“Loblaws is Out of Control”: Canadians Unite Against Rising Grocery Prices
Photo Credit: David Kawai/Bloomberg via Financial Post
*Disclaimer: Since this article was sent for publication on Apr. 30, the boycott has begun and additional information has surfaced.*
A group of Canadians fed up with grocery prices has decided to boycott Canadian grocery giant Loblaws during the month of May.
The boycott includes all of Loblaws’s subsidiaries, including (but not limited to) Real Canadian Superstore, No Frills, T&T, Esso Gas, and Shoppers Drug Mart, as well as their in-house brands such as President’s Choice, No Name, and Joe Fresh.
This isn’t the first time Canadian consumers have expressed frustration over grocery prices, especially at Loblaws stores. Much of the public’s resentment towards the company, particularly in recent years, has been directed at Galen Weston Jr., the current president and heir of Loblaw Companies Limited.
This onslaught of criticism is in part due to the public image Weston has created for himself. Since the early 2000s, he has presented himself as the face of the company, appearing in advertisements and signing off on newsletters with his first name only.
In 2022, the X (then known as Twitter) hashtag #BoycottLoblaws saw a popularity surge after Loblaw president Galen Weston Jr. sent out a letter announcing a temporary “price freeze” on No Name products due to inflation.
Weston’s letter, which blogTO deemed “tone-deaf”, blamed supply chain costs for the ever-increasing cost of groceries, failing to mention that Weston’s family also owns one of Canada’s largest food processors and distributors.
Loblaws has also historically faced criticism for hiring political lobbyists. An IJF report from February revealed that “nearly 60 per cent of the people Loblaw companies have hired to lobby federally, in Ontario and in BC since 2006 previously worked for Conservative, Liberal or NDP administrations.”
The rise of r/loblawsisoutofcontrol
The story of the boycott began in November 2023 with Emily Johnson, a mental health and addictions worker in Ontario who had recently been on maternity leave with her second child.
It was during this time that she began to notice the rapidly increasing prices at grocery stores. “I found myself single and trying to support two very young kids on my own, so it really highlighted for me that I needed to start being more mindful with my shopping,” she told The Nest.
In November 2023, while scrolling through r/Ontario on Reddit, she saw a post about a holiday planter for sale at a Loblaws-owned store. The price of this product? $85.
Noticing other users in the comments expressing outrage over what she described as “some sticks and ribbon”, Johnson decided to create a subreddit dedicated to providing a safe space for people to voice their frustration towards high grocery prices, which she named “Loblaws Is Out Of Control”.
It wasn’t until January, when Loblaws announced it was getting rid of its half-price discount on nearly-expired produce, that the community decided to start taking action.
“People got really angry, and we saw almost 16,000 members join overnight,” Johnson said.
Loblaw quickly revoked the decision, but many were left with a bad taste in their mouths after the controversy. The community continued to grow in February, when Manulife Financial signed a deal with Loblaw to have its specialty drug program carried out at almost exclusively Loblaws-owned pharmacies — a decision that decreased the accessibility of specialty medications for Canadians living in rural areas. Despite this decision also being revoked a week later, the community has continued to grow rapidly since, amassing over 50,000 members.
As members of the subreddit became increasingly frustrated, discussions about boycotting the grocery giant began to emerge. After noticing these conversations within the community, the moderation team — led by Johnson — decided to organize a national boycott, which was officially announced in late March.
“Greater affordability, competition, and choice”
The original objectives of the boycott, as Johnson explained in a Reddit post, were to convince Loblaws to reduce their prices by 15 per cent and remove all “member-only pricing” schemes that force customers to become PC Optimum members to access sale prices. However, since the original announcement in March, the community has shifted its aims to reflect a more generalized hope for “greater affordability, competition, and choice” within the grocery sector.
Johnson explained that the lack of competition in Canada has contributed to food deserts across the country, and compared the situation here to that in the US. “Our neighbours to the south have a lot of antitrust laws legislated because their political forefathers felt that monopolies could potentially have more power than a government and undermine democracy itself,” she said. “We see Canadians literally starving, conversations popping up about people considering medically-assisted dying because they can’t afford groceries, and a government toothless against it [...] This current system is not working.”
The “Loblaws Is Out Of Control” community is hoping to see the Canadian government step in by enforcing the Grocery Code of Conduct, a piece of legislation currently in development that promotes fair practices among Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, Walmart, and Costco — the five largest grocers in Canada. The Code would serve both consumers and suppliers by enforcing fair dealing, timely payments and accurate forecasting.
Loblaws and Walmart are currently the only two grocers who have held out on signing the Code. On Dec. 7, Galen Weston stood before the House of Commons committee studying food prices, expressing his concern that the Code could “raise food prices for Canadians by more than $1 billion.”
The House of Commons committee sent a letter in mid-February urging Loblaw and Walmart to sign on, saying if they didn’t, it would “not hesitate to recommend that the federal and provincial governments adopt legislation to make it mandatory.”
Johnson expressed that “it’s very difficult to accurately critique [Loblaws’] profits and their profit margins because they’re involved in every step of the chain. They are a supplier in a lot of instances, they are the actual store in a lot of instances, and they’re paying themselves rent in some instances [...] Money is being sent to be actively hidden so that we don’t really know what’s actually going on. It just feeds into the narrative that we really don’t know the full extent of the problem here.”
The full demands of the boycott, updated on Apr. 22, can be viewed here.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois and others critique the movement
Although consumers have attempted to boycott the grocery giant for years — after all, the #BoycottLoblaws hashtag made its first appearance on X in 2010 — these efforts have had little to no effect on the company in past years. The Liberal, NDP, and Conservative parties have yet to comment on the boycott, but critics outside the political sphere have begun to speak about its potential efficacy.
Nicholas Li, an assistant economics professor at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CBC that he thinks the demands of the boycott are unrealistic. “Cutting prices by 15 per cent and removing […] special access to discounts for Optimum card holders are anathema to Loblaw's basic business model,” he said.
Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University, has expressed similar sentiments on social media. “Some are calling for yet another boycott of Loblaw, as if this is a novel idea [...] You'd have to be incredibly naive to believe it will make any difference,” he wrote in a post on X.
Johnson said, “I think the biggest issue we have right now is so-called ‘experts’ speaking out against us and trying to write us off as a group of extremists or a group of misguided idealists.”
“That’s our biggest hurdle right now: people who are being held in a position of authority [...] using their voice to belittle us and create the narrative that we don’t know what we’re doing [...] instead of coming from a position of fact and accurately critiquing our movement.”
She specifically mentioned Charlebois and told The Nest that “he has now twice used my first and last name and publicly has called me a hypocrite, as well as stating that I am personally responsible for a ‘Steal From Loblaws Day’ that has recently popped up.” Johnson specified to The Nest that she is not associated with this concept, and does not condone any illegal activity.
She additionally mentioned that Charlebois emailed her on Apr. 20 “to ask me to get the community to stop messaging him.”
The Nest contacted Charlebois requesting a comment on these allegations. Charlebois responded with a comprehensive email. “I don’t recall calling Emily Johnson anything, certainly not a hypocrite,” he began.
Charlebois included a copy of the email he sent to Johnson on Apr. 20, in which he claimed the “Steal from Loblaws Day” was instigated by a member of her Reddit community, and that the subreddit “frequently hosts content that encourages violence, theft from grocers”. He also explained that after his email address was shared in the subreddit, he and his family received “over 100 threatening emails”.
Along with the copy of the email, he explained that he “did not ask [Johnson] to tell members to not contact me; if you read the note carefully. What I was asking was for her to better monitor her platform.” He added that he has never been paid by Loblaw nor any grocer or trade organization related to food retail.
Charlebois concluded, “I mentioned Emily's name on X because she has done several media interviews herself about the platform. She outed herself. Otherwise, I wouldn't have mentioned her name.”
His full statement can be read here.
On Apr. 22, Johnson posted a community announcement on Reddit that included a statement regarding “Steal From Loblaws Day”.
“Our team strictly condemns all illegal activity, and are not associated with this event popping up,” the post wrote. “Furthermore, any comments which incite, encourage, or even jokingly suggest illegal acts will be removed, and accounts will be banned.”
The impacts so far
Despite facing criticism online, the “Loblaws Is Out Of Control” community’s impact has been evident in the stock market. Community member u/Totally_man shared on Apr. 18 that the daily volume of TSE:L saw a decrease of 25 per cent over ten days compared to the past three months.
Outside the stock market, the community is making an effort to educate consumers on alternatives to the five largest grocers in Canada. Johnson said that while the issue stretches beyond the Loblaws corporation, the community believes that “by targeting the biggest bully, the rest will fall in line.”