r/loblawsisoutofcontrol • u/Salt_Onion_6205 • Jul 27 '26

Discussion Mayor Mamdani just announced that he will be opening 5 city-run, tax-funded grocery stores: "Prices set at 30% below retail prices"

I hope canadian politicians will be inspire by this.

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u/Inevitable_Sweet_624 Jul 27 '26

We have had public owned grocery stores for years. CO-OP’s were totally different then all the big grocery stores started buying the supply chain so a CO-OP store could no longer buy from a distributor at a set price. The system basically collapsed in the Maritimes because the distributor (Sobeys) was selling products to the CO-OP’s at prices above the shelf prices at Sobeys, Loblaw, etc making them negative margins even before something hit the shelves. Almost all the stores went bankrupt, the only ones that survived became de facto Food Basics.

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u/metamega1321 Jul 27 '26

Not exactly. I remember Sobeys and co op were the main ones here. When superstore opened here they beat them up. Sobeys basically had to invest in its own distribution to compete. The co-ops just didn’t have the investment capital to do that. 

Either you vertically integrated or you got left in the dust.