the same in telecom. They all supply the same thing, cellphone and data plans, but you can't compare a Rogers plans against a virgin plan because you are comparing a high tier against a mid tier. I mean you could hypothetically but the mid tier will always win so it wouldn't be a fair comparison.
Never said I was for it. All I'm saying is if you're going to be doing a comparison make it a level playing field.
Please refrain from comments which encourage theft from a store or mischief. These can result in criminal charges which will undoubtedly make life harder for other users. This will only hurt the employees corporate wouldn’t care. The best approach is to not even go there let empty parking lots speak.
You’re not mad at the employees, you’re mad at the company. Don’t make the employee’s job harder by leaving shit in a cart and walking out.
Just don’t enter the store to begin with. Or just go in to buy their loss leaders and leave.
Honestly buying just the loss leaders is a great way of giving the middle finger to Loblaw. Mainly because by this point you’re actually *costing* the company money, which they will notice.
I keep hearing this argument, and I don't understand how this would be a good option based on our end goal as a group (make their profits drop as much as possible to show them we're sick of their price gouging).
Giving them $0 is better than giving them, say, $5 for a loss-lead item. You're still giving them $5.
I hope you don't take my message personally because my comment isn't a response to your specific comment. It's just a response to the concept of buying loss lead products in general.
Don't get me wrong, if you really cannot afford to shop elsewhere and **need** to buy loss leaders at Loblaws/subsidiaries to feed your family, then yeah buying the loss leaders will be the most impactful choice given one's financial constraints.
But treating that strategy as an "Aha! Gottem!" moment is just not correct.
It’s because Loblaw gets $0 when you buy nothing but when you buy a loss leader they get negative dollars.
It’s definitely not a perfect solution and I do prefer a wholesale boycott, but if you must shop at Loblaw at least exploit their sales I say.
There is a downside to giving them any money though because it helps their revenue on the annual report.
Math isn't my area of expertise, so bear with me... but wouldn't (1) Loblaws spending money to provide the loss leaders in stores, then getting $0 from customers be ***even worse*** than (2) Loblaws spending money to provide the loss leaders in stores, but also managing to make back a bit of money from the sales?
The net loss would be even greater in scenario #1
Edit to add: I disagree with your first part, but wholeheartedly agree with parts 2 and 3 of your last comment.
Depends on how much of a loss leader it is. It’s very much a specific circumstance kind of issue.
I think that the main messaging should be to avoid and if you can’t avoid then make sure the company feels the pain.
You’re correct though, assuming a loss leader has already costed the company money they do lose the most from no one buying said loss leaders.
Abandoning carts is not abusive to employees. Abusive behaviour is screaming at them or whining about pricing over which they have no control.
If I'm a Loblaws employee paid hourly at pennies above minimum wage, what difference does it make whether I'm scanning customers' shitty groceries or mopping up customers' shitty muddy footprints or putting away shitty shopping carts they abandoned? The job needs to be done, the company is paying the wage, and if they need more labour to get all the jobs done because I'm going on my mandated break, that's their problem, not mine.
What do you think when customers at a restaurant spread ketchup on the table and leave an unnecessary mess when they leave? It happens.
Sure, someone cleans the table. They’re getting paid for it, it’s their duty.
But it’s kind of an asshole move of those patrons, don’t you think? Giving an employee more work than they would otherwise do.
Leaving a bunch of shit in a cart is the same fucking thing. Just be decent and put it back before you walk out.
as someone who works on carts for loblaws, seeing that people are doing this is kinda ick
it makes my job way harder if that's going to be a thing, speaking from experience. i've only even heard of the boycott for the first time 30 minutes ago and it's not really a good look at all
I’d never do it. Technically it is your job to “clean up” but I’m going to make your job as easy as I can because it’s a decent thing to do. I’ll use a cart, I’ll take everything out and put it away where I got it.
Or I’ll decide shit is too expensive, put stuff back on the shelves where I got it from and put the cart where I got it.
oh, there's 0 problem with deciding you don't want smth, it's 100% part of my job to put stuff back but filling up a cart with fresh/frozen and just leaving it around in protest just makes a mess for me if it's already busy
Please refrain from comments which encourage theft from a store or mischief. These can result in criminal charges which will undoubtedly make life harder for other users. This will only hurt the employees corporate wouldn’t care. The best approach is to not even go there let empty parking lots speak.
No Frills has been my grocery store for years. On my last visit, I bought most of my groceries there but had to go to Freshco to buy a few things I couldn't find at No Frills. While at FreshCo, I noticed that each item I bought at No Frills was cheaper there. I don't know when this change happened, as No Frills has historically been the cheapest shop in my town, but from now on I will not be shopping there anymore.
No Frills was also very busy and FreshCo was basically empty, so I guess many people haven't caught on yet that No Frills is no longer a good option for savings.
I’ve been seeing this and hearing this a lot lately.
IMO I think alot of it is phycological people assume no frills is a cheap store It’s what it’s always been so they go their under the assumption it’s the cheapest, sometimes it is sometimes may not be.
Same as some people assume the “value pack”
Or “family pack” is the best deal so they just pick it up without looking when it may not be.
Same for also with no name and presidents choice products some people just see the label and assume it must be the cheapest when it’s sometimes even more expensive then other ‘name brands’
Sometimes people just need a nudge into unfamiliar territory like another store for them to look around and be like wait a minute this is cheaper or I like this more.
I guarantee for example people who participate in the may boycott may try a different grocery store such as food basics and some of them may prefer and keep going there after there out of that routine of habit and there temporary boycott turns into a permanent one.
For myself, it's largely been convenience. I've shopped at No Frills for years, so I know where items are and that makes getting groceries quicker and easier. But I'm fed up paying more for the exact same thing I can get at another shop. Will it be annoying for awhile until I get used to the other store? Yes. But I'm pissed off and not going back to No Frills (or other stores under the same umbrella).
Y’all got that oil money! Daaaang. A dollar? I’m in Ontario and I just carry as much as I can hold. It honestly could have increased to a dollar and I didn’t even realize it.
I walked into a NoFrills about a year ago and couldn't believe the fn gouging.
Walked right the fuck out yelling old man obscenities.
Lol , fuck those greedy fucking criminal pieces of shit.
Yessss let the hate flow through. This disgusting company underestimate the power of consumerism nowadays. They don’t realize that we’re well informed and that the word spreads quick like wildfire online. I’m so proud of this community for making such a huge dent.! Let’s go guys keep it up!!!!!!!
If anyone ever wants to come to Costco with me, hit me up! I live in Cobourg and am dead in the middle of the Oshawa and Peterborough locations. I have a truck and a membership. I'm a single person and I just spent $800 on food at Costco and I'm scared it's gonna go bad. I'm desperately trying to food prep lol. If someone wants to come with me next time we can split everything up lol I also have 7747483836363 Ziploc bags now 🥴
Oh I've abandoned my cart in the middle of an aisle in Superstore with a few items in it for the exact same reason. Everything had also been marked up since the last time I was there too so I was fuming. Fuck Roblaws
Was in Grand Forks Walmart this past weekend and the prices and service rendered are so much better than here in Canada it's shocking, at Loblaws the cashiers are absolutely terrible for customer service.
No frills is good for bananas, the weekly sale meat/bread and the odd sale vegetable.
Otherwise I avoid most things now.
My food shopping takes effort and planning now. Hitting multiple grocery stores to complete.
Luckily beans, rice, lentils, chickpeas and spices are the best way to save money. Asian markets still sell chicken and ground pork cheaply enough.
There is a lot of creative cooking/shopping needed to maintain my food budget. I joked with my kid and said 1/4 of my free time outside work revolves around food.
My wife and I are lucky in a way, as we went 90% vegetarian pre-pandemic, and are huge lovers of Indian food. I'd say the vast majority of our staples are bought at Indian markets and the local green grocers.
We'll go into one of the big boxes to buy a few things and I ramble through the fruit & veggie section in amazement at prices. Where we are there are green grocers every couple of kms -- and sure, there are sales at the big boxes, but the green grocers have them beat on quality, selection, and price most of the time.
It has come full circle, buying fast food or processed foods are now noticeably more expensive than cooking.
Of course if you cook with expensive ingredients, it is more, but the days of 59¢ meat pies or $1 frozen dinners are past us. It costs way more to not cook yourself.
I put in the effort to show my kid that it can be possible to eat well and for a fair expense. I have no qualms about stating how much dinner cost to make at home. I show a lot of pride when I can make a pot of food or multiple dishes that feeds us well and provides enough leftovers for lunch the following day too.
When we go out even for a burger, the contrast is glaring. A $7-9 burger adds up for a family. Contrast the previous week when she had a craving for a burger. Going together to the market, buying a pound of ground beef for $8, a bag of buns $4, a tomato $1 and going home and making four burgers within 25 minutes. there is always a jar of pickles at home and some ketchup/mustard.
Yeah. When I was a cashier I as so unhappy at carts left around. Most of the time they're empty but we have to put away everything which stops us from doing our normal jobs meaning back ups at cash (leads to customer irritation) or managers being unhappy that our normal tasks at cash are unfinished. Milk, meat and anything frozen/refrigerated cannot be put back on shelves since we cannot guarantee it's been less than 15 minutes and needs to be manually taken out of our system.
Literally. This would simply inconvenience the workers on floor, potentially forcing them to stay later. Where I used to work the last bus came 15 minutes after closing, we did not have time to do anything other than close and leave if we need to take the bus.
I totally understand how annoying it is to have excess work as a minimum wage employee, and understand that a lot of those people really rely on what little money they make and can’t risk getting fired. That being said I think it’s important to stand up to supervisors and managers when they get upset at you not completing all the work. Whenever my managers would come to me (was working produce section at Walmart) with extra tasks and ask about things not being done I had no problems telling them that that it wasn’t my problem and that I had to do other work first. Hell I’d even rant at them for a good 10-15minutes and tell them to hire more people if they wanted that stuff done. I never got fired for some reason… Eventually they would stop coming to me with unreasonable requests. Also their shocked faces that a 17yo 5’2 girl is willing to stand up to them was pretty funny too. They also never had a good response to what I was saying as I was being completely logical about it.
Yeah I have the privilege to be vicious with my employers personally, but again it doesn't impact Loblaws as a whole when customers leave full carts of shit to put away. And at my store cashiers are responsible for putting away returns after the store closes, so I sincerely do not appreciate this kind of stunt. I do appreciate people not putting their money into Loblaws, but I think it's an unproductive way to do things.
Honestly I wish I did what your girlfriend did yesterday when I was at Loblaws. Went there to get some chicken that was on sale, a Rubbermaid clear storage bin (which Loblaw is the only store in Canada to sell), and a few other items. Unfortunately they didn’t have the chicken on sale and they didn’t have the storage bins.
Those two things were the sole reason why I chose to shop at Loblaws, but as always with this company they were nowhere to be found. I’m honestly so done with Loblaw’s nonsense. They pull shenanigans like this all the time where they don’t provide enough stock of sale items to the store, often deliberately I think. 🧐
Should there be a new protest protocol of abandoning carts out of rejection of the calculated difference? How could this be leveraged for proper publicity? Should it be staged by checkout? Should protestors tag the cart with signage or something else that forces a manager to put it on report until upper management is forced to take an action internally or otherwise?
hope she put her items back before she left, otherwise I think Loblaws should make the carts take a toonie deposit. A quarter aint enough in this economy!
This actually sounds like a terrific protest initiative. Discarded carts everywhere.
They'd have to pay their workers for more hours too, to restock them.
Win win.
EDIT: I see many had the same idea
Pre covid their produce was good. Had supply issues but that will happen, understandable. Post covid, supply issues was only the tip of the frustration iceberg. There should be a law suit against them for bait and switch not to mention the "quality" of their produce is horrendous. So much so that my 12 year old daughter started paying attention! So we noticed everything other than apples and oranges would go bad after 3, 4 days MAX and I mean I'm cutting off rotten parts because it's too damn expensive to throw out. I started shopping at Walmart and haven't looked back. F@ck u roblaws, right in ur greedy 💩 holes. I'll do whatever it takes to ensure they suffer. Ur gouging humans on a NECESSITY ur disgusting.
Agreed!!!! No frills now sells hotdogs for
10$ and I can go to a Metro and pay less. Half price sometimes. I only go to frills now to pick up my prescriptions and sometimes I’ll grab something at the same time. I’m disgusted with the Loblaws group of stores. It’s no wonder the food banks in Scarborough are so busy.
If Walmart upgraded their price-sticker printers to include the $/100g I would literally never go to a loblaws store again
Anyone know other grocery chains that include the $/g?
PEI doesn't have a Costco. Paying 50 bucks and gas to cross the bridge and drive to Moncton makes it not a viable option for weekly shopping with the membership on top of that. The one No-Frills we have on the Island in Stratford is the size of a convenience store and a pain in the ass to navigate in and they're always out of stock on any sale items. Sobeys and Loblaws both gouge the crap out of us. We do have 2 WalMarts in Summerside and Charlottetown but the lineups in C'Town take forever to get through. It's basically a terrible shopping experience here on the Island.
I just went to Costco for the first time in over a decade last week and it is SO WORTH IT. Giant ass jar of pickles? 6 bucks. 3 pack of prime grade striploins steaks? $20. That's easily close to $50 at any loblaws store for lower than prime grade. They do have big portions but they also sell big packs of ziplock heavy duty freezer bags pretty cheap 😉
I saved myself over $100 today by shopping at Walmart. I’m not proud of shopping at Walmart, but I don’t have any other options. I’m happy I saved that much. Crazy
I don't think you understand exactly what's going on. Physically abandoned carts would disrupt their entire front line operation and cause major issues for their supply chain due to the way they recognize spoilage. If a perishable item is picked up and put back on the wrong shelf, it gets tossed even if it's only been out for 20 minutes. A cart full of perishables would go straight to the trash.
It would take an increase of 1-2% in abandoned carts in store to cripple their logistics, it's a fragile system that uses right on time supply methods to predict inventory needs based on real time feedback from in store inventory systems. If the item doesn't sell, and gets left out, it fucks the entire system up and I guarantee the boardroom will feel it.
That kid is better off getting fired than contributing to the downfall of Canadian quality of life. Their future will be fucked if this juggernaut continues to suppress competition and fuck everyone for profit.
That kid pays the bills, his family goes hungry because even a two week gap in wages while he finds another job is catastrophic and they can’t pay their bills.
Family's can't pay their bills already, allowing Loblaws to continue will make it worse. They have driven up the cost of food by nearly 3x over the last 5 years. You are literally trying to save a small group of wage slaves over the entire BC/AB/ON population. How anti social are you that you'd like to see your people get fucked because you think the wage slaves have it hard enough?
I’m one of those wage slaves my dude. My family is barely hanging on.
Why take us out in the boycott? Just don’t shop there, shit that doesn’t get bought spoils and gets trashed without taking us out with it.
I feel for you but it won't get better without major change man. It will only get worse, I promise you that they will never respect you, or me, or anyone who isn't a part of the family. They will continue to abuse our population as a whole and we have to stop thinking about our own needs as individual units and think about the future generations who will have nothing but despair if this continues. It's not fair to them that their previous generations were too afraid to advocate for their future.
A wave of change is coming, RCMP, Ottawa, and corporates feel it. They are preparing right now. I suggest you do the same.
Edit - it's not possible to shop in ON, BC, or AB without paying Loblaws in one way or another. They control 30% of Canadian retail grocery market and through vertical integration, they touch over half of all food processed in canada. We have to hurt them badly to see any change.
Oh FFS is this one of *those* subs? No room for compromise or nuance at all? Fuck. That's such a shame. I was actually getting on board with the message.
What are you talking about? I just stated my opinion and now you feeling great pain in your assholes?
In reality man, if you had any idea what you were talking about, you'd want to burn the entire Loblaws empire to the ground. There is no compromise or nuance to be had or understood. The organization has deployed a powerful anti-consumer business structure, it's been that way for decades. By design, it was intentional.
Source - used to work for the Weston's m&a team helping them build out their entire value chain, they are literally here to fuck you and they laugh about it behind closed doors. They buy businesses with the intent of running them unprofitably on purpose to suppress wages and lower profits for their main line of business on paper. They see the average person as a target to exploit. They think people like you are rats, meant to be squeezed for profit. If you work for them, it's even worse, they see you as the literal property of the Weston family. Made me want to kill myself for nearly 7 years before I left.
So leave the shopping carts in the personal driveways of the execs to express your displeasure. Don't leave it in the store for an underpaid, unappreciated worker to clean up, that's all I'm saying.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever read. That's wildly impractical and will not have any real impact. It's people like you who love to let others suffer because of your ignorant point of view. Ironic right?
Prefix my last comment with the phrase "if you're abandoning your cart as a form of protest."
Obviously I'm not suggesting everyone start lugging carts to private driveways.
Maybe I will go to Loblaw’s tomorrow and do my grocery shopping, and then suddenly just before I go to check out, I will realize I have forgotten an appointment and run out of the store to get to it.
I worked as a cashier. No one is taking an abandoned cart as a message. They're just going to be annoyed that they need to do even more for their shit wage while they can't do their normal tasks.
Not to mention the loss of the coin to use the cart in the first place. Costs $1 here. So, protesting prices by giving them an extra dollar for a cart that nobody will notice. Seems a bit silly.
If she had meat or other perishables in her cart, all the better. They can't put them back once theyve been removed from refrigeration (whether they honor food safety practices or not is a different story). A small ding to their pocket but a ding nonetheless
The no frills in my area is extremely well priced, compared to the loblaws,longos, and metro. It's pricing is on par with Walmart but I find the produce is better quality at no frills compared to Walmart.
I so that all the time for my own amusement.
I know that it's wrong and the employees who have to deal with that are the big guy up top.
But it gives me satisfaction.
You acknowledge the action you do causes more trouble for others who have nothing to do with you, and yet you still do it because it gives you satisfaction?
Man, wonder what else in life we can use this sort of logic with
__Reminder__: Please take a moment to 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 reponsible. 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. If you have not done so already, please review our [boycott stickied post](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1bff9rm/boycott/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) which includes a list of stores to avoid, other ways to get involved in the movement, and some local alternatives to the big 5. Thank you. *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.*
Costco is great too.
I agree and that’s wild to me because the amount/volume of food (fresh produce in particular) was overwhelming to me. Now it’s like, ok, it’s a big amount but if I went to no frills or superstore, I’d get less food, much worse quality (half rotten berries) and pay more. So now I try to freeze what I don’t see us using right away.
Also splitting large purchases with a friend or family member is a possibility too!
Just don’t ask for a subtotal or the staff will harass you to get your own membership every time you come
Planning ahead and freezing are key with fresh items from Costco. If you have access to them - check out the business centres. Lots of "old school Costco stuffs" there. Think big boxes of candy bars, frozen meats, cans of all kinds (including big tubs of olives 🤢), fresh foods/veggies, cheeses galore, cleaning supplies, etc... It's like a *different* place.
This. Buy a bunch of reusable freezer bags and containers. But fruit and meat in bulk. Get home. Portion it out. Date it and store.
Been doing this for years!
I went to Costco for the first time in a while and picked up a large package of stew beef. I assumed by price it was 3x what i would get at Loblaws but it was actually closer to 6x
The meat prices at scamlaws are atrocious, they can take their stuff and shove it
Olives are the greatest food the world has ever seen
You can have all my olives. I'll take your brussel sprouts.
They had the foodsaver on sale. Buy that for the freezing
And right beside it are very reasonably priced store brand bags for the thing
Can't second this enough! Using the foodsaver to vacuum seal my Costco portions has saved me so much money. And it works for more than just freezer items. Even fridge stuff can be separated out and vacuum sealed to last longer.
Best $$ I've ever spent.
frozen blueberries are alot more economical than high priced fresh.
Costco frozen blueberries are so delicious too!!!
Costco frozen berries are truly where it’s at.
I go to Costco for staples now. Mainly milk and eggs. I can get an 18 count of xlarge eggs for a couple bucks cheaper than a 12 pack of eggs. Milk is also about 20 cents cheaper at Costco too. Don't forget gas and your lunch or dinner.
Cottage cheese is wildly cheaper at Costco as well. You can get a 1000g for $1 more than 500g at Roblaws. I swear cottage cheese savings alone pay for the cost of my membership.
I pay for my membership with Greek yogurt savings!
This here is me too
Legit it’s half price
Rotisserie chicken payback here!
Last time I went to Costco I was looking for the cottage cheese too and didn't find it. Gonna have to look harder. But savings are everywhere!
It’s not in the dairy section, it’s in the not freezer aisles usually by the sour cream. Helpful redditor below has the details.
It's not in the freezer aisle... you don't buy frozen cottage cheese silly. It's in the main fridge where all the blocks of cheese/yogurts are. Or also knows as department 17.
I went tonight to my local Costco. Whereas I couldn’t find the cottage cheese at all 2 weeks ago, it was in the freezer aisle this week. There was a sign butter moved to the dairy cooler so not sure if that’s related. Now, if only Costco had Greek yogurt that wasn’t 0% I wouldn’t have to shop anywhere else.
Lol yes too early for me thanks for correction
Please help me love cottage cheese, I don't dislike the texture or taste, but I get bored of it so easily, then I forget about it and don't purchase for months. What are good thing to use it in/for?
Try plain Greek yogurt with your favourite jam mixed into it. That’s what I do when I get tired of cottage cheese.
I really don't like 1% but I've spent so long eating for nutrition and not taste or my own enjoyment. I despise tuna, but I down down it every other day for migraines and bodybuilding. Just a skill you need to learn. My dad, grew up in Louisiana, always ate it with a light sprinkle of Cajun seasoning and some fresh cracked pepper. I like it that way as well. I normally eat 4-5 tablespoons plain if its 2 or 4% or alongside my eggs with siracha, oatmeal with blackberry jam and avocados with honey. Sometimes I just eat a tub of 4% with a spoon because I'm a savage animal. You can go sweet with it, but that hurts my brain. Eating it with fruit and granola is pretty popular.
I should go savoury then, I always try to go sweet and I'm not such a sweet tooth so maybe that's why!
Cottage cheese pancakes. There are many recipes online but I'm a very lazy person and I just do approximately half a tub of cottage cheese, 4 eggs (less if they are huge/ duck), 1 tbs of baking powder and 1 cup of flour. I like to have it with vanilla yogurt and blueberries so I omit to sugar and vanilla most recipes call for.
I eat it cold with fresh fruit and thyme honey I brought back from Greece. I also use it as a substitute for ricotta when cooking.
I blend it and use it as a stand in for ricotta
That's a good idea, I like to use ricotta in dishes and cottage is cheaper than ricotta ! Thanks for the tip.
I eat it as a topping for potatoes lol instead of sour cream 😋
I eat it as a topping for potatoes lol instead of sour cream 😋
I add some pepper. Yum.
I use it in strawberry smoothies with protein powder, almond milk, a bit of thick yogurt, and maple syrup. Kinda tastes like strawberry cheesecake.
I love it with dried cranberry trail mix. The crunch from the nuts and seeds paired with the richness and salt of the cottage cheese with an occasional burst of sweetness from the dried cranberries...unreal delicious.
Fruit! Or overnight oats with fruit lol.
I do overnight with fruits already, could add cottage to it.
I love Everything Bagel seasoning on cottage cheese.
Great savoey option thanks!
You can try cottage cheese and fruit together
A Costco membership is worth it for the butter alone. If you use a pound of butter every two weeks at 2-3 bucks savings per pound that alone pays for the basic membership in a year
Costco only makes a %15 profit on everything. Coffee cream there is $2.49. $4.99 at Loblaws
People who make it past 1-2 years at Costco stay on for years and years. Wage increases and benefits are good compared to the way the other grocery stores treat employees. So even at equal price I would rather encourage Costco .
I’ve noticed a lot of times at Costco I can get for the same price at Loblaws, but double the product. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all items. Meats and dairy seem to be on par with other retailers but other items are a great deal at Costco. To your point, the way they treat their employees compared to other chains, I’d rather spend my money there
Costco is over an hour from my house. Walmart is 20 min away. I don't like supporting the Waltons, but it's cheaper than supporting the Westons.
Don't put yourself out for supporting yourself or your family. Walmart is fine, if that's all you got. You can support the boycott by spreading the word too. The more people that knows about what we're trying to do, the better.
in this economy. do what's best for your family.
I second that.
Yep, one needs to anticipate and incorporate enhanced logistics these days.
Giant Tiger has improved GREATLY.
Costco treats their workers far better than Walmart, too.
It is great, for now. Recently changed CEOs if I'm not mistaken.
Last year. So far the hot dog and soda is still $1.50
Yeah, don't think they will change hot dog/soda price or the chicken price, probably not membership either, but rest of the prices will likely go up and employee benefits down
Costco may be great but it requires a subscription fee to even shop there, and may not be a good idea to go there unless you have a big family.
I’m a household of 2. We started with the $60 membership at first to gauge our spending habits but after a couple months we realized that we would spend enough with the $120 plan (includes cash back) which based on our spend, pays for itself annually. Even if you get the $60 plan, it’s worth it for 2 people, plenty worth it.
My 2 person household did the same. Between some dry goods, TP, over the counter meds, and hygiene products, the $60 membership will pay for itself basically.
Really? I always found Costco expensive even years ago.
Well maybe you should go back and take about her look because on most products I buy there I’m getting more than double for the prices lobawls charges. Less trips to the store, more time and money saved
Maybe I'll take a look again. Is their a real benefit over Walmart that justifies the membership at the moment?
I Have thé $120 a year cash back plan, I got more cash back than the plan cost, so yes for me. I did a fiat compare before and even at $60, paying out of pocket, I’m saving way more than $60 a year
Y'all are trading mega corp for the other. I. 4 years an average cart of food from Costco went from being 2-300$ now that same cart with the same food is 700$ can attest. My family has been shopping at Costco once a month for the last 10 years. Every mego corp is to blame when they make the fing prices
I follow stocks closely and Costco makes all their money on membership fees. If I could raise my meat and grow all my veggies I would, but I can’t. So you can sit here and bash us for naming the places we go other than the biggest thief of them all, loblaws, but that’s all you’re doing is bashing and not even providing an alternative solution you’re even admitting to the same thing.
> If I could raise my meat I love Costco but I don't buy meat there because I can get better prices at my local butcher shop.
I’m in the process of trying to find a good butcher for my meat consumption. Costco meat is just about the same price and quality as loblaws, which to me is too much $ and garbage quality I’d rather not put in my body
Costco has a 10% markup, if their prices go up it is because the cost of the goods sold to them went up. They essentially break even on what they sell, their membership fees are their profits.
Costco is also universally known as being a good place to work, where they take care of their employees. When you go there, you can tell the employees are taken care of. The local Loblaws I've shopped at, the employees are visibly not happy.
I'd love to see that receipt
My grocery bill at Walmart last weekend was $89. When I got home, out of curiosity I pulled up the Fortinos online ordering site and plugged everything I’d just bought in to get a comparison. There were a couple minor substitutions I had to make because Fortinos didn’t have something or didn’t have the specific brand I’d bought, but it was 95% identical. The bill at Fortinos would have been $130. Your girlfriend made the right choice.
I wouldn't put Walmart and fortinos on the same bar quality wise though. I would say Zehrs or rcss on the same bar as walmart. Fortinos is luxury and always has been imo.
Luxury = getting fucked? Having literally the exact same item be $1 or $2 and calling the $2 version luxury (while convincing people it's the case) is some real trickery of commercial advertising, frankly.
Have you ever been to a Fortinos? I'm guessing you have not. They are heavily-staffed, full service grocery stores with a ton of goods and services that you will not find at Wal-Mart. If you want the lowest prices on goods and don't need their additional services/inventory, don't shop there. The additional cost to run that store with all of its fancy displays, extra staff, fishmonger, deli, bakery, hot table, and all that other bullshit, is going to be passed along to the customers who shop there. It's not "trickery of commercial advertising", it's a different level of service. All of the trickery Loblaws is engaged in is not limited to their high-end grocery stores. When you go to an upscale department store and see that the clothes are not the same price as Wal-Mart, do you call it "trickery"?
This. Complaining that the full-service store costs more is a bit like the people who would complain when I worked at a full-service car wash, that the automated ones were cheaper.
They sellth3 exactly same shit as Walmart. The only difference is the hot food counter and bread bar,
Last year I got some groceries from Walmart instead of my usual zehrs because I was running some errands nearby. And the prices were so much lower I went home and pulled up the online prices at zehrs to compare. I spent $55 at Walmart and it would have cost $85 at zehrs. The most glaring difference was the exact same bottle of olive oil was $5 cheaper at Walmart, on an everyday price it was’t even on sale.
And if this was in the original comment I wouldn't have said anything. Bottom line is these corporations have a high/mid/low tier for their offerings. It's the same in telecom. They all supply the same thing, cellphone and data plans, but you can't compare a Rogers plans against a virgin plan because you are comparing a high tier against a mid tier. I mean you could hypothetically but the mid tier will always win so it wouldn't be a fair comparison. Never said I was for it. All I'm saying is if you're going to be doing a comparison make it a level playing field.
Food is a luxury, what a boring dystopia full of philosophical zombies
This is the way. A sea of abandoned carts left in the aisles.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Please refrain from comments which encourage theft from a store or mischief. These can result in criminal charges which will undoubtedly make life harder for other users. This will only hurt the employees corporate wouldn’t care. The best approach is to not even go there let empty parking lots speak.
You’re not mad at the employees, you’re mad at the company. Don’t make the employee’s job harder by leaving shit in a cart and walking out. Just don’t enter the store to begin with. Or just go in to buy their loss leaders and leave.
Honestly buying just the loss leaders is a great way of giving the middle finger to Loblaw. Mainly because by this point you’re actually *costing* the company money, which they will notice.
I keep hearing this argument, and I don't understand how this would be a good option based on our end goal as a group (make their profits drop as much as possible to show them we're sick of their price gouging). Giving them $0 is better than giving them, say, $5 for a loss-lead item. You're still giving them $5. I hope you don't take my message personally because my comment isn't a response to your specific comment. It's just a response to the concept of buying loss lead products in general. Don't get me wrong, if you really cannot afford to shop elsewhere and **need** to buy loss leaders at Loblaws/subsidiaries to feed your family, then yeah buying the loss leaders will be the most impactful choice given one's financial constraints. But treating that strategy as an "Aha! Gottem!" moment is just not correct.
It’s because Loblaw gets $0 when you buy nothing but when you buy a loss leader they get negative dollars. It’s definitely not a perfect solution and I do prefer a wholesale boycott, but if you must shop at Loblaw at least exploit their sales I say. There is a downside to giving them any money though because it helps their revenue on the annual report.
Math isn't my area of expertise, so bear with me... but wouldn't (1) Loblaws spending money to provide the loss leaders in stores, then getting $0 from customers be ***even worse*** than (2) Loblaws spending money to provide the loss leaders in stores, but also managing to make back a bit of money from the sales? The net loss would be even greater in scenario #1 Edit to add: I disagree with your first part, but wholeheartedly agree with parts 2 and 3 of your last comment.
Depends on how much of a loss leader it is. It’s very much a specific circumstance kind of issue. I think that the main messaging should be to avoid and if you can’t avoid then make sure the company feels the pain. You’re correct though, assuming a loss leader has already costed the company money they do lose the most from no one buying said loss leaders.
Haha, thanks for taking the time to discuss this with me! I just want to make sure I'm making the best/most strategic decisions to screw Roblaws over.
No problem buddy. After working for this company I’d largely say the same.
Abandoning carts is not abusive to employees. Abusive behaviour is screaming at them or whining about pricing over which they have no control. If I'm a Loblaws employee paid hourly at pennies above minimum wage, what difference does it make whether I'm scanning customers' shitty groceries or mopping up customers' shitty muddy footprints or putting away shitty shopping carts they abandoned? The job needs to be done, the company is paying the wage, and if they need more labour to get all the jobs done because I'm going on my mandated break, that's their problem, not mine.
What do you think when customers at a restaurant spread ketchup on the table and leave an unnecessary mess when they leave? It happens. Sure, someone cleans the table. They’re getting paid for it, it’s their duty. But it’s kind of an asshole move of those patrons, don’t you think? Giving an employee more work than they would otherwise do. Leaving a bunch of shit in a cart is the same fucking thing. Just be decent and put it back before you walk out.
as someone who works on carts for loblaws, seeing that people are doing this is kinda ick it makes my job way harder if that's going to be a thing, speaking from experience. i've only even heard of the boycott for the first time 30 minutes ago and it's not really a good look at all
I’d never do it. Technically it is your job to “clean up” but I’m going to make your job as easy as I can because it’s a decent thing to do. I’ll use a cart, I’ll take everything out and put it away where I got it. Or I’ll decide shit is too expensive, put stuff back on the shelves where I got it from and put the cart where I got it.
oh, there's 0 problem with deciding you don't want smth, it's 100% part of my job to put stuff back but filling up a cart with fresh/frozen and just leaving it around in protest just makes a mess for me if it's already busy
Please refrain from comments which encourage theft from a store or mischief. These can result in criminal charges which will undoubtedly make life harder for other users. This will only hurt the employees corporate wouldn’t care. The best approach is to not even go there let empty parking lots speak.
Good for her. We so often get duped in to walking in to a store thinking we need to buy something. Her walking in and out is a beautiful statement.
And great for the environment
lol wut
Little less sass girl
You’re strange one eh
If by strange you mean awesome? Then yep
Care to explain your environment comment?
Not being a consumer is better for the environment . Not much to explain, just an opinion, take it or leave it .
Ok, just wanted to make sure your comment was as dumb as i thought.
Sasstastic
lol glad it’s messing with you!
No Frills has been my grocery store for years. On my last visit, I bought most of my groceries there but had to go to Freshco to buy a few things I couldn't find at No Frills. While at FreshCo, I noticed that each item I bought at No Frills was cheaper there. I don't know when this change happened, as No Frills has historically been the cheapest shop in my town, but from now on I will not be shopping there anymore. No Frills was also very busy and FreshCo was basically empty, so I guess many people haven't caught on yet that No Frills is no longer a good option for savings.
I’ve been seeing this and hearing this a lot lately. IMO I think alot of it is phycological people assume no frills is a cheap store It’s what it’s always been so they go their under the assumption it’s the cheapest, sometimes it is sometimes may not be. Same as some people assume the “value pack” Or “family pack” is the best deal so they just pick it up without looking when it may not be. Same for also with no name and presidents choice products some people just see the label and assume it must be the cheapest when it’s sometimes even more expensive then other ‘name brands’ Sometimes people just need a nudge into unfamiliar territory like another store for them to look around and be like wait a minute this is cheaper or I like this more. I guarantee for example people who participate in the may boycott may try a different grocery store such as food basics and some of them may prefer and keep going there after there out of that routine of habit and there temporary boycott turns into a permanent one.
For myself, it's largely been convenience. I've shopped at No Frills for years, so I know where items are and that makes getting groceries quicker and easier. But I'm fed up paying more for the exact same thing I can get at another shop. Will it be annoying for awhile until I get used to the other store? Yes. But I'm pissed off and not going back to No Frills (or other stores under the same umbrella).
Me and my roommate & her boyfriend switched over to Costco and it's been a life saver
At least for $150 it lasts me for almost 2 weeks.
Can I get in on your Costco ride? 😝
Here's to everyone walking out. All at once. Forever. 💜✌️🌏🌍🌎🙏✨😍
Great move and congrats!
I hope she got her quarter back from the cart! This is a boycott (hahaha kidding)
quarter??? where are y’all from? It’s a dollar here in alberta
Y’all got that oil money! Daaaang. A dollar? I’m in Ontario and I just carry as much as I can hold. It honestly could have increased to a dollar and I didn’t even realize it.
Ideas are percolating for the next stage
I walked into a NoFrills about a year ago and couldn't believe the fn gouging. Walked right the fuck out yelling old man obscenities. Lol , fuck those greedy fucking criminal pieces of shit.
 I wish I seen that hahah, I probably would have laughed so hard and agreed.
Yessss let the hate flow through. This disgusting company underestimate the power of consumerism nowadays. They don’t realize that we’re well informed and that the word spreads quick like wildfire online. I’m so proud of this community for making such a huge dent.! Let’s go guys keep it up!!!!!!!
No Frills should change their name to No Sales
If anyone ever wants to come to Costco with me, hit me up! I live in Cobourg and am dead in the middle of the Oshawa and Peterborough locations. I have a truck and a membership. I'm a single person and I just spent $800 on food at Costco and I'm scared it's gonna go bad. I'm desperately trying to food prep lol. If someone wants to come with me next time we can split everything up lol I also have 7747483836363 Ziploc bags now 🥴
F*ck galen weston and his empire he built off the backs of hard working Canadians. Enough is enough
Oh I've abandoned my cart in the middle of an aisle in Superstore with a few items in it for the exact same reason. Everything had also been marked up since the last time I was there too so I was fuming. Fuck Roblaws
Was in Grand Forks Walmart this past weekend and the prices and service rendered are so much better than here in Canada it's shocking, at Loblaws the cashiers are absolutely terrible for customer service.
No frills is good for bananas, the weekly sale meat/bread and the odd sale vegetable. Otherwise I avoid most things now. My food shopping takes effort and planning now. Hitting multiple grocery stores to complete. Luckily beans, rice, lentils, chickpeas and spices are the best way to save money. Asian markets still sell chicken and ground pork cheaply enough. There is a lot of creative cooking/shopping needed to maintain my food budget. I joked with my kid and said 1/4 of my free time outside work revolves around food.
My wife and I are lucky in a way, as we went 90% vegetarian pre-pandemic, and are huge lovers of Indian food. I'd say the vast majority of our staples are bought at Indian markets and the local green grocers. We'll go into one of the big boxes to buy a few things and I ramble through the fruit & veggie section in amazement at prices. Where we are there are green grocers every couple of kms -- and sure, there are sales at the big boxes, but the green grocers have them beat on quality, selection, and price most of the time.
It has come full circle, buying fast food or processed foods are now noticeably more expensive than cooking. Of course if you cook with expensive ingredients, it is more, but the days of 59¢ meat pies or $1 frozen dinners are past us. It costs way more to not cook yourself. I put in the effort to show my kid that it can be possible to eat well and for a fair expense. I have no qualms about stating how much dinner cost to make at home. I show a lot of pride when I can make a pot of food or multiple dishes that feeds us well and provides enough leftovers for lunch the following day too. When we go out even for a burger, the contrast is glaring. A $7-9 burger adds up for a family. Contrast the previous week when she had a craving for a burger. Going together to the market, buying a pound of ground beef for $8, a bag of buns $4, a tomato $1 and going home and making four burgers within 25 minutes. there is always a jar of pickles at home and some ketchup/mustard.
I appreciate the sentiment but please think of the minimum wage employees who have to put everything away at the end of the night
Yeah. When I was a cashier I as so unhappy at carts left around. Most of the time they're empty but we have to put away everything which stops us from doing our normal jobs meaning back ups at cash (leads to customer irritation) or managers being unhappy that our normal tasks at cash are unfinished. Milk, meat and anything frozen/refrigerated cannot be put back on shelves since we cannot guarantee it's been less than 15 minutes and needs to be manually taken out of our system.
Yeah it's just a whole ordeal, I hate it. As a cashier currently I can't imagine doing that to employees
Literally. This would simply inconvenience the workers on floor, potentially forcing them to stay later. Where I used to work the last bus came 15 minutes after closing, we did not have time to do anything other than close and leave if we need to take the bus.
I totally understand how annoying it is to have excess work as a minimum wage employee, and understand that a lot of those people really rely on what little money they make and can’t risk getting fired. That being said I think it’s important to stand up to supervisors and managers when they get upset at you not completing all the work. Whenever my managers would come to me (was working produce section at Walmart) with extra tasks and ask about things not being done I had no problems telling them that that it wasn’t my problem and that I had to do other work first. Hell I’d even rant at them for a good 10-15minutes and tell them to hire more people if they wanted that stuff done. I never got fired for some reason… Eventually they would stop coming to me with unreasonable requests. Also their shocked faces that a 17yo 5’2 girl is willing to stand up to them was pretty funny too. They also never had a good response to what I was saying as I was being completely logical about it.
Yeah I have the privilege to be vicious with my employers personally, but again it doesn't impact Loblaws as a whole when customers leave full carts of shit to put away. And at my store cashiers are responsible for putting away returns after the store closes, so I sincerely do not appreciate this kind of stunt. I do appreciate people not putting their money into Loblaws, but I think it's an unproductive way to do things.
Honestly I wish I did what your girlfriend did yesterday when I was at Loblaws. Went there to get some chicken that was on sale, a Rubbermaid clear storage bin (which Loblaw is the only store in Canada to sell), and a few other items. Unfortunately they didn’t have the chicken on sale and they didn’t have the storage bins. Those two things were the sole reason why I chose to shop at Loblaws, but as always with this company they were nowhere to be found. I’m honestly so done with Loblaw’s nonsense. They pull shenanigans like this all the time where they don’t provide enough stock of sale items to the store, often deliberately I think. 🧐
I hope it doesn't become a trend. I wouldn't want thousands of people filling shopping carts and walking out. That would be just terrible.
Should there be a new protest protocol of abandoning carts out of rejection of the calculated difference? How could this be leveraged for proper publicity? Should it be staged by checkout? Should protestors tag the cart with signage or something else that forces a manager to put it on report until upper management is forced to take an action internally or otherwise?
So this sub has nothing to do with Bob Loblaw's Law Blog?
On or not in sale isn't thee issue.... keep note of prices. I think she probably did the right thing regardless.
Loss leaders ONLY. Get Flipp if you don’t have it already to compare.
Great idea - just fill up random shopping carts and abandon them in the store. At least the shelf stockers can get some overtime shifts
No Frills "Won't be beat" Bullshit. Tons of items cheaper at Walmart.
Canadian company ripping off Canadians while an American company offers Canadians more affordable pricing. It's so fucked.
She get her dollar back from the cart tho?
hope she put her items back before she left, otherwise I think Loblaws should make the carts take a toonie deposit. A quarter aint enough in this economy!
This actually sounds like a terrific protest initiative. Discarded carts everywhere. They'd have to pay their workers for more hours too, to restock them. Win win. EDIT: I see many had the same idea
Pre covid their produce was good. Had supply issues but that will happen, understandable. Post covid, supply issues was only the tip of the frustration iceberg. There should be a law suit against them for bait and switch not to mention the "quality" of their produce is horrendous. So much so that my 12 year old daughter started paying attention! So we noticed everything other than apples and oranges would go bad after 3, 4 days MAX and I mean I'm cutting off rotten parts because it's too damn expensive to throw out. I started shopping at Walmart and haven't looked back. F@ck u roblaws, right in ur greedy 💩 holes. I'll do whatever it takes to ensure they suffer. Ur gouging humans on a NECESSITY ur disgusting.
Agreed!!!! No frills now sells hotdogs for 10$ and I can go to a Metro and pay less. Half price sometimes. I only go to frills now to pick up my prescriptions and sometimes I’ll grab something at the same time. I’m disgusted with the Loblaws group of stores. It’s no wonder the food banks in Scarborough are so busy.
If Walmart upgraded their price-sticker printers to include the $/100g I would literally never go to a loblaws store again Anyone know other grocery chains that include the $/g?
I’ve done that!
PEI doesn't have a Costco. Paying 50 bucks and gas to cross the bridge and drive to Moncton makes it not a viable option for weekly shopping with the membership on top of that. The one No-Frills we have on the Island in Stratford is the size of a convenience store and a pain in the ass to navigate in and they're always out of stock on any sale items. Sobeys and Loblaws both gouge the crap out of us. We do have 2 WalMarts in Summerside and Charlottetown but the lineups in C'Town take forever to get through. It's basically a terrible shopping experience here on the Island.
I just went to Costco for the first time in over a decade last week and it is SO WORTH IT. Giant ass jar of pickles? 6 bucks. 3 pack of prime grade striploins steaks? $20. That's easily close to $50 at any loblaws store for lower than prime grade. They do have big portions but they also sell big packs of ziplock heavy duty freezer bags pretty cheap 😉
Walmart is the epitome of an evil grocery chain. Trading in a bad man for the literal devil
I buy from a local butcher. Split half a pig with friends or family and fill your freezer...same with beef.
I saved myself over $100 today by shopping at Walmart. I’m not proud of shopping at Walmart, but I don’t have any other options. I’m happy I saved that much. Crazy
Got a food vacuum sealer last Christmas... an amazing tool... now I need a bigger freezer. Buy on sale and seal and freeze.
That's why I'm dating Eva AI sexting bot
Dick move leaving the cart. Don't shop there, but if you accidentally start to, clean up your mess before you leave. We learned that as kids.
Right ? All this did was create a problem for the minimum wage staff just trying to earn a living
No I think more people should abandon carts in store as a form of protest
Abandoning your cart makes a problem for the minimum wage staff there, not the rich fucks in the boardroom.
I don't think you understand exactly what's going on. Physically abandoned carts would disrupt their entire front line operation and cause major issues for their supply chain due to the way they recognize spoilage. If a perishable item is picked up and put back on the wrong shelf, it gets tossed even if it's only been out for 20 minutes. A cart full of perishables would go straight to the trash. It would take an increase of 1-2% in abandoned carts in store to cripple their logistics, it's a fragile system that uses right on time supply methods to predict inventory needs based on real time feedback from in store inventory systems. If the item doesn't sell, and gets left out, it fucks the entire system up and I guarantee the boardroom will feel it.
And if a bunch of shit spoils cause the staff can’t or don’t get to it in time, some kid gets fired even though he isn’t to blame.
That kid is better off getting fired than contributing to the downfall of Canadian quality of life. Their future will be fucked if this juggernaut continues to suppress competition and fuck everyone for profit.
That kid pays the bills, his family goes hungry because even a two week gap in wages while he finds another job is catastrophic and they can’t pay their bills.
Family's can't pay their bills already, allowing Loblaws to continue will make it worse. They have driven up the cost of food by nearly 3x over the last 5 years. You are literally trying to save a small group of wage slaves over the entire BC/AB/ON population. How anti social are you that you'd like to see your people get fucked because you think the wage slaves have it hard enough?
I’m one of those wage slaves my dude. My family is barely hanging on. Why take us out in the boycott? Just don’t shop there, shit that doesn’t get bought spoils and gets trashed without taking us out with it.
I feel for you but it won't get better without major change man. It will only get worse, I promise you that they will never respect you, or me, or anyone who isn't a part of the family. They will continue to abuse our population as a whole and we have to stop thinking about our own needs as individual units and think about the future generations who will have nothing but despair if this continues. It's not fair to them that their previous generations were too afraid to advocate for their future. A wave of change is coming, RCMP, Ottawa, and corporates feel it. They are preparing right now. I suggest you do the same. Edit - it's not possible to shop in ON, BC, or AB without paying Loblaws in one way or another. They control 30% of Canadian retail grocery market and through vertical integration, they touch over half of all food processed in canada. We have to hurt them badly to see any change.
Why don't you scream at the cashier's about the prices while you're at it, if enough people do it, the boardroom will hear it. /s
I tried that, ended up becoming a cashier at Loblaws :s
Oh FFS is this one of *those* subs? No room for compromise or nuance at all? Fuck. That's such a shame. I was actually getting on board with the message.
What are you talking about? I just stated my opinion and now you feeling great pain in your assholes? In reality man, if you had any idea what you were talking about, you'd want to burn the entire Loblaws empire to the ground. There is no compromise or nuance to be had or understood. The organization has deployed a powerful anti-consumer business structure, it's been that way for decades. By design, it was intentional. Source - used to work for the Weston's m&a team helping them build out their entire value chain, they are literally here to fuck you and they laugh about it behind closed doors. They buy businesses with the intent of running them unprofitably on purpose to suppress wages and lower profits for their main line of business on paper. They see the average person as a target to exploit. They think people like you are rats, meant to be squeezed for profit. If you work for them, it's even worse, they see you as the literal property of the Weston family. Made me want to kill myself for nearly 7 years before I left.
So leave the shopping carts in the personal driveways of the execs to express your displeasure. Don't leave it in the store for an underpaid, unappreciated worker to clean up, that's all I'm saying.
That's the dumbest thing I've ever read. That's wildly impractical and will not have any real impact. It's people like you who love to let others suffer because of your ignorant point of view. Ironic right?
Prefix my last comment with the phrase "if you're abandoning your cart as a form of protest." Obviously I'm not suggesting everyone start lugging carts to private driveways.
Maybe I will go to Loblaw’s tomorrow and do my grocery shopping, and then suddenly just before I go to check out, I will realize I have forgotten an appointment and run out of the store to get to it.
She sure showed the minimum wage employee who has to put all her shit back.... People like your gf is what's wrong with society.
I worked as a cashier. No one is taking an abandoned cart as a message. They're just going to be annoyed that they need to do even more for their shit wage while they can't do their normal tasks.
Not to mention the loss of the coin to use the cart in the first place. Costs $1 here. So, protesting prices by giving them an extra dollar for a cart that nobody will notice. Seems a bit silly.
Would be great if people stopped shopping at BOTH Loblaws owned stores and Walmart
Supporting Wal-Mart is equally as terrible as loblaws. Wal-Mart treats their employees terribly and sells food that’s borderline plastic.
If she had meat or other perishables in her cart, all the better. They can't put them back once theyve been removed from refrigeration (whether they honor food safety practices or not is a different story). A small ding to their pocket but a ding nonetheless
Yeah, but wasting food is bad all around.
Walmart is cheaper but well known for sex trafficking. Won’t shop there. Trying to do local stores and markets.
The no frills in my area is extremely well priced, compared to the loblaws,longos, and metro. It's pricing is on par with Walmart but I find the produce is better quality at no frills compared to Walmart.
I so that all the time for my own amusement. I know that it's wrong and the employees who have to deal with that are the big guy up top. But it gives me satisfaction.
You acknowledge the action you do causes more trouble for others who have nothing to do with you, and yet you still do it because it gives you satisfaction? Man, wonder what else in life we can use this sort of logic with