TORONTO – When Gillian Pulfer picked up roasted sweet potato soup, flank steak and chicken salad from a Toronto Pusateri’s Fine Foods for $10 last weekend, the deal was too good not to brag about.
“It’s a more high-end, luxury grocery store…so most people don’t necessarily have the budget to go shop there, but you’re saving money and you’re getting good food,” said Pulfer.
After chowing down, she let her Instagram followers in on her secret: She found the haul on Too Good to Go. The app is one of many uniting deal-seekers with restaurants and grocers eager to keep aging food that’s still fit for consumption out of the trash in exchange for a small fee.
Users of apps like Too Good To Go, Flashfood, Feedback and Olio say they have paid anywhere from $3 to $10 for prepared lunches or dinners, a week’s worth of vegetables and fruit, several loaves of bread, pastry boxes and even, entire pizzas or cakes.
The savings often go a long way, said Eric Tribe, Flashfood’s chief marketplace officer.
“Over the holidays, we had a father who wrote in and thanked us because he’d been let go from his job due to COVID-19 and he used the money saved on Flashfood to buy stocking stuffers for his kids,” said Tribe.
The app, which is used by supermarket conglomerate Loblaw Corp., was started by Toronto entrepreneur Josh Domingues in 2016, after his chef sister threw out $4,000 of food following a catered event.
The app offers produce, meat, fish, bread, dairy and pantry staples nearing their best before date and often marked down by at least 50 per cent. Some items last for weeks, if frozen or cooked. Others have a day or two left.
Orders are retrieved in supermarkets, which typically mark items nearing their best before dates down or donate them to charities, food banks and farms for animal feed.
But those methods still leave grocers responsible for a quarter of the country’s food waste, so Flashfood targeted that portion exclusively, said Tribe. (The app does not divert food from charities, he added.)
To date, Flashfood has kept more than 13.5 million kilograms of food out of landfills and saved users a collective $90 million.
However, Second Harvest, a charity redistributing unsold items to people in need, estimates that almost 60 per cent or 35.5 million tonnes of food produced in Canada is wasted annually. About 32 per cent or 11.2 million tonnes of that lost food is edible and could be redirected to people in need.
“Some people claim this food waste can be solved by downloading an app,” said Maria Corradini, the Arrell Chair in Food Quality at the University of Guelph.
“That’s probably not true, but of course they can have a contribution to reducing this burden.”
She believes better inventory planning and use of artificial intelligence would go even further to addressing food waste.
Too Good To Go’s country manager for Canada agrees inventory management is key, but said, “matching supply and demand is very complex” and no restaurant wants to produce less only to find it can’t serve late customers.
Too Good To Go mostly deals with restaurants, bakeries, and butchers, but also partners with grocery and convenience stores.
Users of the app, which was founded in Copenhagen in 2016 and expanded to Canada last July, order ahead before fetching items at designated times.
What they pick up is a mystery because businesses sell “surprise bags,” and while some offer hints about their contents, others don’t.
For example, Italian food purveyor Eataly advertises some $8 bags as having charcuterie ingredients, but McEwan Foods, celebrity chef Mark McEwan’s supermarket, shares no clues about its $8 bags.
Toronto bakery Daan Go Cake Lab’s bags have featured cake slices or its famous character macarons. Some simply weren’t sold that day, but others have cracks or blemishes the bakery’s posh clientele wouldn’t accept.
Signing up for Too Good To Go was a no-brainer, said chief operating officer James Canedo.
“As chefs, you never want to see food wasted. It’s almost sacred for us,” he said.
“So many people out there don’t have the same privileges, so for food to be wasted, that is something we’re trying to prevent.”
Corradini lauds those sentiments and said the apps’ waste reduction goals are noble, but there are risks.
While some apps only deal with reputable vendors staffed with employees trained in handling food, others like Olio allow anyone to prepare food at home or sell items they can’t finish.
“I would never go for something that has been opened because you never know what went on there,” Corradini said.
She added that even food from grocers and restaurants should be examined closely before eating and customers should cook, freeze, prepare or consume anything they buy that is due to go off soon very quickly.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 23, 2022.
TORONTO – Canada Goose Holdings Inc. says it has signed a deal that will result in the creation of its first eyewear collection.
The deal announced on Thursday by the Toronto-based luxury apparel company comes in the form of an exclusive, long-term global licensing agreement with Marchon Eyewear Inc.
The terms and value of the agreement were not disclosed, but Marchon produces eyewear for brands including Lacoste, Nike, Calvin Klein, Ferragamo, Longchamp and Zeiss.
Marchon plans to roll out both sunglasses and optical wear under the Canada Goose name next spring, starting in North America.
Canada Goose says the eyewear will be sold through optical retailers, department stores, Canada Goose shops and its website.
Canada Goose CEO Dani Reiss told The Canadian Press in August that he envisioned his company eventually expanding into eyewear and luggage.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Almost seven years since news broke of an alleged conspiracy to fix the price of packaged bread across Canada, the saga isn’t over: the Competition Bureau continues to investigate the companies that may have been involved, and two class-action lawsuits continue to work their way through the courts.
Here’s a timeline of key events in the bread price-fixing case.
Oct. 31, 2017: The Competition Bureau says it’s investigating allegations of bread price-fixing and that it was granted search warrants in the case. Several grocers confirm they are co-operating in the probe.
Dec. 19, 2017: Loblaw and George Weston say they participated in an “industry-wide price-fixing arrangement” to raise the price of packaged bread. The companies say they have been co-operating in the Competition Bureau’s investigation since March 2015, when they self-reported to the bureau upon discovering anti-competitive behaviour, and are receiving immunity from prosecution. They announce they are offering $25 gift cards to customers amid the ongoing investigation into alleged bread price-fixing.
Jan. 31, 2018: In court documents, the Competition Bureau says at least $1.50 was added to the price of a loaf of bread between about 2001 and 2016.
Dec. 20, 2019: A class-action lawsuit in a Quebec court against multiple grocers and food companies is certified against a number of companies allegedly involved in bread price-fixing, including Loblaw, George Weston, Metro, Sobeys, Walmart Canada, Canada Bread and Giant Tiger (which have all denied involvement, except for Loblaw and George Weston, which later settled with the plaintiffs).
Dec. 31, 2021: A class-action lawsuit in an Ontario court covering all Canadian residents except those in Quebec who bought packaged bread from a company named in the suit is certified against roughly the same group of companies.
June 21, 2023: Bakery giant Canada Bread Co. is fined $50 million after pleading guilty to four counts of price-fixing under the Competition Act as part of the Competition Bureau’s ongoing investigation.
Oct. 25 2023: Canada Bread files a statement of defence in the Ontario class action denying participating in the alleged conspiracy and saying any anti-competitive behaviour it participated in was at the direction and to the benefit of its then-majority owner Maple Leaf Foods, which is not a defendant in the case (neither is its current owner Grupo Bimbo). Maple Leaf calls Canada Bread’s accusations “baseless.”
Dec. 20, 2023: Metro files new documents in the Ontario class action accusing Loblaw and its parent company George Weston of conspiring to implicate it in the alleged scheme, denying involvement. Sobeys has made a similar claim. The two companies deny the allegations.
July 25, 2024: Loblaw and George Weston say they agreed to pay a combined $500 million to settle both the Ontario and Quebec class-action lawsuits. Loblaw’s share of the settlement includes a $96-million credit for the gift cards it gave out years earlier.
Sept. 12, 2024: Canada Bread files new documents in Ontario court as part of the class action, claiming Maple Leaf used it as a “shield” to avoid liability in the alleged scheme. Maple Leaf was a majority shareholder of Canada Bread until 2014, and the company claims it’s liable for any price-fixing activity. Maple Leaf refutes the claims.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Companies in this story: (TSX:L, TSX:MFI, TSX:MRU, TSX:EMP.A, TSX:WN)
TORONTO – TD Bank Group, which is mired in a money laundering scandal in the U.S., says chief executive Bharat Masrani will retire next year.
Masrani, who will retire officially on April 10, 2025, says the bank’s, “anti-money laundering challenges,” took place on his watch and he takes full responsibility.
The bank named Raymond Chun, TD’s group head, Canadian personal banking, as his successor.
As part of a transition plan, Chun will become chief operating officer on Nov. 1 before taking over the top job when Masrani steps down at the bank’s annual meeting next year.
TD also announced that Riaz Ahmed, group head, wholesale banking and president and CEO of TD Securities, will retire at the end of January 2025.
TD has taken billions in charges related to ongoing U.S. investigations into the failure of its anti-money laundering program.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
