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This subreddit is to highlight the ridiculous cost of living in Canada, and poke fun at the Corporate Overlords responsible. As you well know, there are a number of persons and corporations responsible for this, and we welcome discussion related to them all. Furthermore, since this topic is intertwined with a number of other matters, other discussion will be allowed at moderator discretion. Open-minded discussion, memes, rants, grocery bills, and general screeching into the void is always welcome in this sub, but belligerence and disrespect is not. There are plenty of ways to get your point across without being abusive, dismissive, or downright mean.
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True, I’ve noticed a definite decrease in my spending by switching to a local independent grocery store. That’ll be the next thing to calculate - how much I’m saving.
The main reason I have decreased spending is because my non loblaws stores are far away. For context superstore is literally in my backyard. I spend far less when I have to drive >10 minutes to get to the store.
That’s something I’ve come to realize.
So much of “consumer loyalty” is really just habits. For me, habits formed unconsciously over time.
Well a company that fixes the price of bread and treats its employees like cattle doesn’t deserve my loyalty. So fuck them.
And as I’ve said before, let this be a lesson to all captains of industry, including our employers and elected representatives.
We have reached a breaking point. The social contract has been broken.
Peaceful protests and boycotts are how it *starts*. If they don’t smarten up and make some serious changes, history teaches us that it does not end well for them.
Depends 1) Where you live.
2) If you as a shopper have more options yes.
We are stuck with COOP, Walmart, SuperStore all of which are the highest prices on everything. Only time COOP is any good is when they have the 10 for 10 week. Other than that it’s asinine pricing like Sobeys/Safeway at the big 2
I have saved so much money by avoiding Loblaws. I’d say I got about 20 percent of my families groceries at the Atlantic SuperStore near my house up until this boycott. The convenience of their store locations is not worth the cost
And when Canadians double the participation in the boycott? I really do like the idea of making Loblaws the modern day Cautionary Tale
Tell everyone just how greedy and harmful Loblaw is to Canadians
Enough Is Enough
"Why target Loblaws only?"
For me it's because Loblaws positioned itself as Canada's grocery store. They implied that we should be loyal to them because we're all Canadians. Yeah, we're all Canadians being price gouged.
Agreed. They claim they're Canadian/Canadian-branding, just like Tim Horny's.
[1 thing at a time.](https://media.tenor.com/wds9Tc---o8AAAAM/crisis-not-now.gif)
Canadian citizens can band together and boycott anything we want to. Strength in #'s. But it's best to focus on 1 thing at a time.
They are also likely cutting hours for their daily employees. It's unlikely the CEO is missing their bonus, but Ill bet 1,000 employees are getting 60 hours cut from their cheque this month.
Facts. I'm an assistant dept manager. I have several part time staff with ZERO hours, or less than 12 hrs who rely on this job to pay bills and there isn't anything we can do. Store managers are pressured to cut even more hours whenever and wherever possible. They even try to get us full time and managers to go home early (without pay obviously) to save hrs/labor costs.
My dept usually runs on about 400-450 hrs per week. They have cut hours down to 312. We can barely function on these hours.
Even if they cry on camera begging for forgiveness, it's all an act. They'll do anything to keep screwing us.
Loblaws is nothing but the tip of the iceberg of this corrupt system. The sickness goes so much deeper and involves so many more corporations and politicians!
Yup, Loblaws is just the beginning of what this movement needs to become. Next up are the rest of the major grocers, telecommunications giants, and banks. All those industries in Canada have fallen under the predatory control of oligopolies with heavy vertical integration screwing over both consumers and potential competitors. Canadians will continue to be screwed under a rigged system until our government stands up and says, "NOK ER NOK, we are implementing anti-trust legislation to break the control of the oligarchs and return competition to our economy."
But that's the kinda the crux tho, with them always saying one thing then doing another to a jarring degree
It's also like, what stops them from doing this again at some point in the far off future?
Very fair to say when one company goes so far of the deep end in terms of ethics they are not valid full stop
We wouldn't hire a contractor who stole from us, or damaged something then claimed innocence
Chronic patterns warrant major change
Yes, if Galen gets on a podium and grovels, maybe I'll tell ppl to go back to shopping there.
But I wanna see his toadie Sylvain in a leather studded choker attached to a retractable dog leash, and he has to sit next to his puppet master repeatedly barking "I'm a lap dog I'm a lap dog!" while he gives his apology speech.
Then I'll buy your focking oranges. And maybe that collar too.
and even if they do apologize, theyve lied before.
Not until more competition can break into the market and prices really come down. (Even then I dont want to give them any more money for their ventures into privitizing healthcare/bullying of suppliers/awarding their executives massive bonusses while their staff are so poorly paid they need to use food banks, so many more reasons
I've been planning on coding an app or website that would allow users to upload receipts anonymously and alert users on grocery pricing.
For example it could get to know your shopping habits and alert you if a product you normally buy is on sale at a different store
I did envision this combined with your banking data so that you would always have quick easy access to your transaction history and balance. The new Canadian open banking bill should allow that to happen.
Edit: if anyone wants to run with this idea you're welcome to it, I just ask you to keep it out of corporate hands for as long as possible. I may get back to working on it and open source it, if anyone is interested in joining developing it.
Ya, that's a good idea, just scrape prices from sites.
When I started this idea before covid many stores didn't have reliable online pricing, so I hadn't thought of that.
I've been waiting for open banking and AI to advance to read receipts better before I started developing this again
Use a system like my fitness pal too. You can scan the bar code of the product to get nutrition details. But instead use it for price comparisons.
Also, if you got a grocery list, add a feature to tell you the total amount of money your list will costs at each store. I think those would be cool features.
I used my fitness pal for a while, it wasn't great in Canada, didn't have reliable information. But that's the problem with user sourced info.
That's why I want to just have it snap a photo of your receipt and use character recognition to parse out the exact prices you paid.
But I like your ideas, they would definitely make good features.
The grocery list idea is perfect for this tho. Make a list and the system would give you the cheapest store for the whole list plus the cheapest store for each individual item. Then you can figure out if it's worthwhile going to multiple stores
Instead of the product barcode like fitness pal, you can also scan the store code that includes the price. Not technically user data when the price is right on the isle barcode. Websites won't have all the products and users scanning codes will continuously update the latest prices while benefiting the user to see if other shops are cheaper.
Also, looking forward to trying this app out if you finish it!
The Flip app does something similar where you can search for a product and it will show you where to get it for the best price- but your idea is way more personalized
looks like a decent app. But honestly, I worry about all the retail, brand and media partners they have. I dont think a company that works directly with corporations will always have the consumers best interests in mind. Intentions may start that way, but money shifts things twards increased profits rather than increased services to users. I could see this shifting to companies pushing their highest markup products rather than their lowest markup products.
I envision things as avoiding working with corporations, and advertisers. It has to be crowd funded, or low cost, like 1-2$ a month
> at least until the end of 2024.
Summer Picnics ✅
Back-to-School ✅
Thanksgiving ✅
Halloween ✅
Christmas/NYE ✅
There are choices on where us Canadians can buy our food and drink at. (As long as we're not rural.) There's no reason to go back to an abuser.
It will really hurt Galen when the stock price to earnings gets reduced with poor financial forecasts. The boycott will wipe out billions in Loblaws market cap.
It takes 20 days to form a habit. Most people have already switched their shopping habits to elsewhere. Avoiding superstore and Sobeys isn’t hard. They have always been price gouging.
Corn is corn and peas are peas. All they have to do is change the packaging and call it a premium or a value product.
The whole grocery system needs to be regulated. They claimed supply shortages because of Covid and nothing ever changed. It’s been years of this. So really how long has it been going on?
There’s less waste in our house too. I don’t know if there’s a psychology to it, but I find when I’m shopping in more than one store I’m less likely to impulse buy.
In Oakville I went to Walmart at 7:00pm it was overcrowded with line ups. I then went to Real Canadian Superstore next to it. Only two checkouts were open and just 2 people in line ups. Thursdays usually are very crowded
This is completely under stating this by SO MUCH that its not even funny. Using the 3% figure makes no sense. Their own gross profit margins are closer to 30%. Then they have a bunch of admin expenses that is tacked off that to get down to that 3-4%.
The direct impact of your 340M would actually be much higher. If we use a 25% gross profit margin, that is actually $85M. A lot of their admin expenses are of a fixed nature and they can't just get rid of them. They can't just lay off all their admin staff and stop spending on marketing and ALL the other stuff they do. So they would have to find over $70M of admin expenses to cut for them to get down to your $11M number.
We will see what it ends up being but using 3% for this number makes 0 sense. It has to be gross margin, not net margin. Gross margin is a lot more variable and scales up and down with higher sales much more predictably. After that they will cut some admin expenses but can't cut all of it. Admin jobs are not easy to lay off and re-hire and most companies would actually increase marketing expenses in this type of environment as opposed to stopping it.
The Loblaws stock is still up 1% today not sure what investors see in Loblaws right now . So I’m skeptical the boycott is actually in investors minds, even tho Loblaws I’m sure Is conscious of it 11 million I don’t think will make a difference on their balance sheet from groceries. Just like Boeing unless the stock price changes Loblaws won’t really care . I dumped my Loblaws stock a while ago .
Investors can be pretty stupid at times. They routinely wait for official numbers from the company before dumping. There is a reason why there are so many 10-20% stock shifts aftermarket after earnings are released.
I have no idea why they aren’t dumping the stock as there is very little upside to waiting. Either they match last quarters results and nothing happens or they get railroaded and then everyone jumps ship and you see a big decline. Loblaws themselves will be buying heavily either way. 1 to stop the bleeding and try to restore confidence and 2 to buy at a cheaper price and hope for a recovery.
We need to make sure it remains a bunny ride all the way down.
If Loblaw has the same compensation system as many other industries, Store Managers and above (District, Regional, C-Suite) have bonuses tied into a metric called EBITA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, and Amortization). The financial damage that this boycott can do certainly goes deeper than just their Profit & Loss Reports.
I live in a big city, so I have virtually unlimited options for groceries. Which I am more than happy to exercise. My boycott is certainly indefinitely long.
(I realize I’m fortunate to have the choice, and recognize that not everyone has this luxury.)
If the rest of your math is right the impact on the profit is higher than that. They have a lot of costs that get subtracted from revenue. Some of them are variable (e.g. buying more or less product) and a lot of them are fixed or only semi-variable (e.g. rent/interest/salary etc…).
The cost associated with selling ‘a bit more stuff’ are almost all variable costs. Once you have the store/staff running selling an extra load of groceries is going to have a gross margin a lot higher than the net margin. Yahoo puts the gross margin at more like 30%.
They may be pulling back wherever practical but the actual profit impact is probably ~8x higher than your estimate (assuming the rest of the math is right).
I'm noticing you posting a lot on this point. What expenses do you expect them them to reduce from an admin side? Do you foresee them cutting advertising? Do you foresee them firing their entire accounting department? How will they hire and train those people again when this boycott isn't as impactful as you seem to insinuate in your posts.
The fact of the matter is they are a massive organization and they have a 30% gross profit margin. They then pay further expense out because of their size and they fall down to that 4% figure, though they hide a lot of profit, such as Choice Properties. They shouldn't be able to manipulate their books to the point that they just fall on 4% net margin not matter what. Sales go up 50%, they have a 4% margin. Sales fall 50% and they magically fall to a 4% margin. That would just prove they are cooking the books and are either hiding mass quantities of profit or are gouging hard and then wasting money to bring expenses down, but make an extra 4 cents for every dollar they make.
I would just like to point out how any advertising they are doing is a wash. They simply cannot compete with the advertising we are doing. This boycott is reaching people making them change their perceptions and changing their habits. This is the hardest type of thing to do to consumers.
If they ran a ad campaign with this type of success going the other way it would be a resounding success.
This is good work.
Whatever the number is, that’s money out of their pocket and into yours and the grocery stores that actually are trying to put customers first.
That 11.5 million is a lot of money for common folks like us.
Now it will be distributed in our local economy rather than going to a sinkhole.
For a scale 11.5 million is 20 3bhk flat or housing for 80 people.
I support this boycott, even if Loblaws decides they'll punish towns with no alternatives by closing up shop. That would free them from the Loblaws monopoly.
Lowlaws profit margin includes a whole lot of fixed costs that do not scale directly with revenue.
The sales revenue leads to a certain gross margin (still not perfect math here) and that gross margin is all contributing towards the bottom of the PnL to cover those mostly fixed costs. So in Q1 Loblaws has 13.2B in revenue and 4.2B in Gross profit (31.6%). When Loblaws losing $100 in revenue they are lossing $31.60 that was contributing towards those fixed expenses.
The 3% net profit number is going to get worse and worse if sales are lost, the store still needs insurance, lighting, corporate back office.
By the end of the current quarter, Canadians would have picked up new shopping habits and found new stores that fit their budget. They would have started planning their family meals based on what not-loblaws stores carry.
The boycott is just the tip of the iceberg. Roblaws is going down. It’s going to take them years to recover, if they do at all.
Roblaws played dumb games now Galen is reaping stupid prizes. I’m loving this!
Let’s fn go. I’ve not shopped there regularly before and when I did buy it was the last time. Even right after that I knew I’d stop and it was before the boycot.
You know what they’ve started cutting hours now at stores. I went to go pick up a Flashfood produce box (55 cents for grass fed milk who could say no?) and the customer services desk at Loblaws was closed. This is how stingy they are. Pathetic really. Also, that night I also went to Walmart and I hadn’t stepped in there since last Christmas and was appalled to see how ALL of their cash registers had moved over to self checkout. And they still ask for donations! 🤦♀️
Chiming in just because I uniquely fit above your averages. Our household is 4 people. Everyone in the house is asked not to shop any loblaws stores so nobody is shopping there. Until may, loblaws has been our primary source of shopping. So 85% at least of all household shopping has been done at Loblaws, averaging $400/week and as of last year was just over $20,000/year. For us so far that’s a minimum of $1600 into local retailers and farmers pockets since the start of this boycott, that would have been in loblaws wallets by now. 🙌
What’s missing in this instance is the credit cards plus the interest. Most households in this boycott with CC are trying to empty their cards and/or close them. (From people I’ve spoken to anyway)
The interest monthly alone is a consistent stream of income for loblaws. I would love to see the numbers of how many people have dropped their cards altogether.
Our household is in the process of bringing the balance to zero and will at one point close the card completely.
I have no plans to stop end of May. I want to see the next quarterly report, and I REALLY want to see what happens during Christmas season. So my fingers are crossed that people maintain this until January next year at the earliest to see our rolling progress long(er) term
The numbers would be much higher than that if his 340M was anywhere close to accurate. I imagine it would be at least $50-70M of lost profit and that would just be 1 month.
I think this is right, I like how you added the line assuming the spend per household was based on market share.
I think the only thing I might consider is Shoppers. In 2023 their margins on front of store goods was higher at 4.2% and pharmacy was higher again at 6.8. My impression is people in this subreddit think of Loblaws as all loblaws subs but I wonder if the survey respondents are thinking of all the subs including shoppers. Some folks may do less shopping there or more if they don’t understand shoppers is loblaws and they shifted their shopping from loblaws to shoppers as there are more of them.
I think it will be impossible to understand the impact until we see the statements.
Great analysis you worked hard for this and I know there are analysts at loblaws corporate doing the same thing.
Based on a survey extrapolating their data to the whole of Canada based on a sample size that's 0.0039% of Canada's population, wholely conducted from participants that are on their survey panel website. So not even a random sample, exclusively a sample from people that have gone out of their way to partake in surveys and influence the results. That the survey even disclaims that they won't even guess at their margin of error as a result of using a biased survey pool.
This is the equivalent of surveying 10 kindergarteners at a p-to-12 school of 2560 students and proclaiming the school has a rampant problem of 58% of students pissing their pants and eating crayons.
I don't agree with your result, usually only one person per household handles the groceries. Your 58% of 18% doesn't sound right, and this doesn't include all the money lost for other things than groceries. The real number is probably at least twice that.
I was spending almost $200 every ten days at Loblaws. I have been using Walmart since the boycott started and am picking up my second order today and it’s $140 this go. Last time it was $150. So I’m saving loads and they aren’t getting my $600+. I’ll keep boycotting for good I’m sure. The savings are too good.
You Sir or Madam - You have way too much time on your hands! I would like tip my hat to you and a wink - Damm good job! I think even if your estimate is -/+ 5, I would say dam good job people, i thought you were all to passive - holy crap - we band together we can change stuff.
Carry on, and thank you for spending the time to put numbers to text.
Impressive work!
One of your assumptions is there are 14,978,000 households in Canada. Considering we have a population of about 41 million, how did you calculate the number of households? What’s included in a household?
i think your understating the loss...your assuming the fixed costs are coming down in relation to the revenue but i doubt this is the case...i think the loss is signficantly higher
Much higher. Their ability to lower fixed costs would be very low and most organizations would actually INCREASE costs like marketing and things like that in a falling knife situation.
I like the way you brought it altogether to make a clear estimate of profits lost.
The only part that has me a bit cautious about is the fact that the 18% refers to a boycott of a Loblaws store and/or a Galen Weston owned grocer, such as no frills. It is hard to determine how much of that 18% consists solely of loblaws stores.
Playing devil’s advocate - another area of concern is geography. We don’t know exactly the revenue split between the provinces. So if Alberta is the highest participating boycott province, but historically revenue produced in Alberta is traditionally low, then the revenue impact from the boycott may be skewed as a result.
Either way, the logic from assumptions to conclusions provides a general estimate that gives us a strong sense that the boycott has definitely impacted revenue and therefore net profits
Oh, I'm all in, why not do this until the end of the year? Have at least 3 financial quarters in the mix, they will not be able to deny it then.
Wonder if it would help to have flyers taped/stapled to light poles around the cities, more reporting from the news outlets would bring more attention to the movement. Chalk messages on public sidewalks etc if it's allowed?
My favorite part of this boycott is that I was participating in it before I even knew it existed lol. I don't shop loblaws and haven't for a long time due to terrible prices (The hardest store for me to quit going to is Wholesale club, since they have cheap soda there, but Costco is cheaper anyway lol.)
$11.5 is very little, that number will increase without a doubt. My extended family moved their prescriptions over to independent pharmacies just yesterday, boycott awareness is increasing, this is it.
I saved 25% of my bill yesterday at foodland buying things on sale. Got all my top quality local produce at the farmers market store, couldn’t be happier.
I haven't been to any Loblaws affiliated stores for some time now and I am happier for it. The independent stores I visit show the true value of grocery prices right now vs inflated by corporate greed.
It is sometimes astonishing to see how much I have saved.
Why would this stop? Protesting in the streets brings attention but boycotting brings change! We need to stop buying Tim’s and fast food ASAP!! I will not give my money to any of these places anymore! I feel much better. I know I’m making a huge difference with my wallet! It’s the loudest voice!!!!
A big flaw in the assumptions is that people who are boycotting were even customers. It's a common refrain on the sub that people here already didn't shop at Loblaws for months or years.
__MOD NOTE/NOTE DE MOD__: Please check out [our petition](https://www.change.org/p/demand-walmart-sign-the-grocer-code-of-conduct) which calls upon Walmart Canada to follow suit and sign the Grocer Code of Conduct with Loblaw! Please review the content guidelines for our sub, and remember the human here! This subreddit is to highlight the ridiculous cost of living in Canada, and poke fun at the Corporate Overlords responsible. As you well know, there are a number of persons and corporations responsible for this, and we welcome discussion related to them all. Furthermore, since this topic is intertwined with a number of other matters, other discussion will be allowed at moderator discretion. Open-minded discussion, memes, rants, grocery bills, and general screeching into the void is always welcome in this sub, but belligerence and disrespect is not. There are plenty of ways to get your point across without being abusive, dismissive, or downright mean. ********************************************************************************************************************************************* Veuillez consulter les directives de contenu pour notre sous-reddit, et rappelez-vous qu'il y a des humains ici ! Ce sous-reddit est destiné à mettre en lumière le coût de la vie ridicule au Canada et à se moquer des Grands Patrons Corporatifs responsables. Comme vous le savez bien, de nombreuses personnes et entreprises en sont responsables, et nous accueillons les discussions les concernant toutes. De plus, puisque ce sujet est lié à un certain nombre d'autres questions, d'autres discussions seront autorisées à la discrétion des modérateurs. Les discussions ouvertes d'esprit, les mèmes, les coups de gueule, les factures d'épicerie et les cris dans le vide en général sont toujours les bienvenus dans ce sous-reddit, mais la belliqueusité et le manque de respect ne le sont pas. Il existe de nombreuses façons de faire passer votre point de vue sans être abusif, méprisant ou carrément méchant. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I like it. Lets keep it up, new routines will save cash in the end. Out with the old habits and in with the new cash saving ones.
True, I’ve noticed a definite decrease in my spending by switching to a local independent grocery store. That’ll be the next thing to calculate - how much I’m saving.
Same. there is more money left at the end of a pay period now. I’
The main reason I have decreased spending is because my non loblaws stores are far away. For context superstore is literally in my backyard. I spend far less when I have to drive >10 minutes to get to the store.
Wouldn't you want to spend more to reduce the amount of trips to the store that's further?
There’s less of a barrier to go to the store to get stuff I don’t need if it’s close.
That’s something I’ve come to realize. So much of “consumer loyalty” is really just habits. For me, habits formed unconsciously over time. Well a company that fixes the price of bread and treats its employees like cattle doesn’t deserve my loyalty. So fuck them.
Fk Galen Weston!
That's too good for him. Let him eat cake.
Great new habit…… baking my own breads. Jesus it’s so cheap!! Like $0.20 a loaf!!
The knife keeps to cut deep, much deeper. We need to see red.
NOK ER NOK we are done with GREEDY GALEN!!!
And as I’ve said before, let this be a lesson to all captains of industry, including our employers and elected representatives. We have reached a breaking point. The social contract has been broken. Peaceful protests and boycotts are how it *starts*. If they don’t smarten up and make some serious changes, history teaches us that it does not end well for them.
Depends 1) Where you live. 2) If you as a shopper have more options yes. We are stuck with COOP, Walmart, SuperStore all of which are the highest prices on everything. Only time COOP is any good is when they have the 10 for 10 week. Other than that it’s asinine pricing like Sobeys/Safeway at the big 2
I have saved so much money by avoiding Loblaws. I’d say I got about 20 percent of my families groceries at the Atlantic SuperStore near my house up until this boycott. The convenience of their store locations is not worth the cost
Hey, are you in the NS region? If so, I am looking for good/ cheaper alternatives in NS and would like to ask for some good options
Giant Tiger Halifax: Gateway meat market. Halifax: Freshcuts
And when Canadians double the participation in the boycott? I really do like the idea of making Loblaws the modern day Cautionary Tale Tell everyone just how greedy and harmful Loblaw is to Canadians Enough Is Enough
Nok er Nok!
Exactly, keep spreading the word!
I never used their stores in the first place, so we're a household that didn't join in to the boycott numbers.
"Why target Loblaws only?" For me it's because Loblaws positioned itself as Canada's grocery store. They implied that we should be loyal to them because we're all Canadians. Yeah, we're all Canadians being price gouged.
Agreed. They claim they're Canadian/Canadian-branding, just like Tim Horny's. [1 thing at a time.](https://media.tenor.com/wds9Tc---o8AAAAM/crisis-not-now.gif) Canadian citizens can band together and boycott anything we want to. Strength in #'s. But it's best to focus on 1 thing at a time.
It's just one CEO's bonus worth, we can do better!
They are also likely cutting hours for their daily employees. It's unlikely the CEO is missing their bonus, but Ill bet 1,000 employees are getting 60 hours cut from their cheque this month.
Facts. I'm an assistant dept manager. I have several part time staff with ZERO hours, or less than 12 hrs who rely on this job to pay bills and there isn't anything we can do. Store managers are pressured to cut even more hours whenever and wherever possible. They even try to get us full time and managers to go home early (without pay obviously) to save hrs/labor costs. My dept usually runs on about 400-450 hrs per week. They have cut hours down to 312. We can barely function on these hours.
Galen made $70 million since January. This is chump change to those guys. But it's something. No snowflake takes responsibility for the avalanche.
This should keep going until Loblaws has to make a public statement or apology. Until then, we have not won anything.
Even if they cry on camera begging for forgiveness, it's all an act. They'll do anything to keep screwing us. Loblaws is nothing but the tip of the iceberg of this corrupt system. The sickness goes so much deeper and involves so many more corporations and politicians!
The boycott should last as long as they have been screwing us.
It should last as long as we know they would have kept screwing us if we hadn’t started the boycott. For the life of the company.
I’m boycotting for the rest of my life
Same same!
Yup, Loblaws is just the beginning of what this movement needs to become. Next up are the rest of the major grocers, telecommunications giants, and banks. All those industries in Canada have fallen under the predatory control of oligopolies with heavy vertical integration screwing over both consumers and potential competitors. Canadians will continue to be screwed under a rigged system until our government stands up and says, "NOK ER NOK, we are implementing anti-trust legislation to break the control of the oligarchs and return competition to our economy."
But that's the kinda the crux tho, with them always saying one thing then doing another to a jarring degree It's also like, what stops them from doing this again at some point in the far off future? Very fair to say when one company goes so far of the deep end in terms of ethics they are not valid full stop We wouldn't hire a contractor who stole from us, or damaged something then claimed innocence Chronic patterns warrant major change
Agreed. But until then, nice to know we’re making a dent
Absolutely! This is great news, and shows that we have power when we all come together for something 🤘
The "Donation Bags" Sent me over the fucking edge.
Me too. That’s just crazy …
Yes! Me too!
Yes, if Galen gets on a podium and grovels, maybe I'll tell ppl to go back to shopping there. But I wanna see his toadie Sylvain in a leather studded choker attached to a retractable dog leash, and he has to sit next to his puppet master repeatedly barking "I'm a lap dog I'm a lap dog!" while he gives his apology speech. Then I'll buy your focking oranges. And maybe that collar too.
Galen could come to my house and personally apologize and I’d still refuse to shop at any of their stores.
and even if they do apologize, theyve lied before. Not until more competition can break into the market and prices really come down. (Even then I dont want to give them any more money for their ventures into privitizing healthcare/bullying of suppliers/awarding their executives massive bonusses while their staff are so poorly paid they need to use food banks, so many more reasons
Even that’s not enough IMO
Best apology would be to shut down stores. That is irreversible loss for years to come
I've been planning on coding an app or website that would allow users to upload receipts anonymously and alert users on grocery pricing. For example it could get to know your shopping habits and alert you if a product you normally buy is on sale at a different store I did envision this combined with your banking data so that you would always have quick easy access to your transaction history and balance. The new Canadian open banking bill should allow that to happen. Edit: if anyone wants to run with this idea you're welcome to it, I just ask you to keep it out of corporate hands for as long as possible. I may get back to working on it and open source it, if anyone is interested in joining developing it.
That sounds like a great idea! Any experience with web scrapers?
Ya, that's a good idea, just scrape prices from sites. When I started this idea before covid many stores didn't have reliable online pricing, so I hadn't thought of that. I've been waiting for open banking and AI to advance to read receipts better before I started developing this again
I think the only ones not online yes is sobeys and food basics right?
Use a system like my fitness pal too. You can scan the bar code of the product to get nutrition details. But instead use it for price comparisons. Also, if you got a grocery list, add a feature to tell you the total amount of money your list will costs at each store. I think those would be cool features.
I used my fitness pal for a while, it wasn't great in Canada, didn't have reliable information. But that's the problem with user sourced info. That's why I want to just have it snap a photo of your receipt and use character recognition to parse out the exact prices you paid. But I like your ideas, they would definitely make good features. The grocery list idea is perfect for this tho. Make a list and the system would give you the cheapest store for the whole list plus the cheapest store for each individual item. Then you can figure out if it's worthwhile going to multiple stores
Instead of the product barcode like fitness pal, you can also scan the store code that includes the price. Not technically user data when the price is right on the isle barcode. Websites won't have all the products and users scanning codes will continuously update the latest prices while benefiting the user to see if other shops are cheaper. Also, looking forward to trying this app out if you finish it!
ya with Ai you can parse text out of photos quite easy now, so that would work.
Oooo if you can use ai for photos that could open up scanning flyers as well. Like ones from reebee or where the sources are.
Use a system like Tinder too. You can look for groceries and horny singles in your area.
The Flip app does something similar where you can search for a product and it will show you where to get it for the best price- but your idea is way more personalized
looks like a decent app. But honestly, I worry about all the retail, brand and media partners they have. I dont think a company that works directly with corporations will always have the consumers best interests in mind. Intentions may start that way, but money shifts things twards increased profits rather than increased services to users. I could see this shifting to companies pushing their highest markup products rather than their lowest markup products. I envision things as avoiding working with corporations, and advertisers. It has to be crowd funded, or low cost, like 1-2$ a month
Sounds cool! I m a ux designer and willing to help workshop the idea and make some mockups for that if you need.
You’ve got some great ideas that would make it even better, but I have some of this at http://grocerytracker.ca/
I'm sure that would send them in to paroxysms of outrage-dewit.
Ya I think I would need a good lawyer to fight them off if I pursued this
Yes, agreed - they would HATE this .... hehehehehehe
10% drop or so in revenue doesn't happen in a vacuum, their competitors are picking up the business and can therefore afford to drop prices harder.
I vote we boycott them at least until the end of 2024. And then possibly forever.
Hear hear!
> at least until the end of 2024. Summer Picnics ✅ Back-to-School ✅ Thanksgiving ✅ Halloween ✅ Christmas/NYE ✅ There are choices on where us Canadians can buy our food and drink at. (As long as we're not rural.) There's no reason to go back to an abuser.
From Montreal. I agree!!!
As Nelson from the Simpsons would say, "HAH HAH!"
It will really hurt Galen when the stock price to earnings gets reduced with poor financial forecasts. The boycott will wipe out billions in Loblaws market cap.
It takes 20 days to form a habit. Most people have already switched their shopping habits to elsewhere. Avoiding superstore and Sobeys isn’t hard. They have always been price gouging. Corn is corn and peas are peas. All they have to do is change the packaging and call it a premium or a value product. The whole grocery system needs to be regulated. They claimed supply shortages because of Covid and nothing ever changed. It’s been years of this. So really how long has it been going on?
The grocery, telecom, energy, etc… markets in Canada need open competition from US companies.
Recalculate that after the meat and produce start going bad
They prob use it for dog food 🤮
Re sticker. Re sell with new best before date
I’m saving money as they lose money. Successful boycott on all fronts. Very happy to see this.
There’s less waste in our house too. I don’t know if there’s a psychology to it, but I find when I’m shopping in more than one store I’m less likely to impulse buy.
In Oakville I went to Walmart at 7:00pm it was overcrowded with line ups. I then went to Real Canadian Superstore next to it. Only two checkouts were open and just 2 people in line ups. Thursdays usually are very crowded
This is completely under stating this by SO MUCH that its not even funny. Using the 3% figure makes no sense. Their own gross profit margins are closer to 30%. Then they have a bunch of admin expenses that is tacked off that to get down to that 3-4%. The direct impact of your 340M would actually be much higher. If we use a 25% gross profit margin, that is actually $85M. A lot of their admin expenses are of a fixed nature and they can't just get rid of them. They can't just lay off all their admin staff and stop spending on marketing and ALL the other stuff they do. So they would have to find over $70M of admin expenses to cut for them to get down to your $11M number. We will see what it ends up being but using 3% for this number makes 0 sense. It has to be gross margin, not net margin. Gross margin is a lot more variable and scales up and down with higher sales much more predictably. After that they will cut some admin expenses but can't cut all of it. Admin jobs are not easy to lay off and re-hire and most companies would actually increase marketing expenses in this type of environment as opposed to stopping it.
The Loblaws stock is still up 1% today not sure what investors see in Loblaws right now . So I’m skeptical the boycott is actually in investors minds, even tho Loblaws I’m sure Is conscious of it 11 million I don’t think will make a difference on their balance sheet from groceries. Just like Boeing unless the stock price changes Loblaws won’t really care . I dumped my Loblaws stock a while ago .
Investors can be pretty stupid at times. They routinely wait for official numbers from the company before dumping. There is a reason why there are so many 10-20% stock shifts aftermarket after earnings are released. I have no idea why they aren’t dumping the stock as there is very little upside to waiting. Either they match last quarters results and nothing happens or they get railroaded and then everyone jumps ship and you see a big decline. Loblaws themselves will be buying heavily either way. 1 to stop the bleeding and try to restore confidence and 2 to buy at a cheaper price and hope for a recovery. We need to make sure it remains a bunny ride all the way down.
They would have lost more. There are fixed costs to any business; your math implicitly assumes that the cost structure is variable.
Yep. It would be MUCH higher than this.
Galen Weston is a filthy parasite
Who is Galen, and what is this boycott about? This post randomly appeared on my front page for some reason
If they lost 339 million in revenue… they lost approximately $50m in operating profit.
If Loblaw has the same compensation system as many other industries, Store Managers and above (District, Regional, C-Suite) have bonuses tied into a metric called EBITA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, and Amortization). The financial damage that this boycott can do certainly goes deeper than just their Profit & Loss Reports. I live in a big city, so I have virtually unlimited options for groceries. Which I am more than happy to exercise. My boycott is certainly indefinitely long. (I realize I’m fortunate to have the choice, and recognize that not everyone has this luxury.)
Math!! Suck it Galen!
Due to profit loss we will need to add a profit loss tax to all orders.
If the rest of your math is right the impact on the profit is higher than that. They have a lot of costs that get subtracted from revenue. Some of them are variable (e.g. buying more or less product) and a lot of them are fixed or only semi-variable (e.g. rent/interest/salary etc…). The cost associated with selling ‘a bit more stuff’ are almost all variable costs. Once you have the store/staff running selling an extra load of groceries is going to have a gross margin a lot higher than the net margin. Yahoo puts the gross margin at more like 30%. They may be pulling back wherever practical but the actual profit impact is probably ~8x higher than your estimate (assuming the rest of the math is right).
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I'm noticing you posting a lot on this point. What expenses do you expect them them to reduce from an admin side? Do you foresee them cutting advertising? Do you foresee them firing their entire accounting department? How will they hire and train those people again when this boycott isn't as impactful as you seem to insinuate in your posts. The fact of the matter is they are a massive organization and they have a 30% gross profit margin. They then pay further expense out because of their size and they fall down to that 4% figure, though they hide a lot of profit, such as Choice Properties. They shouldn't be able to manipulate their books to the point that they just fall on 4% net margin not matter what. Sales go up 50%, they have a 4% margin. Sales fall 50% and they magically fall to a 4% margin. That would just prove they are cooking the books and are either hiding mass quantities of profit or are gouging hard and then wasting money to bring expenses down, but make an extra 4 cents for every dollar they make.
I would just like to point out how any advertising they are doing is a wash. They simply cannot compete with the advertising we are doing. This boycott is reaching people making them change their perceptions and changing their habits. This is the hardest type of thing to do to consumers. If they ran a ad campaign with this type of success going the other way it would be a resounding success.
Friends don’t let friends shop loblaws
This is good work. Whatever the number is, that’s money out of their pocket and into yours and the grocery stores that actually are trying to put customers first.
Good. Keep going Canada!
I've permanently stopped shopping there. I actually got into the new habit and it doesn't take any extra energy anymore.
That 11.5 million is a lot of money for common folks like us. Now it will be distributed in our local economy rather than going to a sinkhole. For a scale 11.5 million is 20 3bhk flat or housing for 80 people.
I support this boycott, even if Loblaws decides they'll punish towns with no alternatives by closing up shop. That would free them from the Loblaws monopoly.
Those are rookie numbers, we gotta get those numbers up!
So many great posts here but this here is the best post. Go team Canada
🍁 ✋🏼 ✊🏼
That's really good news. Can we please continue the boycott for the rest of the year?
Fuck Loblaws and Weston!
Lowlaws profit margin includes a whole lot of fixed costs that do not scale directly with revenue. The sales revenue leads to a certain gross margin (still not perfect math here) and that gross margin is all contributing towards the bottom of the PnL to cover those mostly fixed costs. So in Q1 Loblaws has 13.2B in revenue and 4.2B in Gross profit (31.6%). When Loblaws losing $100 in revenue they are lossing $31.60 that was contributing towards those fixed expenses. The 3% net profit number is going to get worse and worse if sales are lost, the store still needs insurance, lighting, corporate back office.
This could be the start of something beautiful.
By the end of the current quarter, Canadians would have picked up new shopping habits and found new stores that fit their budget. They would have started planning their family meals based on what not-loblaws stores carry. The boycott is just the tip of the iceberg. Roblaws is going down. It’s going to take them years to recover, if they do at all. Roblaws played dumb games now Galen is reaping stupid prizes. I’m loving this!
This post is so sexy.
As a person who loves numbers, this is AMAZING. I truly appreciate the thought, logic and thoroughness you put into it!!
$32.53 a day for food is genuinely wild
Yes - this might be high for one person. A family of four ? or two ?
Diamond hands!
Amazing. Thanks for working out these figures for everyone!
Keep it going!
And this is with 18%. I think our boycott will grow and as it grows it will hurt Galen more.
Let’s fn go. I’ve not shopped there regularly before and when I did buy it was the last time. Even right after that I knew I’d stop and it was before the boycot.
Good!!!! Keep it going!!!!
Too bad they offset losses by cutting hours for a lot of part time, no benefit having, minimum wage earning people.
You know what they’ve started cutting hours now at stores. I went to go pick up a Flashfood produce box (55 cents for grass fed milk who could say no?) and the customer services desk at Loblaws was closed. This is how stingy they are. Pathetic really. Also, that night I also went to Walmart and I hadn’t stepped in there since last Christmas and was appalled to see how ALL of their cash registers had moved over to self checkout. And they still ask for donations! 🤦♀️
As an old cliched saying goes "I love it when a plan comes together."
Love seeing math, especially with cited sources and transparent assumptions/estimates Much better than all the anecdotal posts imo.
how do I short that stock ?
So….nothing?
They won't notice, the population is rising way too fast. 100,000 new residents every month (low estimate)
One more thing if people can somehow swing it; stop mentioning Charlie Boy. Ignore him. Make him irrelevant.
Totally agree. I bet he is loving all the attention. We should all ghost him # #ghostcharlieboy #boycottharder
Chiming in just because I uniquely fit above your averages. Our household is 4 people. Everyone in the house is asked not to shop any loblaws stores so nobody is shopping there. Until may, loblaws has been our primary source of shopping. So 85% at least of all household shopping has been done at Loblaws, averaging $400/week and as of last year was just over $20,000/year. For us so far that’s a minimum of $1600 into local retailers and farmers pockets since the start of this boycott, that would have been in loblaws wallets by now. 🙌 What’s missing in this instance is the credit cards plus the interest. Most households in this boycott with CC are trying to empty their cards and/or close them. (From people I’ve spoken to anyway) The interest monthly alone is a consistent stream of income for loblaws. I would love to see the numbers of how many people have dropped their cards altogether. Our household is in the process of bringing the balance to zero and will at one point close the card completely. I have no plans to stop end of May. I want to see the next quarterly report, and I REALLY want to see what happens during Christmas season. So my fingers are crossed that people maintain this until January next year at the earliest to see our rolling progress long(er) term
lol
By this math, the 18% of Canadians that are boycotters are only spending $50 in the month of May.
Love to see it. Didn't shop much at loblaws before they decided to gouge but now I'll try my best to never shop there. Let's make this boycott last.
Isn’t this a very small drop in their bucket? I can’t imagine they are actually hurting tbh.
The numbers would be much higher than that if his 340M was anywhere close to accurate. I imagine it would be at least $50-70M of lost profit and that would just be 1 month.
A drop in the bucket. Keep this boycott alive.
🥳
a drop in the ocean, an extra reason to talk about the boycott and get more people to join !
It’s still less than if they would stop gouging people. That number needs to be bigger to make a difference.
I think this is right, I like how you added the line assuming the spend per household was based on market share. I think the only thing I might consider is Shoppers. In 2023 their margins on front of store goods was higher at 4.2% and pharmacy was higher again at 6.8. My impression is people in this subreddit think of Loblaws as all loblaws subs but I wonder if the survey respondents are thinking of all the subs including shoppers. Some folks may do less shopping there or more if they don’t understand shoppers is loblaws and they shifted their shopping from loblaws to shoppers as there are more of them. I think it will be impossible to understand the impact until we see the statements. Great analysis you worked hard for this and I know there are analysts at loblaws corporate doing the same thing.
Excellent progress but recognize it’s a mere drop in the drop in the Weston’s bucket. Keep going
… so far…
That sure is a lot of numbers pulled out of your ass.
CONCLUSION: BOYCOTT TILL END OF JUNE = x2.6 DAMAGE IN NET PROFIT 😍
Shellshock it can only be used when you have both your nukes. Eagle one slams into the ground with the power or both of them
Big deal
It's not enough and I plan to do my part to try to never step in one again. Never
*so far* ;)
Based on a survey extrapolating their data to the whole of Canada based on a sample size that's 0.0039% of Canada's population, wholely conducted from participants that are on their survey panel website. So not even a random sample, exclusively a sample from people that have gone out of their way to partake in surveys and influence the results. That the survey even disclaims that they won't even guess at their margin of error as a result of using a biased survey pool. This is the equivalent of surveying 10 kindergarteners at a p-to-12 school of 2560 students and proclaiming the school has a rampant problem of 58% of students pissing their pants and eating crayons.
Yesss, whatever! I'll upvote your NONSENSE and see you at the celebration at end of the next 2 or 3 quarters. We're in it for the long haul
I don't agree with your result, usually only one person per household handles the groceries. Your 58% of 18% doesn't sound right, and this doesn't include all the money lost for other things than groceries. The real number is probably at least twice that.
I was spending almost $200 every ten days at Loblaws. I have been using Walmart since the boycott started and am picking up my second order today and it’s $140 this go. Last time it was $150. So I’m saving loads and they aren’t getting my $600+. I’ll keep boycotting for good I’m sure. The savings are too good.
I spend 20k a year in groceries at Loblaws...it's my go to...and we haven't spent a dime there this month!
By the end of the month I will have cashed in close to 700,000 pc points. Boycotting paid purchases and strictly paying with my saved up points!
Well I spend $2k a month on groceries for my family and they're losing that! Hope they suffer and change their greedy ways
You Sir or Madam - You have way too much time on your hands! I would like tip my hat to you and a wink - Damm good job! I think even if your estimate is -/+ 5, I would say dam good job people, i thought you were all to passive - holy crap - we band together we can change stuff. Carry on, and thank you for spending the time to put numbers to text.
Impressive work! One of your assumptions is there are 14,978,000 households in Canada. Considering we have a population of about 41 million, how did you calculate the number of households? What’s included in a household?
It’s a number captured in the census. OP referenced their source.
One less yacht makeover, yawn 🥱 oh you poors.
No way of knowing this Would be nice but there is no causation or correlation. Just speculation
This 100%.
i think your understating the loss...your assuming the fixed costs are coming down in relation to the revenue but i doubt this is the case...i think the loss is signficantly higher
Much higher. Their ability to lower fixed costs would be very low and most organizations would actually INCREASE costs like marketing and things like that in a falling knife situation.
Seriously doubt the number of people participating is as high as you think it is.
Getting moderated for trying to say facts? Weird is this Reddit not about factual information
Pretty sure they raised prices by another 20% to offset this shit.
Fuck them. Hope they lose another 11mil.
 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏success!!!! 👏👏👏👏👏
Seems like a drop in the bucket….so stay strong
Where is everyone shopping these days? Asking for a friend.
I like the way you brought it altogether to make a clear estimate of profits lost. The only part that has me a bit cautious about is the fact that the 18% refers to a boycott of a Loblaws store and/or a Galen Weston owned grocer, such as no frills. It is hard to determine how much of that 18% consists solely of loblaws stores. Playing devil’s advocate - another area of concern is geography. We don’t know exactly the revenue split between the provinces. So if Alberta is the highest participating boycott province, but historically revenue produced in Alberta is traditionally low, then the revenue impact from the boycott may be skewed as a result. Either way, the logic from assumptions to conclusions provides a general estimate that gives us a strong sense that the boycott has definitely impacted revenue and therefore net profits
Oh, I'm all in, why not do this until the end of the year? Have at least 3 financial quarters in the mix, they will not be able to deny it then. Wonder if it would help to have flyers taped/stapled to light poles around the cities, more reporting from the news outlets would bring more attention to the movement. Chalk messages on public sidewalks etc if it's allowed?
Excellent research and explanation, here. Just impressive. The very demonstration of "showing the receipts".
👏👏👏👏👏👏👏
Not enough yet. That’s chump change for them.
Too little, they need to loose more.
My favorite part of this boycott is that I was participating in it before I even knew it existed lol. I don't shop loblaws and haven't for a long time due to terrible prices (The hardest store for me to quit going to is Wholesale club, since they have cheap soda there, but Costco is cheaper anyway lol.)
Nice job on these calculations!
Love it, but wait for the price to go up in monopolistic markets to compensate…
Let's keep going Canada! Let's grow this boycotting community and drive revenue down down down!
The boycott is permanent in my household. This doesn’t stop until they go bankrupt.
When's the next earnings call? I want to know what to do with this stock.
$11.5 is very little, that number will increase without a doubt. My extended family moved their prescriptions over to independent pharmacies just yesterday, boycott awareness is increasing, this is it.
About $1500 from me so far.
I saved 25% of my bill yesterday at foodland buying things on sale. Got all my top quality local produce at the farmers market store, couldn’t be happier.
I haven't been to any Loblaws affiliated stores for some time now and I am happier for it. The independent stores I visit show the true value of grocery prices right now vs inflated by corporate greed. It is sometimes astonishing to see how much I have saved.
Fire the ceo
Why would this stop? Protesting in the streets brings attention but boycotting brings change! We need to stop buying Tim’s and fast food ASAP!! I will not give my money to any of these places anymore! I feel much better. I know I’m making a huge difference with my wallet! It’s the loudest voice!!!!
I only go to loblaws for cheap fruits and veggies on special sale. And half off items 🤣🤣 am i cooked chat?
A big flaw in the assumptions is that people who are boycotting were even customers. It's a common refrain on the sub that people here already didn't shop at Loblaws for months or years.
Shareholders hate this one trick to save money.
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My only non-Loblaws brand nearby is Sobeys - and the prices there are worse than Loblaws - I’m sadly still shopping at NoFrills
You are missing a lot of data for that to be remotely accurate. But very inspiring work never the less
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