Food price sticker shock
Posted Mar 8, 2011 1:39 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Consumers can breathe a sigh of relief, according to an food industry expert, who says Calgary food shoppers should be relatively insulated from rising food costs.
Despite increasing wholesale prices because of skyrocketing fuel prices, John Scott of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers says there is so much competition in the marketplace that now is not the time for retailers to pass along those costs to consumers.
“Everybody’s fighting for the consumer to come into their store,” Scott tells 660News. “So nobody’s going to raise prices by one cent unless they absolutely have to. Before anybody actually passes through costs, they look at anything else in their system that they can lower before they ever increase prices to the consumer.”
Scott says grocery stores will look at overall operating costs and we will probably see fewer special promotions in an attempt to keep prices under control. But in the end, Calgary shoppers should notice little difference in their total food bill.
“It’s a market that is extremely competitive in this country,” adds Scott. “We spend less than 9 per cent of our disposable incomes on food in this country, that’s among the lowest in the world. And that’s because of a very, very strong supermarket sector and we intend to keep it that way.”
So what’s the reason behind the increases in wholesale costs?
“One of the factors is there have been some horrible crops around the world,” says Scott. “And the second one is consumptive patterns have changed. There’s more wheat based products consumed in China and India than in the past. So all of these things come to bear on pushing an upward pressure on prices.”
