Our Food Basics took US produce off the shelves... !?

urbanriot

I'm not sure why but our local Food Basics took all US produce off the shelves, everything from strawberries to peppers. Blueberries, for example, there was a pile of US stuff next to the Peru stuff on Friday. Today, the US stuff is off the shelf but the Peru stuff is all there. All the produce from Mexico, Peru, etc., is still on the shelves but everything US is gone.

Half the produce area was bare, it was weird.

I can't imagine that this doesn't have something to do with the impending tariffs, some kind of scumbaggery where they're going to put it back on the shelf on Tuesday at a marked up rate and claim tariffs did that... ?

Anyone see anything similar at their local grocery store?

FrathosCAN

urbanriot Interesting. I need groceries badly and will be shopping at Food Basics later today so I'll keep my eyes open. I'm not paying extra for US goods if that's what they're planning by removing items early, I'll just find something else to buy.

Dks01

urbanriot It's a corporate morale practice. This used to be called "virtue signalling". What's happening? The US tariffs have caused a huge amount of anxiety in Canada. There is a disturbance in the force. The corporate sector in Canada is sending positive messages to support the government's tariff action, in this case by removing US produce as a sign of support for Canada. They will also increase their Canadian branding in stores, so we know what Canadian products are and where they come from. The removed produce will likely be donated to food banks.

MomOfARocker

urbanriot Well since they've just announced a 30 day pause on the tariffs it will be interesting to see what they do next. I think they want people here to support Canadian business and that is understandable considering the tariffs but the consumer should be able to make the choice of which they buy for themselves. If the tariffs do go ahead I personally will make every effort to purchase Canadian or from elsewhere besides the US if there is another choice.

urbanriot

I'm not sure why but our local Food Basics took all US produce off the shelves

Guess what was back on the shelves today? lol. I went by there around 6 PM today and all the produce was back on the shelf.

It's hard to imagine any other reason why American produce would disappear for a day or two, between friday and monday, but it happened.

AppleGuy

Nothing here in Kitchener, but I have cancelled all of my US based subscriptions. I have stopped purchasing anything that has a "Made in USA" if it's food. Most fruit at the local store is NOT from the USA. I will buy frozen if Canadian made, so that's limited it to things like strawberries, peaches, etc.

(edit Politics)

Tomorrow is the last day you can buy US booze - looking around the house I had assumed some of my purchases were US based, but it appears that everything is either Canadian or Italian.

My favourite whiskey is now Junction 56, out of Stratford, and I can buy local beer "Waterloo Brewery" in Kitchener at a good price, they also brew Carlsberg and Kronenbourg. My favourite cooler is Black Fly, and that is made in London, ON. For some reason I thought is was US based, but it isn't.

Donoreo

I thought that the local franchise owner might have done it, but I see that Metro bought out all franchises back in 2008, I was not aware of that. Yesterday I was in Costco and RCSS, and everything in those seemed normal.

Hydraglass

Dks01 I'm curious what's going to happen to second generation imported foods - for instance my kid loves drinking lemonade. We don't grow lemons in Canada - in our house we buy Allen's Lemonade, it's a Canadian company - produced and packaged in QC according to the packaging, but "made from US sourced lemons" - we aren't sourcing lemons from anywhere else - they aren't grown here - maybe we could get some from Mexico - but in general they are a US raw food product that our Cdn food companies depend on to make their products. Now I'm guessing the raw lemons are only about 30% of the cost of producing lemonade, so even if they go up 25%, it shouldn't lead to a 25% increase in the final product - but will the companies bother to keep making those products or will they just shelve some of those food lines that require US produce? I'm thinking Canadian frozen food producers that use things like US spinach or US broccoli, etc... The things we buy unprocessed/unchanged are easy to "detect" the source and switch what we use (and for stores to say 'nope not carrying that' -- but when it's in the supply chain of the products, we're likely just going to end up never really knowing other than seeing price changes.

Guy54435

Hydraglass You can grow citrus indoors:
Tangerine, lemon, kumquat and small orange trees can be grown as houseplants. Citrus plants grow best indoors at 65° during the day, dropping five to ten degrees at night
https://extension.umn.edu/houseplants/growing-citrus-indoors#:~:text=Tangerine%2C%20lemon%2C%20kumquat%20and%20small,clean%20by%20periodically%20washing%20them.

Dks01

Hydraglass Companies will look at their cost of production and figure out if they will produce a product with US ingredients. They may substitute other sources. This is realignment of the supply chain. South Africa and Morocco produce citrus fruits. Your kid may be disappointed. Citrus fruit is on the tariff list.

MomOfARocker

Hydraglass Maybe Canada could import the lemons from Italty, they are well known for their lemons.

The Sorrento lemon, one of the best lemons in Italy, gets its name from the town of Sorrento, southern Italy. The whole Amalfi Coast is known for lemons and limoncello, but Sorrento in particular. Driving on the Amalfi Coast Road, you'll spot terraces of lemon groves climbing high up the steep cliffs.Nov 1, 2023

Hydraglass

Guy54435 Not enough to meet the demands of the whole country (or even at home for my household - I would need approximately enough to make 2L of lemonade every week of the year - probably 1000 lemons!) And it would take years for us (as a country or as individuals) to get set up to do it - more years than this situation is going to be an issue -- in the meantime, India, Mexico, and Brazil grow lots of lemons - time for the juice companies to make some calls!!

Guy54435

Hydraglass Well no you cant feed the country I am sure, I was Just pointing out you could grow citrus at home.

Thane_Bitter

Hydraglass I don't know the product but other nations grow lemons so Allens could find a new producer if it needed to, on the flip side with the US ejecting so many emigrants and illegals no one is around to pick their produce, you will hear some whining from US produce farmers with fields of stuff rotting away not being picked, or perhaps even no one is buying it. In California, a dozen eggs costs 9.49 (USD), today 30 eggs (2.5 doz) costs 9.69 (CND), egg prices are rising steeply in the US thanks to avian flu, tens of millions of laying hens have been culled and destroyed which reduced supply, forced up prices, while the flu can and is impacting our producers the price rise has been much less.

I thought this was wonderful bit of propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3ikjG843mg
Sure if you pretend that the third quarter of 1929 and the next decade that followed didn't happen, tariffs are great and nothing could possibly go wrong.

taraf

There are also some parts of Canada where you can grow lemons outside. We do actually have a small industry domestically, but probably not enough to supply Allens.

MichelR

I thought so far only the liquor stores in most provinces and territories had removed products (at least the government-owned ones).
My bet would have been that grocers would clearly mark Canadian (or maybe U.S.) products and let the consumer decide.
Didn't need this shit.

Hydraglass

MichelR Lots of stores and companies are following suit to the LCBO on their own recognizance - the corner store near me I noticed this AM had removed a bunch of imported US snacks and drinks they were previously carrying, and had removed US beers from their drink shelves - I don't think anyone told them they had to - so - they just decided it was what they wanted to do. As has been reported many times by many people, Canada generally only has 2 modes, "I'm sorry" and "You're gonna be sorry" and there are plenty of people who have flipped to mode 2 - some of those are retail operators who are going to be hit hard by all of this and are taking their frustration out directly.

taraf

You've only heard about the liquor stores because the governments in BC and Ontario have the power to direct them to stop carrying US products.

Private industry is a whole other ballgame. And there absolutely are movements like you suggest in groceries. We went to a Farm Boy yesterday and they were handing out free samples of their store-brand snacks while proudly declaring that they were and had always been Canadian

Dks01

Hydraglass Some like my son the chef have already gone through their stock and are weeding out US products (not a lot - 80% of their stock is Canadian made or sourced, most locally). Made in Canada is the new merchandising.

MichelR

Hydraglass Yeah I haven't been in a store since the tariffs were officially announced (I think a lot of people were still hoping the threat would go away). Might stop by Maxi today or tomorrow, so I'll see if I notice any changes.

The web host for my web site is in the U.S., but I'm not messing with that.

Donoreo

Dks01 Companies will look at their cost of production and figure out if they will produce a product with US ingredients. They may substitute other sources. This is realignment of the supply chain. South Africa and Morocco produce citrus fruits. Your kid may be disappointed. Citrus fruit is on the tariff list.

I think this will make us stronger economically.

Hydraglass

Dks01 We know - I do see India and Mexico are the largest citrus fruit producers in the world, so there are lots of options. This may all go away in 90 days anyway - but that's sorta off-topic (but also sorta not as that's typically about how long it takes to re-tool supply chains in the food industry) - so - there may be a lot of companies sit on the fence for 3 months and work around it in the meantime while making alternate stand-by plans.

urbanriot

Donoreo

I think this will make us stronger economically.

It would make us more self-reliant but it will drive up the cost of goods significantly.

KingB71

Donoreo I think this will make us stronger economically.

And hopefully open Canadian exporter's eyes to new markets overseas they can export to instead of the US

MomOfARocker

Donoreo 100% agree ... I think it's the kick in the pants we needed to make that happen.

taraf

Hydraglass This may all go away in 90 days anyway - but that's sorta off-topic (but also sorta not as that's typically about how long it takes to re-tool supply chains in the food industry)

I think even if the reason it started goes away in 90 days, it's going to be a lot longer than that before we start buying American again. Canadians are rightfully angry.

px_eliezer_

Canadian liquor distributors pulling US products

The premier of Ontario, Canada's most populous province, said Sunday it will join British Columbia and Nova Scotia in pulling American liquor from store shelves and not restocking those products after Trump’s tariff announcement.

Later Sunday, Quebec announced it, too, would pull American-made (liquor) products from stores in the province.

----ABC News

GrumpyCanadian

taraf Absolutely agreed. I started systematically avoiding U.S.-origin products sometime between November 5 and January 20, and now will double down on that mentality. As if to prove your point, I still never went back to readily buying Kraft products since the Leamington closure nearly ten years ago. It is much harder to re-build a relationship that you threw to the ground and stomped on, than it is to establish one that had never existed or maintain one that was in relatively good standing long-term.