Grocery chain Metro said on Tuesday it would keep food prices stable for the holiday season, as it says it used to do, after one of its main competitors launched a campaign on Monday. price freeze to fight inflation.
Posted at 4:35 p.m.
Updated at 5:36 p.m.
The Montreal company explained that it would not accept cost increases from its suppliers during its busiest time of the year “in order to avoid any changes in retail prices, with rare exceptions close “.
“It’s a long-standing practice at Metro,” said the grocer’s vice-president of public affairs and communications, Marie-Claude Bacon, in an email. “This keeps retail prices stable for our customers in our stores. »
Loblaw Companies announced Monday that it will freeze prices on all of its “No Name” branded products until January 31.
Metro’s price suspension applies to both private label and national brand products, and runs from 1er November to February 5, said Mr.me Bacon.
His comments appeared to diverge slightly from a statement Metro provided to CBC News on Monday, which suggested it was “industry practice” to freeze prices over the holidays.
“It gave the impression that retailers were colluding to fix the price of the food products they buy from suppliers, which is illegal,” explained Simon Somogyi, professor at the University of Guelph and holder of the chair. Arrell on Food Trade. “There seemed to be an anti-competitive problem. »
In recent years, Canada’s three big grocery chains have come under fire for a multi-year bread price-fixing scandal and the simultaneous end to “hero” bonuses paid to frontline workers during the pandemic.
When asked if refusing supplier cost increases during the holidays was an industry practice, Ms.me Bacon claimed she could “only speak for Metro.”
Public relations operation?
Still, Metro’s initial suggestion that keeping prices stable over the holidays isn’t unprecedented for grocers raises questions. Was Loblaw’s price freeze announcement more of a public relations stunt than a genuine effort to help Canadians during a time of high food inflation?
Loblaw’s vice president of communications, Catherine Thomas, said on Tuesday “it’s been common for some vendors to hold their costs down during the busy holiday season.”
“Summary: it is not common to commit to maintaining prices at all times of the year, especially for 1500 items [de marque “Sans nom”] covering fresh, frozen, dairy and packaged products, the price of which is already 25% lower on average than that of comparable products. »
Sobeys and IGA’s parent company Empire, which along with Loblaw and Metro is one of Canada’s three largest grocers, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its plans to hold prices steady over the holidays. .
The comments from Loblaw and Metro follow similar moves by grocers in other countries.
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, the US arm of German grocer Lidl launched a summer price-cutting campaign to ease the inflationary burden on customers.
“If Loblaws really cared about increasing consumer spending on groceries, why didn’t they do so earlier this year, when these double-digit price increases really started showing up in grocery stores,” said Stuart Smyth, associate professor of agricultural and natural resource economics at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon.
He added that making the announcement just after the lucrative Thanksgiving season “smells like hypocrisy.”
“When they’ve just reaped all the benefits of Thanksgiving, one wonders how legitimately worried they are,” Smyth added.
Still, the price freeze is still a “good move”, he added, and they don’t deserve to be reprimanded for making an effort.
“If the food retail industry hadn’t been singled out for fixing bread prices, it would be much easier to see this as a goodwill gesture. »