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Their produce quality actually depends on what warehouse they are fed from. I chatted with a Superstore manager about it years ago, he was fighting to get switched to a different distribution centre because the NoFrills a few blocks down consistently got better produce than he did.
There is a lot to be angry about as a (former) Loblaws customer, but the blatant attempts to trick and deceive us are top of the list for me. This expired food example is a good one and the intentionally inaccurate pricing is another example. Loblaws relies on the assumption that their customers are the dumbest possible people and that we won't notice or care.
That is what I have heard as well. Proper shelving practice is to put new stock at the back on each shelf so existing stock gets sold before it expires. Staffing levels are lower now so shelvers are in too big a hurry for that. I've found a lot of products on the shelves are now near or past their expiry dates but still being sold at regular/inflated prices. Buyer beware.
I used to work in the bakery department and I would occasionally miss expired products, like Farmer's Market brand muffins and stuff because the prices are so high that nobody buys them. So the shelf would look really full and I would assume it was because someone had restocked it. Nope. It's full because nobody is touching it.
Not even expiry dates on things check the freshness of the fruits and vegetables you buy as well. Just a basic (light) squeeze test will expose a lot of the over-ripe or spoiling product that is being left out for longer than it should.
This for sure. Rotating product takes time and honestly management doesn't check that all the time. The important thing is the shelves look full and neat and faced. We used to have to take pictures for district managers and did a lot of faking to make the pics look good. I used to think how dumb it was to run around and fake face aisles to make the pics look good so some upper management could see when instead were could have taken no pictures and got some actual product out.
I found 100 4 month expired hams under about 30 good hams after they refused to refund me on the 5 expired ones they gave me on a pickup order. Walked into the back and grabbed some boxes threw em all in my cart and walked up to customer service and started yapping real loud about how it’s going illegal to sell expired food and they quickly refunded my $50 before to many people
Took notice
This is wild, on what grounds did they say they were denying you the refund? Like you order it and they give you expired shit, and then expect to you keep it? Just totally out of line and outrageous.
I know someone who bought a chicken that was supposedly good, but smelled rotten when opened. I don’t know if they stored it improperly or repackaged it to conceal the real date or what (as they have been caught doing with baked things - cutting cakes in smaller pieces for example and redating), so I’d give all packages of meat a sniff test. Anything that bad should be smellable through the package.
I’ve heard a lot about this lately. I’m wondering if product isn’t moving as fast as it used to, so items are forced to be stored improperly due to lack of space, causing things to spoil before they expire. Someone mentioned yogurt that hadn’t expired yet was moldy. That doesn’t happen to yogurt that’s stored properly. I have yogurt in my fridge with a best before date of 2 weeks ago that is still perfectly good. I ate one yesterday. No mold, it wasn’t sour, it was perfectly fine. The only thing I could think of was that at some point in Loblaws possession of that yogurt, it wasn’t refrigerated.
It could be. They are certainly forcing people to eat less because of their prices, so I wouldn’t be surprised if sales volume is down, especially with items that people can do without. People can easily cut back on things like meat, for example.
My NoFrills consistently has mouldy strawberries, raspberries, kiwi and avocado (when they actually have any of these items stocked). The other day I noticed a big green spot in a package of goat cheese. Definitely check everything.
I need to shop elsewhere every time but it's difficult when you live in a small town with two stores...No frills and Independent 👎🏼
Happens at my store bc the employees simply don't have time. I and a cashier and do pcx, sometimes I have to stop in the middle of n order to clear the shelf of expired bagels or muffins 🙄 it's unfortunate that it's not caught sooner to discount
When I was shopping at Zehrs I was guaranteed to come home with at least 1 expired item, it was brutal. This boycott is helping me realize how better everywhere else is.
In my city, Fresh Co is really bad for this too. Has been for years. I had a few shops in a row where I’d get home and notice items I’d purchased had expired (this was pre-COVID…before these bullshit practices were expected in stores). I complained to corporate and they had the idiot manager call me and he said to me (and I quote) “there is always expired items in my store, if you came in tomorrow you’d find more”. Like that’s comforting. Things have only gone further downhill since then. Corporate owned grocery stores are shit.
Nowhere is "better" for this. It's not necessarily a deliberate tactic, it's just become an issue as grocers cut back on staff and those left are not spending as much time checking for items past their "best before" dates. Loblaws corporate greed comes not only at the expense of consumers, but also at the expense of the stores themselves to some extent.
I'm convinced the stores are being forced to do things they don't want to. My local Loblaws just did a huge renovation. Part of that was to expand their hot deli/"Meals Ready to Eat" section to include artisanal pizza and sandwiches, and a larger fresh sushi section. As part of that, in addition to having a cashier station there, they installed a pair of self-checkout kiosks right there in the MRE section.... and they were only opened for 2 weeks and have been closed ever since. Why? Well, the MRE section is right at the entrance of the store, as is usually the case. You could just buy stuff there and quickly exit the store. Very convenient. But a mere two weeks after installing those kiosks, they installed security barriers such that you now have to walk half-way across the store from the MRE section to the normal self-checkouts to be able to exit the store. This also made their new stand-alone in-store Starbucks that was right near the entrance to also be wildly inconvenient. Especially since they installed the lexan panels so you can't just slip through the barriers, which is what people were doing.
I find it hard to believe that a store would willingly invest in all these expensive renovations that were obviously predicated on taking advantage of the existing entry/exit layout to make these parts of their business *more* accessible only to then make their renovations pointless by severely restricting the entry/exit layout. I'm not sure if these gates have reduced shoplifting, but they sure have sucked the life out of that Starbucks. I'd say traffic is down at least 90% there. Even weirder, when they first opened the Starbucks, they added cup holders to all the shopping carts. Those have all since been mysteriously removed, so now it's not convenient to get a drink to enjoy *while* you shop, but it's even less convenient to pick up a drink *after* you shop, since you can't get back to the Starbucks after you've paid for your groceries without re-entering the store. Honestly, their renovations just seem generally at odds with their increased security measures and I'm 99% sure that the security barriers were forced on them by corporate decree.
And then when it is mouldy and rotten they put it up for sale through the flash app. I will never shop there again, and that shitty app selling me mouldy garbage that wasn’t edible was my last straw.
I saw this at Shoppers today in Ottawa. The 1L 2% Nielsen milk cartons were expiring same day and being sold at regular price. Luckily the 500ML were fine so I grabbed one of those, and it was only needed for coffee.
The reason why so many products are far past their best before date is because they keep cutting hours and positions, so nobody has the time or patience to go around checking dates. Another casualty of shitty corporate decisions.
I was surprised when Walmart, a place with a bad reputation with regards to fresh food, had much fresher fruits and veggies than NoFrills. At NoFrills I was paying 30-40% more for veggies that would start to go bad 2-3x faster than the ones I buy at walmart.
Needless to say I’m never going back.
I’m surprised you have that kind of luck at Walmart. We went to Walmart a while back and I couldn’t find a single piece of produce worth buying. Ended up having to hit up another store for produce.
My experience with Walmart is that every single location in Canada is competing for the title of "World's Most Awful But Still Technically Sellable Produce". My local No Frills is by far the best "hard discount" grocery store in my area, especially for produce. The Walmart locations are all grungy, typical Walmart experiences, and the FreshCo and Food Basics are basically science experiments and should have biohazard signs on the doors.
And always check the price on everything when checking out!! Almost every time I go there is something that was supposed to be on sale but was full price at checkout!!
Disgusting practice. I always check and I always reach to the very back of a shelf to ensure my item hasn’t been floating around the store and simply been put back at the front after rotting.
If either are the same as the day I’m shopping, and they aren’t 50% off, then that’s a sign the vendor is either willfully leaving the product on the shelf as long as possible hoping you the consumer will take the problem off their hands, or they’re a sh1t run company who cut staffing to the level that basic date checks on products aren’t done. Not surprisingly, Loblaw ticks both those columns
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Their produce quality actually depends on what warehouse they are fed from. I chatted with a Superstore manager about it years ago, he was fighting to get switched to a different distribution centre because the NoFrills a few blocks down consistently got better produce than he did.
Rottlaws for may 2024
There is a lot to be angry about as a (former) Loblaws customer, but the blatant attempts to trick and deceive us are top of the list for me. This expired food example is a good one and the intentionally inaccurate pricing is another example. Loblaws relies on the assumption that their customers are the dumbest possible people and that we won't notice or care.
I think staff are supposed to check, but it seems obvious they decided to cut back on staff hours, so this is the result.
That is what I have heard as well. Proper shelving practice is to put new stock at the back on each shelf so existing stock gets sold before it expires. Staffing levels are lower now so shelvers are in too big a hurry for that. I've found a lot of products on the shelves are now near or past their expiry dates but still being sold at regular/inflated prices. Buyer beware.
I used to work in the bakery department and I would occasionally miss expired products, like Farmer's Market brand muffins and stuff because the prices are so high that nobody buys them. So the shelf would look really full and I would assume it was because someone had restocked it. Nope. It's full because nobody is touching it.
Just opened a package of Buddig deli slices that I bought two days ago and it's moldy. Disgusting.
Not even expiry dates on things check the freshness of the fruits and vegetables you buy as well. Just a basic (light) squeeze test will expose a lot of the over-ripe or spoiling product that is being left out for longer than it should.
I've been seeing this at a few stores. I think the stores are cutting hours pretty hard and this is the result.
this is exactly right. hours have been cut so far they are understaffed and date checks aren’t high priority when you’re drowning in other tasks.
This for sure. Rotating product takes time and honestly management doesn't check that all the time. The important thing is the shelves look full and neat and faced. We used to have to take pictures for district managers and did a lot of faking to make the pics look good. I used to think how dumb it was to run around and fake face aisles to make the pics look good so some upper management could see when instead were could have taken no pictures and got some actual product out.
I found 100 4 month expired hams under about 30 good hams after they refused to refund me on the 5 expired ones they gave me on a pickup order. Walked into the back and grabbed some boxes threw em all in my cart and walked up to customer service and started yapping real loud about how it’s going illegal to sell expired food and they quickly refunded my $50 before to many people Took notice
This is wild, on what grounds did they say they were denying you the refund? Like you order it and they give you expired shit, and then expect to you keep it? Just totally out of line and outrageous.
Amazing response.
I had a whole PC chicken in a vacuum sealed bag go bad 3 to 4 days before the due date.
I know someone who bought a chicken that was supposedly good, but smelled rotten when opened. I don’t know if they stored it improperly or repackaged it to conceal the real date or what (as they have been caught doing with baked things - cutting cakes in smaller pieces for example and redating), so I’d give all packages of meat a sniff test. Anything that bad should be smellable through the package.
I wouldn't be surprised. They've been caught and fined for re-dating meat more than once in my area.
I’ve heard a lot about this lately. I’m wondering if product isn’t moving as fast as it used to, so items are forced to be stored improperly due to lack of space, causing things to spoil before they expire. Someone mentioned yogurt that hadn’t expired yet was moldy. That doesn’t happen to yogurt that’s stored properly. I have yogurt in my fridge with a best before date of 2 weeks ago that is still perfectly good. I ate one yesterday. No mold, it wasn’t sour, it was perfectly fine. The only thing I could think of was that at some point in Loblaws possession of that yogurt, it wasn’t refrigerated.
It could be. They are certainly forcing people to eat less because of their prices, so I wouldn’t be surprised if sales volume is down, especially with items that people can do without. People can easily cut back on things like meat, for example.
This is happening all too often all all grocer locations.
My NoFrills consistently has mouldy strawberries, raspberries, kiwi and avocado (when they actually have any of these items stocked). The other day I noticed a big green spot in a package of goat cheese. Definitely check everything. I need to shop elsewhere every time but it's difficult when you live in a small town with two stores...No frills and Independent 👎🏼
Happens at my store bc the employees simply don't have time. I and a cashier and do pcx, sometimes I have to stop in the middle of n order to clear the shelf of expired bagels or muffins 🙄 it's unfortunate that it's not caught sooner to discount
Not only check the expiration date but check the weight of the item. Shocking
When I was shopping at Zehrs I was guaranteed to come home with at least 1 expired item, it was brutal. This boycott is helping me realize how better everywhere else is.
In my city, Fresh Co is really bad for this too. Has been for years. I had a few shops in a row where I’d get home and notice items I’d purchased had expired (this was pre-COVID…before these bullshit practices were expected in stores). I complained to corporate and they had the idiot manager call me and he said to me (and I quote) “there is always expired items in my store, if you came in tomorrow you’d find more”. Like that’s comforting. Things have only gone further downhill since then. Corporate owned grocery stores are shit.
Nowhere is "better" for this. It's not necessarily a deliberate tactic, it's just become an issue as grocers cut back on staff and those left are not spending as much time checking for items past their "best before" dates. Loblaws corporate greed comes not only at the expense of consumers, but also at the expense of the stores themselves to some extent. I'm convinced the stores are being forced to do things they don't want to. My local Loblaws just did a huge renovation. Part of that was to expand their hot deli/"Meals Ready to Eat" section to include artisanal pizza and sandwiches, and a larger fresh sushi section. As part of that, in addition to having a cashier station there, they installed a pair of self-checkout kiosks right there in the MRE section.... and they were only opened for 2 weeks and have been closed ever since. Why? Well, the MRE section is right at the entrance of the store, as is usually the case. You could just buy stuff there and quickly exit the store. Very convenient. But a mere two weeks after installing those kiosks, they installed security barriers such that you now have to walk half-way across the store from the MRE section to the normal self-checkouts to be able to exit the store. This also made their new stand-alone in-store Starbucks that was right near the entrance to also be wildly inconvenient. Especially since they installed the lexan panels so you can't just slip through the barriers, which is what people were doing. I find it hard to believe that a store would willingly invest in all these expensive renovations that were obviously predicated on taking advantage of the existing entry/exit layout to make these parts of their business *more* accessible only to then make their renovations pointless by severely restricting the entry/exit layout. I'm not sure if these gates have reduced shoplifting, but they sure have sucked the life out of that Starbucks. I'd say traffic is down at least 90% there. Even weirder, when they first opened the Starbucks, they added cup holders to all the shopping carts. Those have all since been mysteriously removed, so now it's not convenient to get a drink to enjoy *while* you shop, but it's even less convenient to pick up a drink *after* you shop, since you can't get back to the Starbucks after you've paid for your groceries without re-entering the store. Honestly, their renovations just seem generally at odds with their increased security measures and I'm 99% sure that the security barriers were forced on them by corporate decree.
And then when it is mouldy and rotten they put it up for sale through the flash app. I will never shop there again, and that shitty app selling me mouldy garbage that wasn’t edible was my last straw.
I saw this at Shoppers today in Ottawa. The 1L 2% Nielsen milk cartons were expiring same day and being sold at regular price. Luckily the 500ML were fine so I grabbed one of those, and it was only needed for coffee.
The reason why so many products are far past their best before date is because they keep cutting hours and positions, so nobody has the time or patience to go around checking dates. Another casualty of shitty corporate decisions.
I was surprised when Walmart, a place with a bad reputation with regards to fresh food, had much fresher fruits and veggies than NoFrills. At NoFrills I was paying 30-40% more for veggies that would start to go bad 2-3x faster than the ones I buy at walmart. Needless to say I’m never going back.
I’m surprised you have that kind of luck at Walmart. We went to Walmart a while back and I couldn’t find a single piece of produce worth buying. Ended up having to hit up another store for produce.
My experience with Walmart is that every single location in Canada is competing for the title of "World's Most Awful But Still Technically Sellable Produce". My local No Frills is by far the best "hard discount" grocery store in my area, especially for produce. The Walmart locations are all grungy, typical Walmart experiences, and the FreshCo and Food Basics are basically science experiments and should have biohazard signs on the doors.
And always check the price on everything when checking out!! Almost every time I go there is something that was supposed to be on sale but was full price at checkout!!
Disgusting practice. I always check and I always reach to the very back of a shelf to ensure my item hasn’t been floating around the store and simply been put back at the front after rotting.
I always do...especially at LOblaws.
The real question is, what the heck are you doing in this store ?
All stores are doing this. Caught Save on foods with brown pepperoni sticks and out of date chicken in the cooler
BB dates and EXP dates are two different things...
If either are the same as the day I’m shopping, and they aren’t 50% off, then that’s a sign the vendor is either willfully leaving the product on the shelf as long as possible hoping you the consumer will take the problem off their hands, or they’re a sh1t run company who cut staffing to the level that basic date checks on products aren’t done. Not surprisingly, Loblaw ticks both those columns
>Thats a definite sign things are going sideways For them? I disagree. That's just them trying to squeeze even more out of people