Grocery with a social purpose: what Canada could learn

Opinion. The views expressed are the author’s own.

In the United Kingdom, the corporate search for profit is expanding in interesting ways. Sainsbury’s is a grocery chain with added flavour, selling items you would expect in hardware, clothing or electronics stores. It has well over a thousand stores across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and it keeps opening more in regions with smaller populations and limited sales potential. Those stores can have a real effect on the communities around them. When a smaller store opens and employs 125 to 150 people, that is a significant investment in local lives. Many small towns and villages are thought not to have the profit potential a corporation looks for, yet these investments happen regularly.

Even a village of a few hundred residents can be profitable because of its people’s everyday needs, from food to medicine. In the past, residents relied on local mom-and-pop stores or travelled long distances for what they needed. With large cities saturated with these stores, the smaller community has become the new corporate target, and in a good way.

Ownership is often local or in partnership with the company, and full-time and part-time jobs make a real financial difference in communities that often feel ignored by the rest of the country and by corporate interests. Local teams know what their community needs and wants.

In Canada, investments like these are declining. If a store loses money for a year or two, it will often be closed, no matter how important it is to the community. It is a North American corporate rule that puts profit ahead of community needs. The optics are bad, but that is business. In Europe, a different attitude is flourishing beyond the U.K.’s borders, one in which social responsibility and community values are woven into corporate ambitions. Customers show real loyalty to stores that become true parts of their community. You can make a profit wherever you can find it.

Steven Kaszab lives in Bradford, Ontario.

Editor’s note: this column has been edited for length and clarity. A store count and a source in the author’s original submission could not be confirmed and were removed or generalized.