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Before I get into the meat of this post, let me say that this is all based on what I see
here in my own area first and foremost. I would also like to see everyone's opinion on this, as well as observations and experiences from where you reside and do your business.

Now then.

In the last few years, I have tried to utilize more and more local businesses instead of
big boxes and/or chain stores. I dumped Wal-Mart some time back in favour of a couple small locally owned businesses, shifted some of my needs to Giant Tiger (Canadian owned), and get the vast majority of groceries from a locally owned No Frills supermarket.

I also frequent a family owned book store in the plaza across the way, and occasionally stop into a family owned restaurant in our downtown to buy the odd treat or bottle of black cherry pop (rarer for me, because I don't really drink pop anymore).

One of the biggest issues with keeping our money local is with the farmers. Every time I try to help out a local farmer by buying from them (either at the Farmer's Market, or when I visit my favourite local farm), the prices are ridiculous. Examples of this are as follows, using items I buy frequently:

$2.99 / english cucumber ($0.99-$1.47 supermarket)
$3.97 / celery ($1.49-$2.99 supermarket)
$5.00 / dozen eggs ($3.00 supermarket - and that's a little high lately)

I understand that I am buying local produce and products from the farmer, but like a lot
of people, I'm on a budget. A lot of their prices were like this long before the pandemic, and what I listed were only a few. That being said, when I buy my produce at the supermarket, it's Canadian first, American second. I don't buy produce from Mexico because most of it is terrible, and if there are no Canadian apples, I buy Chilean because they are quite good.

Also, we have a local farm that is HUGE on pick your own. I go every year to pick two different types of apples, and sometimes buy the odd extra thing in the farm's store on my way out. Some farms in the area have been sympathetic with the pandemic happening, and have adapted OK. The local farm that I visit has done things backwards, to say the least.

Farmer Morris is making any customer doing PYO to wear a mask at all times outside, in the wide open fields, while migrant workers are exempt. I can understand inside the store or on the wagon ride out to the various fields, but everywhere else makes no sense. Still, I thought about going on my annual apple picking excursion last fall until he updated the PYO prices on his website.

The apples that would cost me between $14-$20 for a big PYO bag (I love apples!) would nearly double, and he started to mandate farm visitors to buy gloves as well. I actually contacted him, and asked about everything he was doing and why it needs to be so expensive, and he literally wrote back, "My farm, my rules!" This is the same farmer who recently built an additional $2.5 million dollar house on his vast tract of land, because one wasn't enough.

Not all farmers are like him, but that and the prices at the market have turned me off the local farmers, as they have a lot of people. I actually heard some seniors talking about Farmer Morris in the supermarket about his new rules (there are a LOT of seniors that used to visit the farm), and how they can't go because gloves affect their arthritis (I never thought of that!) and such, never mind the high prices.

How are prices/farmers like in everyone else's part of the country? Is this just a Simcoe County thing, or does this happen across Canada? If so, what can be done to bring some of these damn prices down. A lot of us probably want to do more for local businesses, but we are held back by gouging that affects out budgets.

Keep in mind, I am not knocking anything, just relating what I see in my own area.

Please discuss, as I am interested to see where this goes!

-J.

   

I have always said that I would rather take an ass kicking than go to Walmart. Everyone hates Walmart. Its like you lose a little bit of your humanity every time you step inside a Walmart. I know that I lose more self respect every time that I step inside. Yet every week, there I am taking my place amongst the great unwashed masses.

I don't know how Walmart does it. They consistently have the lowest prices on everything. Sometimes the dollar store may beat them by a few pennies on brands that only the dollar store has. I would love to shop local and help out local businesses. The problem is that my local grocery store charges twice as much as Walmart, with a lot less selection. Now if the grocery store was paying a living wage and helping out the community in other ways, maybe I could go for it. Turns out they are paying minimum wage, which is $8 an hour. Walmart has said that they are raising their wages to $15 an hour. My local grocery store has not made any such proclamation. Why pay twice as much when the store is screwing the employees? Local stores screw their people over just as much as big multi national corporations do. I am not going to pay twice the going rate to keep some greedy cheap ass business in business just because he is local.

   

We went to a couple U-pick farms last year as family outings and it was a lot of fun. We got to support the local economy, get a bunch of exercise, and try out things we never had before.

A couple of them cost us a lot more than I would have paid at a grocery store, but the freshness and quality was more than worth it. Fresh strawberries from the farm are a million times better than strawberries picked a week ago and shipped here from California.

My only regret was not doing it all summer long - this year, we'll start going July and keep going until the end of the season (about September long weekend here).





How does Wal-Mart do it?

With relentless pressure on manufacturers to cut prices, which often forces them to outsource to Asia or other low cost labour markets.

This Fast Company story from 2003 gives you an idea...and keep in mind that that is from 2003. Wal-mart has only gone ever further along those lines to keep prices as low as possible on some products.

I'm not sure which grocery store you shop at in Vegas, but up here, several of the non-big box grocery stores like Safeway are union shops that ensure staff gets paid a bit more than minimum wage. Of course, because their labour costs are higher, so are their prices. I don't mind paying a bit more when I need to grab a few things. If I need a lot of groceries, I go to Costco, which pays its employees well and has excellent customer service. I only go to Wal-Mart once and awhile, and I agree, it can suck the humanity out of your soul shopping there.

I only go to local farmer's markets once or twice a year, and because it is such a treat, I usually spend way too much, but again I don't mind because I know it helps the local people and our local economy.

   

Our small town is plastered with Buy Local ads.
Even though you can't buy shoes, men's clothing, anything electronic, outdoor stuff, ethnic groceries, appliances, furniture, etc. here.
If you're looking for leftover marked down candy from Halloween 1976, we still have a Fields store.....

   

Funny how the "middle class" of retail has vanished. If I want a kitchen utensil, say a decent cutting board, I can go to Walmart or I can go to a kitchen "boutique" store. Walmart will have a plastic cutting board for $4.99. The boutique place will have a local artisan marble slab for $60. Nothing in between--what used to be Sears, for example.

Nobody local can compete with Walmart on price, so they have to compete on quality.

I know my wife once bought a bunch of plastic water guns for my son's birthday party. She bought about 8. Of course, when she got home, 4 of them didn't work, but they were so cheap, she just went and bought another 8, and half of those didn't work either. but now she had enough and it was still far cheaper than going to, say, Toys R Us, or the little toy store at the mall.

So this oil got pumped in Saudi Arabia, put on a tanker and sent to China to a chemical plant that turned the oil into plastic, and from there it was shipped to a manufacturing plant in China that turned them into water guns and packaged them. From there they were put on a boat for Norther America, and from there trucked to a warehouse somewhere, and then trucked to a dollar store where my wife bought them, tore them out of the packaging and tossed them in the garbage, where they'll be trucked to a landfill to spend the next 500 years biodegrading. I mean, what was the point of all that? If that's profitable then we have a stupid fuckin system.

   

I don't mind paying a little bit more. I used to look forward to going to the orchard every fall and picking those awesome apples, and buying a few small things from the farm store. I was even going to start making trips to the PYO fields for blueberries and other things.

That being said, I'm on a budget, and even I have limits to how much more of that 'little bit' I can afford to pay.

Add to the fact that I just lost my secondary source of income for the foreseeable future, and my budget just got tighter.

-J.

   

Sadly, it is profitable, because Wal-Mart buys about a million of them for 25 cents each, and sells a package for $4.99 (which the manufacturer makes money on because of economy of scale). Even with shipping it around the world, it's still wildly profitable...that's why there's hundreds of 'Dollar' stores across the country.

If you want 'middle class retail', Canadian Tire and a handful of others are about as close as you get. Slightly better quality, moderate prices, and a decent selection, although a lot of it is still made in Asia.

   

All you can do is all you can do.

   

^ This. Once you get past the shoddy Mastercraft items there are a lot of very good midrange brand items at Crappy Tire that don't cost a lot. I'm sure that CT is just as heartless a corporation in their own way but at least shopping there supports our own Canadian monsters instead of the slimy Walton family in the US.

There's no way to avoid buying Asian-made garbage though, no matter where you go. It's just the way it is now if you're not rich and able to buy boutique to satisfy your whims. There's no sense in feeling guilty over it either because it's not a situation that any one of us can ever change.

   

Bottom line is that all those items are artificially cheap. The secret to a profitable enterprise is to privatize the profits and socialize the costs. Also, workers in Canada make several times what workers in China and other such countries do. The only way back to a but-local economy is to to pay more.

The alternative is to keep pumping money into China--an autocracy bent on regional and eventually global domination, and complete the hollowing out of the economy in Canada, to our old role of hewers of wood.

   

Up country here, Staples opened in Prince George and within 3 years killed off every stationery store and print shop within 300 miles, including mine. 20 years later it's go there and the "savings" have ended. The house brands are now ten cents less than Avery, the paper selection is a shadow of what they used to carry and 'clearance' items mean a dollar less then normal. Or take your chances online.
Walmart hasn't got there yet, but it did kill off shitloads of Mom & Pop local stores as well as a local chain once they got into groceries.
ALL the utilities have centralized, no more local offices or employees.
Worse, even main hubs like Prince George were management centralized, selling bikinis in April when the lakes are frozen, size 8 workboots, no tall size Mens clothing and out of snow shovels by Nov 1st. You have no choice but to pay $60 for a plastic snowshovel or travel out of town.
The local auto place (still have one, the truckers need it) had headlight bulbs for my Jeep for $114.99. I got same ones from Crappy Tire in PG for $49

   

All you can do in that case is order online just so the local Staples doesn't get the business. Hopefully that way you can drive them out of the area altogether which would allow a local competitor to start up again to provide the service.

   

Ant vs Elephant..
ex: We used to buy 750 packs of those roughly cut business cards to print ours locally. Now a 250 pack costs $22 there.
You can order 250 professional business cards online from VistaPrint for $9.99. Sometimes 500 for that price.....

   

I agree, but people are addicted to cheap prices as much as they are to their smartphones, so it's a tough battle.

Personally, my mantra has always been to pay more for quality than to get cheap shit that falls apart after a few uses.

I learned that lesson growing up, watching family and friends buying low quality electronics, while I bought quality brand names like Sony and Panasonic. Sure they cost 30 or 40% more, but they still work like a charm today, while the junk was consigned to the dumpster decades ago.

   

Given what we know of wage stagnation now it's more like people have no choice but to go to Walmart in order to stretch their dollars as far as they can. I know I'd prefer to only do groceries at Calgary CoOp but when I save $20 per trip at Walmart for the same items then I have to do what's best for us & not for the local provider.

   

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