For David Hale, the tipping point was Red Rose tea.
A grocery shopper in the Moncton area, Hale says he watched over the past year as a box of 216 tea bags at Atlantic Superstore crept up from $9.99 to $13.99. A couple months ago, he walked into the store and says he discovered a new price: $23.99.
“I said there’s something going on here,” Hale said in an interview.
After speaking with a store manager and not getting a satisfying answer about what was behind the high price, Hale said he left without buying the tea.
A box of Red Rose tea was the tipping point for Moncton shopper David Hale. (Raechel Huizinga/CBC)
His son encouraged him to start shopping elsewhere, and Hale has only been back to Atlantic Superstore for dog food — when it’s on sale.
He stocked up on that at the end of April, ready to join other Canadians in boycotting all Loblaw Companies, which includes Atlantic Superstore, for the entire month of May (a box of 216 Red Rose tea bags was priced at $13.99 on May 7, when CBC visited the Atlantic Superstore in Moncton).
Other complaints about prices at the grocery giant that have circulated online include a $37 package of chicken breasts, $9 butter and $30 for feta cheese.
The prices led to the creation of a Reddit community called “Loblaws is out of control,” and the boycott was born.
Buying local
Forsaking corporate grocery stores can leave consumers — especially in a rural province like New Brunswick — with few alternatives. Buying from smaller grocers or farmers’ markets are a couple of options, but one farmer says New Brunswick doesn’t have enough producers to feed everyone.
Alyson Chisolm is the owner of Windy Hill Organic Farm in Kent County, about 55 kilometres north of Moncton.
She grows produce for farmers’ markets and her community-shared agriculture program, which takes up-front payments from consumers at the beginning of the growing season and in return provides baskets of fresh produce — spinach, tomatoes, zucchini, whatever is growing on the farm — every week until the season ends.
“We’re seeing fewer and fewer young people becoming farmers. We’re seeing a lot more young farmers or startup farms fail,” she said.
WATCH | If New Brunswickers want to abandon corporate grocery stores, a transformation is needed:
Here’s why N.B. farmers say the problem of food prices runs deeper than a boycott
5 hours ago
Duration 2:26
Some Canadians are boycotting Loblaw stores throughout May in response to high grocery prices, but New Brunswick farmers say the entire food system needs a transformation.
New Brunswick’s field-vegetable production reached 7,406 metric tonnes in 2023, according to the Department of Agriculture.
That’s an increase of 0.9 per cent from 2022. Self-sufficiency in vegetable production has also increased slightly, from 7.3 per cent in 2018 to 9.1 per cent in 2022. More recent data is not yet available.
Chisolm said there was renewed interest in buying local during the pandemic, when supply chain issues exposed how reliant New Brunswickers are on grocery stores — but as restrictions ended and the supply chain stabilized, that interest faded.
Alyson Chisolm uses this greenhouse to grow produce on her farm in Kent County. (Raechel Huizinga/CBC)
While her weekly food box subscribers have held steady, she said she believes that’s because other farms are struggling.
“I know quite a few farms who’ve either cut back their [community-shared agriculture] numbers quite drastically or have gotten out of farming,” she said. “It’s enabled me to maintain my numbers.”
Rebeka Frazer-Chiasson co-founded Ferme Terre Partagée, a co-op farm in Rogersville, with her partner Kevin Arseneau, now a Green MLA.
She said her weekly food-box numbers for this season are low so far, though not as bad as last year. This time four years ago, all of her spots were full — not only another sign of decreasing interest in buying local, she said, but also a sign that budgets are getting tighter.
Rebeka Frazer-Chiasson of Ferme Terre Partagée, says she shared this graph on social media to show how her farm’s food box prices have increased by 6.7 per cent over the past seven years, compared to an increase of more than 30 per cent at grocery stores in New Brunswick. (Ferme Terre Partagé / Instagram)
And not just for the average New Brunswickers. If farmers truly paid themselves for the work they do, Frazer-Chiasson said, the cost of their produce would be much higher.
There’s also the problem of housing. In Rogersville, she said the vacancy rate is low, another barrier for new farmers who have to invest thousands of dollars to get started.
“You can’t be making $15,000 a year and buying a house for $300,000.”
It’s ‘not enough’
Suzanne Fournier, executive director of the National Farmers Union of New Brunswick, said data from 2018 shows the net income for farmers was seven per cent of every dollar they made.
“That’s not enough to earn a living. That’s not enough to keep your farm going.”
Fournier acknowledged that the province recently announced there were record farm cash receipts in New Brunswick, but pointed out that most of that money goes to bills and debt.
“Farm debt is increasing at another exponential rate,” she said.
At the same time, so few companies control Canada’s grocery store system that farmers can’t raise their prices, Fournier said.
Chisolm made the same point, adding that’s why it’s so difficult to rebuild the food system.
“It’s not as simple as boycott Loblaw, buy from the farmers’ market,” she said.
“You have to build something. What we really need to do is transition. Transition away from supermarkets, transition towards local food and enable the farmers or the farmer wannabes to help meet that need.”
“Otherwise, it’s going to crash and burn, and we don’t want that to happen.”
TORONTO – Roots Corp. may have built its brand on all things comfy and cosy, but its CEO says activewear is now “really becoming a core part” of the brand.
The category, which at Roots spans leggings, tracksuits, sports bras and bike shorts, has seen such sustained double-digit growth that Meghan Roach plans to make it a key part of the business’ future.
“It’s an area … you will see us continue to expand upon,” she told analysts on a Friday call.
The Toronto-based retailer’s push into activewear has taken shape over many years and included several turns as the official designer and supplier of Team Canada’s Olympic uniform.
But consumers have had plenty of choice when it comes to workout gear and other apparel suited to their sporting needs. On top of the slew of athletic brands like Nike and Adidas, shoppers have also gravitated toward Lululemon Athletica Inc., Alo and Vuori, ramping up competition in the activewear category.
Roach feels Roots’ toehold in the category stems from the fit, feel and following its merchandise has cultivated.
“Our product really resonates with (shoppers) because you can wear it through multiple different use cases and occasions,” she said.
“We’ve been seeing customers come back again and again for some of these core products in our activewear collection.”
Her remarks came the same day as Roots revealed it lost $5.2 million in its latest quarter compared with a loss of $5.3 million in the same quarter last year.
The company said the second-quarter loss amounted to 13 cents per diluted share for the quarter ended Aug. 3, the same as a year earlier.
In presenting the results, Roach reminded analysts that the first half of the year is usually “seasonally small,” representing just 30 per cent of the company’s annual sales.
Sales for the second quarter totalled $47.7 million, down from $49.4 million in the same quarter last year.
The move lower came as direct-to-consumer sales amounted to $36.4 million, down from $37.1 million a year earlier, as comparable sales edged down 0.2 per cent.
The numbers reflect the fact that Roots continued to grapple with inventory challenges in the company’s Cooper fleece line that first cropped up in its previous quarter.
Roots recently began to use artificial intelligence to assist with daily inventory replenishments and said more tools helping with allocation will go live in the next quarter.
Beyond that time period, the company intends to keep exploring AI and renovate more of its stores.
It will also re-evaluate its design ranks.
Roots announced Friday that chief product officer Karuna Scheinfeld has stepped down.
Rather than fill the role, the company plans to hire senior level design talent with international experience in the outdoor and activewear sectors who will take on tasks previously done by the chief product officer.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Mediated talks between the union representing HandyDART workers in Metro Vancouver and its employer, Transdev, are set to resume today as a strike that has stopped most services drags into a second week.
No timeline has been set for the length of the negotiations, but Joe McCann, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1724, says they are willing to stay there as long as it takes, even if talks drag on all night.
About 600 employees of the door-to-door transit service for people unable to navigate the conventional transit system have been on strike since last Tuesday, pausing service for all but essential medical trips.
Hundreds of drivers rallied outside TransLink’s head office earlier this week, calling for the transportation provider to intervene in the dispute with Transdev, which was contracted to oversee HandyDART service.
Transdev said earlier this week that it will provide a reply to the union’s latest proposal on Thursday.
A statement from the company said it “strongly believes” that their employees deserve fair wages, and that a fair contract “must balance the needs of their employees, clients and taxpayers.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MONTREAL – Travel company Transat AT Inc. reported a loss in its latest quarter compared with a profit a year earlier as its revenue edged lower.
The parent company of Air Transat says it lost $39.9 million or $1.03 per diluted share in its quarter ended July 31.
The result compared with a profit of $57.3 million or $1.49 per diluted share a year earlier.
Revenue in what was the company’s third quarter totalled $736.2 million, down from $746.3 million in the same quarter last year.
On an adjusted basis, Transat says it lost $1.10 per share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of $1.10 per share a year earlier.
Transat chief executive Annick Guérard says demand for leisure travel remains healthy, as evidenced by higher traffic, but consumers are increasingly price conscious given the current economic uncertainty.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
