Food prices, including a $40 chicken, has stoked fury and calls for big foreign supermarket chains to come to Canada.

Late last year, Emily Johnson took to Reddit to share her frustration with how expensive food in Canada has become.

She fixated on one grocer in particular: Loblaw, the dominant food retailer in Canada, boasting nearly 2,500 stores.

Her Reddit group - named LoblawsIsOutofControl - was filled with photos of grocery items for sale at seemingly egregious prices, like C$40 ($29.36; £23.06) for 1.4 kilograms of chicken.

Soon after, Ms Johnson and others banded together to launch a nation-wide boycott against Loblaw, saying they were fed up with the disparity between rising food prices and record profits.

  • Cyborganism
    55·
    21 days ago

    We started boycotting Loblaws and Shoppers Drug Mart in May like the movement said and haven’t stopped since. We’ve been going out groceries at our local independent markets for produce, meats, fish, cheese, and other goods in bulk and getting the rest from Metro and Jean Coutu pharmacy. Metro aren’t that much better but it’s the lesser of two evils.

    Honestly I can say we have saved a lot, especially on the bulk stuff for dry goods like nuts, flour, coffee, cereal and also dish soap, honey and even peanut butter.

    • wise_pancake
      171·
      21 days ago

      I went into superstore and the produce and meat sections were awful.

      All the produce was near expiry, the potatoes had eyes growing and were soft, the onions had holes in them. I just left, I couldn’t pay those prices for produce with days left on their life.

      Metro was immediately better.

      • Cyborganism
        10·
        21 days ago

        In my case, the Metro I go to has awful vegetables. They’re like you just described. It really depends on the location.

        • wise_pancake
          2·
          20 days ago

          I just assumed it was because of the boycotts and they were sitting out for longer

    • Papamousse@beehaw.org
      9·
      21 days ago

      Loblaws branded stores disappeared from QC years ago. In Québec, Métro is pretty expensive, like IGA or Provigo. The cheapest groceries are Maxi (yeah, it’s Loblaws group) and SuperC (Metro group). But for me, all fruits/vegetable comes from local greengrocers, who also sell various ham/cold cuts and lot of cheese, sometimes for 50% of the price of groceries, and it’s fresh cut. Else for some bulks there’s bulk barn, and Costco, or sometimes even Amazon, a family box size cereal is $10.99 at IGA and the same one is $5.49 on Amazon.

      • Cyborganism
        16·
        21 days ago

        Loblaws, the name, isn’t used in Quebec anymore, no. But their brand stores are very much here.

        The whole point is not to just boycott stores that say “Loblaws” on the sign. But to boycott all the chains they own like Shoppers Drug Mart/Pharmaprix, Provigo, Maxi, T&T, as well as No Name, Life and PC brands, etc.

        Anything Galen Weston Jr owns.