“We don’t have a contract with our customers. They can choose to shop elsewhere tomorrow if they don’t like the offer that we’re giving,” he said.
Interesting choice of words. I spend over $500 a shopping trip, and am a PC Express member (which means I have a contract with them).
I haven’t been shopping with them already for a few weeks because of some issues I experienced at my local store. I don’t blame the store either; I directly blame management at head office who have been methodically stripping power away from local managers over the past four years.
I will not buy from loblaws anymore. The small stores is where it’s at.
Good to see from Canadians.
Yes! Every month should be “steal (business) from Loblaws” month.
I am a member of a co-op. I strongly believe in the mission, however, it is not affordable for families. Maybe if we prioritized less speciality foods and had more members we could bring costs down, but it is truly a struggle in balancing supporting the community and staying open.
My co-op tries to balance this by incentivizing donating to the local food banks, both in product and monetary donations, but it is a real struggle.
All that being said, since the price fixing began, health food is no longer that much more expensive.
Member co-op grocery stores used to be cheaper than the private, corporate stores, but they came with that barrier to entry that kept many people away. And the corporate stores continued to build capital, so they could afford better locations, more convenient parking, etc. Now, co-ops are niche, and need to operate as specialty stores because they were squeezed out of the market.
We could have affordable grocery co-ops again, but it would take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears at this point.
