After quinoa, kale and oat milk, guess which foods are reaching peak popularity in supermarkets. A hint, it has nothing to do with taste or health benefits.
Quebecers fill their carts with food… on sale.
Almost 6 out of 10 items purchased were on discount, in the last quarter of 2023. This says a lot about the financial reality of consumers in a context of mortgage rates three times higher than five years ago and food inflation sustained.
“We’ve never seen this. It’s a record ! “, commented Francis Parisien, senior vice-president of sales for SMEs in Canada at NielsenIQ during an event organized by CTAQ, the Food Processing Council of Quebec. His tables showed that the popularity of sales experienced a particularly sharp jump from April to October last year, and that the increase has never stopped since.
This trend means that the weekly menu of an ever-increasing number of households is dictated by flyers. We can see this as healthy consumption habits, but it becomes more and more cumbersome and frustrating to make purchases based on prices rather than what you want.
The particularly expensive fish and seafood category is the most affected by the phenomenon with 66% of units purchased on sale. Vegetables, fresh meat and snacks follow very closely.
At the other end of the spectrum are pet food (31%), cheese and alcoholic beverages which are, on the contrary, mostly purchased at the usual price.
What hasn’t changed is that Quebec continues to be the place where “on special” food purchases are most common. But gains are recorded in all provinces when we look at the results of the last year.
Quebecers are also the biggest fans of those good old paper circulars that you unfold on the kitchen table to write your shopping list. Elsewhere in the country, the craze for finding deals online and on phone applications is more developed.
But be warned, habits will have to change: the death of Publisac will occur in the coming weeks.
Across Quebec, the famous bag will be replaced – after 46 years of history – by the raddar, a leaflet that combines the sales of several retailers. Given its relatively small size (29 pages, on average), the amount of discounts found there is much less. With some exceptions, a company can only present four pages of sales, at most, the aim being to reduce paper.
To consult the other offers – because there will be no less in store – you must go online (raddar.ca, flipp.com, circulars.ca) or to an application (reebee). Retailers also have their own sites and apps.
Only 22% of Quebecers do not look for discounts.
Even though food inflation has fallen significantly in the last year, going from 11% to less than 5%, price increases continue to cause concern. No less than 96% of Quebecers say they are concerned (21%) or very concerned (75%) by this trend, notes NielsenIQ. Among women, who are more likely to shop for groceries and are generally less wealthy, there are 81% who are very worried.
Faced with such stratospheric levels, we should not be surprised that the Minister of Industry François-Philippe Champagne is trying to score points by presenting himself as the defender of consumers pressurized by our five major food retailers.
But he deplores that the big grocers have not been “sufficiently transparent about the causes of food inflation” and that they have not “provided regular updates on initiatives aimed at stabilizing prices” , it does not change anything. No grocer was afraid of his threats of tax measures last fall, as evidenced by the absence of announcements to consumers that would save them money.
Sobeys (IGA) promised federal elected officials in December the deployment of a new strategy at the start of the year. We are still waiting for the press release.
Over the past two years, prices have jumped by an average of 21%, again according to NielsenIQ. It varies enormously from one category to another, but we know that the largest increases affect processed foods sold in the center of the store which require a lot of labor. In other words: cooking becomes more and more profitable over time.
So get to your stove!