Canada’s largest food retailer, Loblaw Companies Limited, is announcing a price freeze on all its No Name branded products until January 31, saying food inflation is driving up grocery bills.
The Sans Nom private label includes more than 1,500 grocery items.
In a letter shared with members of the company’s PC Optimum loyalty program on Monday, Loblaw President Galen G. Weston says the price of an average basket of groceries has risen about 10% this year. , with the prices of some items such as apples, soup and fries rising even more. Mr. Weston says much of the increases are beyond the company’s control.
Galen G. Weston adds that while the grocery chain opposes unfair price increases, most are reasonable and stem from increased base costs for suppliers. That’s why Loblaw has decided to focus on what it can control and is locking in prices on No Name products and promising more offers in the coming weeks to ease escalating food costs.
In August, French supermarket chain Carrefour announced plans to freeze the prices of around 100 of its private label products until November 30. In June, Lidl’s US branch launched a summer price-cutting campaign to ease the inflationary burden on customers. The company said it had lowered prices on more than 100 items at its stores in nine East Coast states through August.
Sylvain Charlebois, professor of distribution and food policy at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, points out that “we have seen grocers voluntarily freezing prices in G7 countries for some time now. This should have happened a long time ago in Canada. »
Mr. Charlebois adds that freezing the prices of No Name products will help fix some of the image problems faced by major Canadian grocers.c
“It’s also a public relations strategy,” he adds, “because a lot of Canadians blame grocers for what’s happening with food inflation, even though in many cases food prices can go up for various reasons beyond a grocer’s control. »