This is what happens when you try to “save” money by forcing people to use self-checkout.
People need to stop shopping at Loblaws owned chains. I know it’s difficult because they own practically everything.
I don’t know how much better it is but I’ve been mostly patronizing my local Food Basics, with the occasional trip to Walmart and Costco for things they don’t carry at FB. I avoid the Loblaws’ chains after it became obvious they were doing the biggest price-hikes to drive inflation while Food Basics was raising wages and giving more of their employees full-time benefits.
I realize that Walmart is ethically a damned sight worse, but one battle at a time. Walmart doesn’t give a shit what their Canadian customer-base does they’re a global company. Loblaws lives and dies by it.
I’ve been doing the same. Its a slightly longer walk to food basics than the nearest loblaws chain but it is worth it. I get paper wasting flyers for both stores in my mail every week and everytime the food basics flyer offers better prices for the same foods like produce or meats.
They can afford these insane security measures, and buying all the equipment that goes with it, but lowering prices? Paying their employees more? No no, that’s too much money.
I get when a company puts wheel locks to ensure carts don’t leave the property, believe it or not, buying new carts is quite expensive; each one is several hundred dollars and the store likely has nearly 100 of them, if not more. It’s not a cheap asset. I get that.
Loss due to theft is also a non-trivial problem for obvious reasons, though there’s plenty of loss due to damage, best before expiry, bad handling by workers, defective products, etc.
I’ve worked in grocery and every store I worked at had a bin on a pallet overflowing with damaged or otherwise unsellable stuff. It happens.
But, criminalizing your shoppers? The vast majority of them are people who live local, and are regular shoppers spending thousands a month on products. In business, this is the 80/20 rule. 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients (the ones who shop there regularly). I’m betting for grocery stores, that number is a bit different, but the concept stands. Start alienating those regular shoppers, and they will walk, and 80% of your sales get flushed down the drain as a result. It’s both shocking, and completely unsurprising to me that Loblaws doesn’t seem to understand this.
maybe hard for some region or if your next store is another 20km away. I think those store probably rip off their local customer most.
Yeah, I live in a small town/city of 40k and there’s 4 Loblaws stores and one save on, and save on is considerably more expensive than any of the other options so it’s either give Loblaws money or stretch an already limited budget to give even more money to a different company. Lose - lose for me. There’s a Wal mart but they have 4 shitty aisles of packaged food a pathetic selection of food so they don’t count for groceries up here for the most part.
I don’t know if it’s possible but if you have some local resident that can band together and buy fresh product directly from the farmers? or do a group buy for common household supplies that should be cheaper with bulk order(ie, a costco account that helps to buy stuff for 10 household and everyone shares the cost) . I know it would replace all the purchase required, but in less competition area, at least you would have some form of “competition” from your own independent source.
The reason they aren’t responding on social media is they recently fired a friend of mine who worked as their social media manager. She was the only person I know who refused to say anything negative about Galen Weston. I personally think they’re adopting a policy of ignoring everything the public says about them and fucking us all as hard as they can until the government steps in. Stop giving them your money!
Anti-theft or not, these strategies absolutely deter me from spending more money in these places.
It’s incredibly frustrating that a simple errand run feels like you’re travelling through a maximum security airport. The only thing missing are armed guards.
I went over to my local Loblaws today and while they had added a gate at the store entrance right after the second automatic doors, now they added ANOTHER gate BEFORE those doors. What’s next, a moat with sharks? Holy shit.
