Loblaws sells bread for $8, but the gaslighting is free!
Unless you live under a rock eating scavenged worms (which would at least be somewhat affordable), you know Canada’s Public Enemy Number One these days is Galen Weston Jr. The feckless grocery robber baron – who inherited everything he has from his wealthy parents – is such a huge fan of starring in his own commercials, Canadians have been forced to look at his smug face for decades.
Hungry Canadians are ready to eat Galen Weston instead of his criminally overpriced groceries, but his chains are so wealthy and unfazed they're like 'Season him with our No Name Brand BBQ sauce for $12 a bottle!"
— Abby (@abbythetweet) January 31, 2023
What used to be a benign goofy nerd selling quirky No Name products during every commercial break on basic cable is now the personification of crony capitalist horseshittery, and his massive company simply can’t afford to make your groceries affordable for you. The company is spending a large amount of time replying randomly to average, everyday Canadians on Twitter, all fed up with the CEO and their business practices. They spouted a ton of utter nonsense that put forward one categorical, undeniable truth:
The mega-conglomerate of Canadian grocery chains led by the silver spoon-fed Weston heirs does not give a single fuck if you are hungry, but they’ll waste a whole day copy-pasting overly defensive, poorly-presented crisis PR statements into Twitter replies.
While we may be the face of food inflation but we are certainly not the cause. Food prices are higher in our stores simply because the manufacturers who make the products are charging more for them.
— Loblaw Companies (@loblawco) January 31, 2023
We froze prices to help customers at a time they needed it most. Food inflation continues and we’re seeing a lot of big cost increases from vendors, but hundreds of no name products will not go up.
— Loblaw Companies (@loblawco) February 1, 2023
There is a very real difference between a cost freeze from suppliers and a price freeze to customers. Some grocers talked about saving people money. Others pretended to copy our freeze. We actually did it.
— Loblaw Companies (@loblawco) February 1, 2023
We froze prices to help customers at a time they needed it most. This year, the average family will save thousands of dollars this year if they pick No Name over the national brands.
— Loblaw Companies (@loblawco) January 31, 2023
It’s easy to blame grocers for higher grocery prices. But on a $100 grocery bill, we make less than $4 profit.
— Loblaw Companies (@loblawco) January 31, 2023
We get it. It’s easy to blame grocers for higher grocery prices. But on a $100 grocery bill, our profit is less than $4.
— Loblaw Companies (@loblawco) February 1, 2023
At the heart of every one of their replies is this sentiment, with a side of counting all their cash: Tough. Shit. This is how people in business do business, and since they own every grocery store within a 20km radius of your home, your outrage is neato.
In the current crisis, Loblaws is hoping you’ve forgotten about the time the company blew the whistle (to avoid prosecution) on the bread price-fixing scheme they’d participated in for a decade and a half. “Inflation” was, in reality, just inflated prices manipulated by them. The heart of that scandal was that suppliers worked with retailers to raise prices together, in the name of profit and at the expense of Canadians. And now as prices continue to climb, the freeze on shitty internal brands that make the Westons richer is no more. As Loblaws blames supplier inflation, they’re hoping you’ve forgotten they know how to fix prices, so you maybe don’t think about how they might do it again because they didn’t get in trouble before.
As for us, those boujis farmers’ markets are finally cheaper than the grocery biz, so get your hipster toques out and if you can, start looking into buying local. It’s time – local cuts out the supply chain that Loblaws insists is the one and only problem, after all.
Went searching for images of 'the devil in hell' and at least it's not broken. pic.twitter.com/ZJwWJxxKSs
— Abby (@abbythetweet) January 31, 2023
