Achi news desk-
One of the organizers of the month-long boycott of Loblaw-owned stores says she met with the grocer’s president and Per Bank CEO Thursday afternoon.
Emily Johnson, who started the Reddit page that led to the boycott, said she was sharing shoppers’ concerns and questions with Bank, a European retail operator that took the lead role about months ago.
“Obviously, the boycott is still going on,” Johnson said. But she said she was “confident in the fact that we have an audience, we have their attention, and they are listening to what we have to say and what we want to do .”
Loblaw said earlier in the week that he had reached out to boycott organizers to set up a meeting.
Banc believes the conversation was productive, Loblaw spokeswoman Catherine Thomas said: “We are listening, and think it is important to hear her concerns personally.”
The CEO discussed some of the things the grocer is doing to try to help customers who are struggling with the cost of living, Johnson said.
One of these is the removal of “multi-buy” promotions – where customers get a better price per unit if they buy more than one item – from No Frills stores.
Shoppers on tighter budgets can’t take advantage of such deals if they can’t afford four items instead of one, for example, even when the price per unit is lower.
“Customer feedback in those stores was that it was not beneficial for them (especially as basket sizes are smaller there) and that they appreciate this change,” said Thomas in an email. “In other stores, where customers tend to buy more, multi-buys are often popular sales.”
Bank and Loblaw chairman Galen Weston spoke at the company’s annual general meeting on Thursday where they pushed back on what they call “misguided criticism” of the company.
“Let me assure you that our colleagues, in every corner of the business, are working hard to reduce costs and make things more efficient. These efforts enabled us to reinvest savings to offset the impact of price inflation in our stores,” Bank told shareholders at the meeting.
Johnson started a Reddit page about high food prices in November and quickly attracted attention from frustrated shoppers. It now boasts tens of thousands of members.
As the number of people in Johnson’s Reddit group grew, so did the calls for a boycott. The official start date for the boycott was May 1, the same day Loblaw said its first-quarter profit was up nearly 10 percent from the same period last year.
Customers have been growing increasingly frustrated with rising food prices and the profits earned by grocery companies, and Loblaw has been at the epicenter of many of these frustrations.
“As a well-known company and Canada’s largest grocer, it is only natural that Loblaw would be identified as a focal point for media and government and of course consumer frustrations,” Weston said at a meeting Thursday.
Johnson said the request for a meeting from Loblaw surprised her, and at first she and the other organizers weren’t sure if she should take it.
“For me, it was … ‘let’s hear them out,'” he said. “Because if we’re not here to fix the problem, or if we’re not here to try to fix the problem, you know, then why are we boycotting at all?”
“My goals were to sit down and have the conversation with him, share these views, hear their perspective and present that information back to the community.”
On May 3, the boycotters also launched a petition sponsored by NDP MP Matthew Green calling on Parliamentarians to crack down on “monopolistic practices in the food retail sector,” investigating practices such as shrinking and allegations of price fixing or collusion , implementing measures to promote fair competition. in the food retail industry, explore ways to prevent “excessive price gouging on essential food items,” and make Loblaw and Walmart sign the grocery code of conduct.
A committee in the House of Commons has been studying food prices as well as the grocery code of conduct, and has encouraged both grocers to sign. And last June, the Competition Bureau released a report on the grocery sector, calling it focus and making recommendations to improve competition in the industry.
Johnson previously told The Canadian Press that while the main goal of the boycott is to have a financial impact on the company, she also hopes the boycott educates people and gets the government’s attention.
This report was first published by The Canadian Press on May 3, 2024.
