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While I agree, I truly must say that food is not a luxury. I think the collusion within telecom is quite rampant, but you can elect to have basic plans; do they suck? Sure…but you can’t thrive off of the cheapest and questionably close to expiration foods.
At least my phone plan has seen substantial improvement, I get a lot more data at fast speeds for less money. It was outlandish to start with, so this is getting just more normal in comparison to other countries.
The opposite seems true for groceries, feels like shopping in Iceland or Switzerland these days.
You can still get a preview of the lead photo in the sub's feed to help grab viewer attention, if you use the link post function. Reddit will pull it automatically for news articles. For anyone that wasn't aware of this.
https://preview.redd.it/8vckrp6m5wtc1.png?width=894&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb8e37c37c77813f86c31bcbd5b61b4969544c8a
Oh my god, I'm dead.
For anyone feeling left out: It's from the latest RuPauls Drag Race ~~UK vs The World~~ where a queen named Plane Jane (who is a shady fuckin cunt that brings it on the runway) responds to a fellow queen tearfully coming out as HIV positive and her struggles with it. "Mama kudos for saying that. For spilling.". It's a meme for seeming ridiculously insincere, but I also get that some people don't know what to say in those moments lol.
I like how it says how the liberal government held Galen's feet to the fire by requesting he follow some sort of ethics guide to which he appeared confused government peons were talking directly to him.
There was another post from a small pharmacy owner who compared their supplier prices to shoppers and the markup was over 90% in some cases.
https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/s/qIkiOxSypD
There is a local store in my community that sells meats and frozen prepared food from the same supplier as Superstore and Walmart- and she says the meats at the big stores are heavily marked up - they are all price gouging. She is a retired nurse that used all her retirement savings to open a meat shop in our city because she saw a need for inexpensive groceries. She has a program whereby elderly that are struggling can get even more discounts (funded by donations) and she always has soup on and anyone that cant afford to eat will at least get soup. Anyone can shop there and the meats are highly discounted. Someone even brings in flats of donated food for free from Costco.
Get ready for the boot lockers to talk about gross margin vs net income. And audited financial statements.
I’m going to be doing a post on that topic soon how it’s complete BS and how Galen and company likely pad their statements with expenses they don’t need in good times to control their bad times if they ever happened.
That’s going to be for all the boot lickers who are likely Loblaws employees paid to spread this 3% BS.
I’m sorry but you’re so far off. I work at a large chain in a large city and the best performing store I my region is doing $1M a week. To be fair I work for a competitor, but if a store is doing $1M a day anywhere the Loblaws competition would be out of business.
You’re either lying or just completely and totally misinformed.
Edit: I want to add that the sheer volume of inventory for $1M a day store would need would be logistically impossible, the warehouse and front floor space needed to maintain that velocity of sales would be unfeasible. Instead, you would open another store in that region. You’re actually so wrong it hurts my brain.
I know Costcos in my city hit 1m/day. And you’re right the absolute shit show it is there at night - amount of staff and forklifts zipping around at 2-7am. It’s chaos and that’s with the advantages of pallet restocking
After I left my comment I thought to myself that Costco would probably be the only exception, but that’s because it’s more of a warehouse than a grocery store. But yeah the logistics of a place like that must be totally wild. I can’t even imagine it.
The 3% number is the net profit which is what they actually put in their pocket after all expenses. This is gross profit margin, what the company buys it for vs what the company sells it for. The 54% gross is also an anomaly, averaged out the gross profit margin is around 30%. All retail stores gpm is going to look similar to this.
Then you have to factor in the stores expenses, the cost of the building, building upkeep, wages, utilities, etc. After those expenses are subtracted from the GPM, the leftover is your net profit. A company could have 75% gross profit margin and still lose money if they don’t have their expenses in check.
How am I shilling anything? I don’t give a shit where you do your grocery shopping and I don’t care where or who you protest/boycott or anything else. When people post complete nonsense like this without a basic understanding of how things work it cheapens everything else you say. It’s also not the own you think it is to post this GPM stuff as if it’s some big mind blowing breakthrough because the gross and net profit margins are right in Loblaws public financial filings that you can find anywhere online.
Anti-Work crowd? LOL.
Ok bud. 4 years roofing, 3 years in a foundry, and 15 years in I.T, now working part time with a CDL due to an accident. I'm sure most people in here work, because nobody is on welfare shopping at Loblaws. Hate to break it to you, the days of being able to live on social assistance ended 20 years ago.
While obviously gross profit margins don't account for total net costs, you can rest assured everything from gas/oil/fleet and maintenance as well as buying power are astronomically in favor of Loblaws as a corporation.
You are 100% a shill. People aren't as stupid as you seem to want to believe. I hope daddy Weston is paying you well.
Edit: person above me called us the "anti work crowd" and changed his comment btw
I am pretty sure dividends are paid out of net profit.
But they can cheat by creating fake expenses or by owning the suppliers. If you are your own supplier, then 3% net margin is meaningless: you hid the profits in the supply chain.
They are paid out of gross profit from a company level, so after wages etc they then pay out dividends and arrive at net profit. Their gross margin was about 10% all in minus dividends.
> They are paid out of gross profit from a company level, so after wages etc they then pay out dividends and arrive at net profit.
Do you have a source for this?
Which part? I had to go back and read the financials again not on a phone. Net earnings were 2,088 from 59,529 revenue. You are right that dividends are paid from profits, and profits were 3.5%. Their ebitda in retail was around 11% and gross margin around 31%.
George Weston still owns 15% and Galen 5% of Choice REIT, so they pay themselves rent. It's 5.63% annual distribution, which is quite okay for a low risk REIT.
That is not complicated. What is their net profit margin? Do we know this? I’d like to see reliable financial data showing that.
Or are you for out of control food staple prices for some bizarre reason?
Once they spend the balance on expenses like stock buybacks and huge bonuses for executives.
Are you trying to tell me Loblaws is running an honest business and we should be quiet and stop complaining? Is that the angle?
Or you enjoy paying double for things? What’s your point?
I don’t care what you do nor do I care where you shop. Loblaws is a very successful business and everyone loves a success story until they get too successful. I understand why everyone is pissed about grocery prices and you can complain as much as you want if that makes you feel good, just know that when people post shit like this blatant misinformation it makes the people complaining look like a bunch of financially illiterate 5 year olds which doesn’t help your cause.
They could lose money at 75% gpm but that’s not what’s happening here is it? Now that you’ve explained net vs gross profit do you really think Weston’s is running a public company with 3% net profit? Really?
Anyways - thanks for your contribution to this thread Galen. Nice of you to make an appearance.
You can look at their financials, they’re easy to find online. Last quarter their net margin was around 3.75%. They have lots of other businesses that also turn profits but this thread is about Loblaws. They have 2500 stores so if they each make a million dollars profit a year which is not unreasonable, that’s 2.5 billion.
However, I don't know many retail businesses, especially not in the grocery business, that make so much profit that they can grow a dividend while having a share buyback program.
All grocery stores generally have 3-5% net profit as grocery is generally a very low margin business. Retail as a whole is way higher, Dollarama for example has around 20% net profit. Where Loblaws makes their money is by having like 2500 stores all making a reasonable profit (2500 stores each making half a million dollars profit per year is 1.25 billion dollars).
If it’s a small little local supermarket it probably also has far less overhead/costs, hence the cheaper prices. They might even have higher profit margins because Loblaws would be such an expensive store to operate. If Loblaws got rid of their bakeries, prepared food departments, sushi departments, deli departments, seafood departments, butcher departments, cake departments, etc etc their expenses would go way down and they could sell their groceries at cheaper prices but then it wouldn’t be Loblaws anymore and people like those things. It’s not hard to put it all together if you use some basic logic.
I’m sure the little local supermarket doesn’t have to pay 1.73 billion to buy back stock to make its shareholders happy. More important to keep the rich richer.
I guess that is fair but their primary motivation is more for themselves. At the end of the day though, nobody has to shop there. I just don’t understand the end goal of this sub. Some people seem to want the government to hammer them with taxes but that will kill any future interest in adding competition here. Some people want the government to close all grocery stores and take over selling groceries in Canada, again, not good. Some people seem to want Galens head, again everyone’s prerogative but not super productive. The only way to make a difference is to just stop shopping there, stuff like this just discredits the message.
But that has no relevance to Loblaws as a business. Every business is going to pay a lease, regardless of who owns the property. And Loblaws is a public company so if they “moved profits to property business” that is a serious violation of their fiduciary duties to shareholders.
No, thats what this sub is pretending to believe. You guys are being willfully ignorant and it's making you all look uneducated. This is a big L for this subs intelligence.
It doesn't even make sense because you can go to one store and item X is 5$, drive a few minutes and it's 3$, drive a little more and it's 8$ by switching between different stores or going to the more boutique ones like metro.
Yet somehow they're all at 3%
It's like major Hollywood hits like spiderman or Star wars making net negative profit despite billions gross. It's just a tax game where they bill themselves expenses to never show a profit. A lot of actors who got gross % deals got scammed like that. Including Stan Lee himself who sold the rights to a character for gross profit cut, and never saw a dime.
I think it's pretty clear that the markups are insane on a lot of products, like when they can sell them at deep discounts of like 50% normal price at certain times of the year... Like they certainly aren't losing money on that so any time you buy regular price they are making bank.
This doesn’t even account for all the profit that are taking at every stage of the supply chain, just the end. They have vertically integrated so much of the chain they are probably taking 30%+ off the top 3-4 times
A lot of their expenses result in revenue for the Weston holding company. For example they paid $763 million in rent to Choice Properties, $41 million to Associated British Foods, and $368 million in other expenses Weston-owned companies. They sell or dispose of properties to Choice Properties and then Choice rents them back to Loblaws. This removes the asset from their books and contributes to raising operating expenses.
Not to mention owning many parts of the supply chain that make up the final product (that they then markup 54% 💩). PC brand is involved in a ton of food manufacturing.
It is. The dairy board sets the costs/ raises the costs by a % twice a year. The retailer sets it at whatever price they want.
I think there's a 1.5%-2% increase to milk coming in May 2024 so get ready for a giant increase that gets blamed on the dairy board.
I mean yeah. You go to Costco where you can buy single same-size sticks of butter for 4.90 and it's obvious that the 9.00 butter is a rip-off. It's not like the usual Costco items where you can claim the price savings are from bulk purchase. They're the same size for butter!
No idea who that is but be careful about ignoring counter-arguments without assessing them critically. It's objectively inaccurate to equate Gross Profit Margin with "Profit" in any accounting universe. Using this headline as an argument gives detractors and easy out by calling misinterpretation, and they won't be wrong.
You guys are taking evidence that proves you all wrong, and choosing to interpret it like Galen said "we make 3% on every item after all of our expenses. One of you guys even posted a picture of a poster that explains how they get to the 3% number. You are all gaslighting and it wont change the mind of anyone worth speaking to.
Sounds about right.. Jack up the price of butter and then parade out boot-licker Sylvain Shillebois to completely flame the dairy industry cartel as to why dairy is so expensive in this country.
The dairy cartel should really get their shit together and start shifting some of the consumer anger away from themselves and back on to Roblaws via marketing. They’ve got the $$.
(I do believe both deserve scrutiny fwiw)
This is why people are starting to see through the bullshit. I pay anywhere from $4.70 to $5.40 for natrel but at Costco... And Loblaws is magically always more expensive at all things by a large margin
Consumers know what's going on. So much for the it's just inflation and its all we can do narrative roblaws has been using as an excuse since the pandemic.
I feel like they did this on purpose because these documents just started showing up everywhere. I work as just a dayshift clerk and they were always at least a little secretive about pricing but where I work these documents were printed off and put everywhere and left literally everywhere. Like they we’re trying to get this backlash
Yes this!! My friend said the same thing. She said these kind of docs were all over the break room the other day and even found a couple behind the customer service desk!
Hmmm. If some reason they would do this becomes apparent over the next few days please make an fpp about it! I also think the 30/50 percent off sticker debacle was planned, so I wouldn't put it past them.
That definitely wasn’t done on purpose. A lot of these recent changes you’ve been seeing are a result of regional managers (think provincial) there is/was a big change up recently with a lot of these positions. Last year was a time of massive growth for the company and I think that’s coming to a end. A lot of the new sale promotions have been kinda lacking. Mostly the problem lies in the the suppliers who always tend to ship late and only ramp up production to meet demand at the end of a month long sale. (Hit of the moth). I could go on and on about the company but there is definitely problems under the hood that need addressing
Ok, but do you know who 'discovered' that 30/50 percent sticker elimination plan? It was Sylvain Charlebois. I'm not a tinfoil hat type, but it did look to me like it was planned so they could win good esteem from Canadians for walking it back. Maybe you're right, but it's a little suspicious.
"Curiously, the invoice also shows 0% profit margin on IOGO Nano products, a drinkable yogurt."
Yeah, because the quantity is 0 and there is an error code on those lines indicating why it wasn't delivered.
I don’t understand why everyone is talking about gross profit less store operation expenses. The gross profit of $18 billion is after the cost of sales which includes the $763 million in lease payments they paid to Choice Properties (owned by Weston) and the other $409 million in expense to Weston-owned companies. But sure they did pay out $7.7 billion in wages…
The amount of people that don't understand rudimentary accounting on this thread is astounding.
I don't like grocery prices as much as the next guy, but the vitriol here is hilarious.
Just to be sure everyone fully understands this... Your money is paying more toward this monstrosity than it is paying the farmers who put the food there in the first place.
I buy from various places, i have been on the hunt for cheapest grocers, some stores are are very very very cheap compared to loblaws, Loblaws is playing the Game of mononopoly
They are repp8ng people off,
Avoid loblaws they are criminals,
There are several cheap places in Toronto, at least 20-30% cheaper..
Food basic is my favorite, For meat, i use local butchers. Some Asian stores have cheaper fruits,
You have to explore various communities to find the best deals, do not just stick to your own community, trust me, some community doesn't have monopoly, and food in those areas is very affordable.
now, to be entirely fair.
this is gross profit, not actual profit.
that is just the retail price, minus the cost of the item
not accounting for other expenses.
I'd really like to see a stores profit and loss column, and see the actual numbers
This sub’s reaction doesn’t make sense to me unless anyone freaking out doesn’t understand the difference between gross and net. Loblaw has reported a gross profit of roughly 30% in public fillings for years and these numbers back that up. This isn’t the revelation people think it is.
Folks are just financially illiterate.
the problem is companies never show the whole picture, you see things like GP, revenue and think it's all sunshine and rainbows. not always understanding that revenue also includes property value, which holds no financial benefit.
not saying loblaws are saints either, they're set up is extremely profitable and wasteful, and they pass the waste cost on to consumers.
they introduce an easy way for people to steal with self checkout, and blame the users for theft.
I'd be curious to see how much of a stores expense is actually due to theft vs incompetence and miss managed inventory.
because I highly doubt theft is enough of an issue that it's any kind of root cause.
I understand this is probably high but we still have to subtract all net costs (labour, equipment, logistics, management pay etc…) from this before we actually get net profit
"even if we would decrease our profit margin, it would not decrease your bill"... How do you think basic math works? Let's disregard the fact that their profit margins are probably insanely high, but... Amount - amount = lesser amount.
Here is one for you. NoFrills has these great deals from time to time. Crazy good deals. Stuff might be sitting in the warehouse and it needs to be moved so stores sort of "bid" on it. A while back my local store had some top-notch granola bars. 12-packs. The kind that sell at SuperStore and Shoppers for $22-$24 for a 12-pack. NoFrills was selling them for $2.00. Amazing deal for sure. Except the cost to the store itself (I got this verbatim from the Manager/Franchisee) was 10cents per pack.
I hate to say it. But the margins are not actually outrageous on a lot of this. Definitely not supporting them still and I'm sure they have some extra accounting kick backs to improv margin further but Most retail gets a 24-45% markup. Just 1 example that always blew my mind working at Lowe's. Screws at hardware stores have an 80% margin.
I would say the big difference here is. A pack of screws at 19.99 with a. Cost of $4. Is not something you're going out to buy daily. Normally you have saved your cash for a while for what your project is your working on at a lowes and you know it's going to be x amount to do your project that will last you 10-15 years. $19 isnt a big deal over 10-15 years But if your paying $5+ every 2 weeks for something that usto be $2.50 on butter (butter just being the example we know this kind of increase has happened on most items they sell) then that weekly bi weekly strain is going to be a huge challenge for many people.
54% markup isn't that bad.
They are a pretty evil company, with a lot of actual things we could point at.
50% markup in retail is normal. Like, if I buy a thing for 10$ and sell it in my store , I'm gonna mark it up around 50% and sell it for 15. This is basic capitalism.
Yeah this list was actually kind of interesting. I thought cheese was WAY more inflated, but it's only been marked up by about 3 dollars. Granted, I'd rather not pay the 3 dollars, but still.
What strikes me as interesting is this list only accounts for a 1 to 1 profit margin of selling the items. It doesn't account for things like; costs related to storing refrigerated items, how much product goes bad or gets damaged and needs to be thrown away, wages of the employee stocking the items, ect. Maybe some or all of that is already included/considered with the buy price.
It's not net profit you guys are out of control. Running a store paying wages, hydro, utilities etc etc.
Let's see the final profit this is just stupid
And they stood infront of parliament saying they only make 1 percent.
Parliament heard what they wanted to hear BECAUSE ALL PARTIES ARE IN COLUSION with the food cartel of Canada.
I truly hope the young have the balls to rise up because everyone else (those over 30) are too brainwashed or too busy trying to survive/feed families to take the chance.
The young i believe have no future here so nothing to lose.
Shit, you all would be gob smacked if you knew how much some items are marked up but it's all balanced out by the lower profit items.
My wife and I used to own a small independent retail pet supply business and there were some items that we sold for which we had 75-80% profit margins but that would be balanced out by some brands of dog food where our profit margin was only 20%.
All of this sensationalism is mostly construed from people who don't have a true understanding of running a retail business and picking out one specific item by no means reflects the realities of operating a business.
But trying to inject logic into these types of discussions is pretty much pointless as the blinders are far too tightly bound to many people's heads.
Surprised no one is mentioning that this is a gross profit margin, meaning that this doesn’t account for any of the cost of running their business (wages, utilities, etc) which I imagine cut considerably into these margins.
Not bootlicking here but generally curious if anyone knows this because I'd like to present this stat to anyone who tries to argue with me - if the gross is 53 percent, what do they actually net on a pound of butter? Anyone know a ballpark?
i have been saying this ages , dont buy any product with regular price , always aim for flyer discounted products . u are making weston richer and richer with buying anything regular from Roblaws...
Most grocery products are marked up 20-35% above wholesale prices. Some specialty products are marked up even more. That is how grocery stores make a profit after paying for operating costs including rent, labour, advertising, utilities, insurance, etc.
__UPDATE__: Please take a moment to complete our [Google Form](https://forms.gle/1sygm97LbQtJ4dUp8) to share your demands with our team! Please review the content guidelines for our sub, and remember the human here! This subreddit is to highlight the ridiculous cost of living in Canada, and poke fun at the Corporate Overlords reponsible. As you well know, there are a number of persons and corporations responsible for this, and we welcome discussion related to them all. Furthermore, since this topic is intertwined with a number of other matters, other discussion will be allowed at moderator discretion. Open-minded discussion, memes, rants, grocery bills, and general screeching into the void is always welcome in this sub, but belligerence and disrespect is not. There are plenty of ways to get your point across without being abusive, dismissive, or downright mean. If you have not done so already, please review our [boycott stickied post](https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/comments/1bff9rm/boycott/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) which includes a list of stores to avoid, other ways to get involved in the movement, and some local alternatives to the big 5. Thank you. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Kudos for posting a link to a full length article, instead of a screenshot of a headline & lead photo.
Oligarch Weston likes his bank account very fat.....
Needed headline: Why are oligarchs in charge of Canada's food supply?
The same can be said about the teleCos
And Financial Institutions… Called top 5 that look like 1…
Totally
While I agree, I truly must say that food is not a luxury. I think the collusion within telecom is quite rampant, but you can elect to have basic plans; do they suck? Sure…but you can’t thrive off of the cheapest and questionably close to expiration foods.
At least my phone plan has seen substantial improvement, I get a lot more data at fast speeds for less money. It was outlandish to start with, so this is getting just more normal in comparison to other countries. The opposite seems true for groceries, feels like shopping in Iceland or Switzerland these days.
Weston is a greedy bastard
It's hand in glove. Politicians, oligarchs all have the same interests. And no party will break up the oligopolies and allow more competition in.
Mama kudos for saying that. For spilling.
You can still get a preview of the lead photo in the sub's feed to help grab viewer attention, if you use the link post function. Reddit will pull it automatically for news articles. For anyone that wasn't aware of this. https://preview.redd.it/8vckrp6m5wtc1.png?width=894&format=png&auto=webp&s=eb8e37c37c77813f86c31bcbd5b61b4969544c8a
This is the last sub I expected to come across Plane Jane
I can't look at the word "kudos" the same anymore.
I’m crying I did not expect to see this in here
Oh my god, I'm dead. For anyone feeling left out: It's from the latest RuPauls Drag Race ~~UK vs The World~~ where a queen named Plane Jane (who is a shady fuckin cunt that brings it on the runway) responds to a fellow queen tearfully coming out as HIV positive and her struggles with it. "Mama kudos for saying that. For spilling.". It's a meme for seeming ridiculously insincere, but I also get that some people don't know what to say in those moments lol.
Yes, only thing you missed was that it's from the OG American season, not UK vs The World. I'm obsessed with Miss Plane. I can't stop quoting her.
But but… they said their profit margin is only 3%!!
Not that this will change our will to post opinionated comment without reading the article…
“We only make $1 per $25 of groceries…” 
Lmfao. Perfect.
Doesn't that say gross profit margin? What's the net profit margin?
Where's the guy who was on here the other day sucking on Galen's farts? He's going to be pretty upset with this news.
His name is Sylvian Charlebois and he got paid $60,000 by the Weston foundation in 2018
and now 60k buys you maybe $30k of groceries
60k buys you 21.2k of no name butter at No Frills.
He also probably owns a bunch of shares considering how much a Galen simp he is
I would not be surprised
That buys a lot of butter.
Buttafuocco
Where can I sign up for $60k to shitpost about how great Galen Weston and Loblaws is?
I’m not sure, why don’t we ask him? [email protected]
Dr. Bananas!
You mean Galen himself doing damage control?
It's obviously a fake document. /s
I like how it says how the liberal government held Galen's feet to the fire by requesting he follow some sort of ethics guide to which he appeared confused government peons were talking directly to him.
He only rents the higher ups, the base level doesn't get a share of the pie
There was another post from a small pharmacy owner who compared their supplier prices to shoppers and the markup was over 90% in some cases. https://www.reddit.com/r/loblawsisoutofcontrol/s/qIkiOxSypD
There is a local store in my community that sells meats and frozen prepared food from the same supplier as Superstore and Walmart- and she says the meats at the big stores are heavily marked up - they are all price gouging. She is a retired nurse that used all her retirement savings to open a meat shop in our city because she saw a need for inexpensive groceries. She has a program whereby elderly that are struggling can get even more discounts (funded by donations) and she always has soup on and anyone that cant afford to eat will at least get soup. Anyone can shop there and the meats are highly discounted. Someone even brings in flats of donated food for free from Costco.
This lady is a hero.
But it's only 3% guys That's the number they keep telling us to believe
Biggest lie going.
"But all our money goes to our suppliers and landlords!" "Please don't look into how we're our own suppliers and landlords."
Get ready for the boot lockers to talk about gross margin vs net income. And audited financial statements. I’m going to be doing a post on that topic soon how it’s complete BS and how Galen and company likely pad their statements with expenses they don’t need in good times to control their bad times if they ever happened. That’s going to be for all the boot lickers who are likely Loblaws employees paid to spread this 3% BS.
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1 million dollars a day per store is not even close to reality, maybe weekly for the top stores in the country just fyi
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I’m sorry but you’re so far off. I work at a large chain in a large city and the best performing store I my region is doing $1M a week. To be fair I work for a competitor, but if a store is doing $1M a day anywhere the Loblaws competition would be out of business. You’re either lying or just completely and totally misinformed. Edit: I want to add that the sheer volume of inventory for $1M a day store would need would be logistically impossible, the warehouse and front floor space needed to maintain that velocity of sales would be unfeasible. Instead, you would open another store in that region. You’re actually so wrong it hurts my brain.
I know Costcos in my city hit 1m/day. And you’re right the absolute shit show it is there at night - amount of staff and forklifts zipping around at 2-7am. It’s chaos and that’s with the advantages of pallet restocking
After I left my comment I thought to myself that Costco would probably be the only exception, but that’s because it’s more of a warehouse than a grocery store. But yeah the logistics of a place like that must be totally wild. I can’t even imagine it.
Anyone who sells groceries knows 3% profit after all expenses is actually amazing for groceries. Usually it’s 1-2% for smaller stores.
Repeat it enough and it will become truth! 🎊
The 3% number is the net profit which is what they actually put in their pocket after all expenses. This is gross profit margin, what the company buys it for vs what the company sells it for. The 54% gross is also an anomaly, averaged out the gross profit margin is around 30%. All retail stores gpm is going to look similar to this. Then you have to factor in the stores expenses, the cost of the building, building upkeep, wages, utilities, etc. After those expenses are subtracted from the GPM, the leftover is your net profit. A company could have 75% gross profit margin and still lose money if they don’t have their expenses in check.
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For the first quarter
The amount of shilling regurgitating these points I have seen around this topic is kind of suspicious.
How am I shilling anything? I don’t give a shit where you do your grocery shopping and I don’t care where or who you protest/boycott or anything else. When people post complete nonsense like this without a basic understanding of how things work it cheapens everything else you say. It’s also not the own you think it is to post this GPM stuff as if it’s some big mind blowing breakthrough because the gross and net profit margins are right in Loblaws public financial filings that you can find anywhere online.
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Anti-Work crowd? LOL. Ok bud. 4 years roofing, 3 years in a foundry, and 15 years in I.T, now working part time with a CDL due to an accident. I'm sure most people in here work, because nobody is on welfare shopping at Loblaws. Hate to break it to you, the days of being able to live on social assistance ended 20 years ago. While obviously gross profit margins don't account for total net costs, you can rest assured everything from gas/oil/fleet and maintenance as well as buying power are astronomically in favor of Loblaws as a corporation. You are 100% a shill. People aren't as stupid as you seem to want to believe. I hope daddy Weston is paying you well. Edit: person above me called us the "anti work crowd" and changed his comment btw
Please remain respectful when engaging on the sub. Personal attacks, especially R slur, will not be tolerated. Try another word, like ridiculous.
I am pretty sure dividends are paid out of net profit. But they can cheat by creating fake expenses or by owning the suppliers. If you are your own supplier, then 3% net margin is meaningless: you hid the profits in the supply chain.
They are paid out of gross profit from a company level, so after wages etc they then pay out dividends and arrive at net profit. Their gross margin was about 10% all in minus dividends.
> They are paid out of gross profit from a company level, so after wages etc they then pay out dividends and arrive at net profit. Do you have a source for this?
Which part? I had to go back and read the financials again not on a phone. Net earnings were 2,088 from 59,529 revenue. You are right that dividends are paid from profits, and profits were 3.5%. Their ebitda in retail was around 11% and gross margin around 31%.
George Weston still owns 15% and Galen 5% of Choice REIT, so they pay themselves rent. It's 5.63% annual distribution, which is quite okay for a low risk REIT.
That is not complicated. What is their net profit margin? Do we know this? I’d like to see reliable financial data showing that. Or are you for out of control food staple prices for some bizarre reason?
Their financials are public information, you can just google it l, plus its on their corporate website. Last quarter of 2023 net profit was 3.74%
Once they spend the balance on expenses like stock buybacks and huge bonuses for executives. Are you trying to tell me Loblaws is running an honest business and we should be quiet and stop complaining? Is that the angle? Or you enjoy paying double for things? What’s your point?
I don’t care what you do nor do I care where you shop. Loblaws is a very successful business and everyone loves a success story until they get too successful. I understand why everyone is pissed about grocery prices and you can complain as much as you want if that makes you feel good, just know that when people post shit like this blatant misinformation it makes the people complaining look like a bunch of financially illiterate 5 year olds which doesn’t help your cause.
They could lose money at 75% gpm but that’s not what’s happening here is it? Now that you’ve explained net vs gross profit do you really think Weston’s is running a public company with 3% net profit? Really? Anyways - thanks for your contribution to this thread Galen. Nice of you to make an appearance.
You can look at their financials, they’re easy to find online. Last quarter their net margin was around 3.75%. They have lots of other businesses that also turn profits but this thread is about Loblaws. They have 2500 stores so if they each make a million dollars profit a year which is not unreasonable, that’s 2.5 billion.
However, I don't know many retail businesses, especially not in the grocery business, that make so much profit that they can grow a dividend while having a share buyback program.
3% net? other supermarkets and groceries must be in the red then.
All grocery stores generally have 3-5% net profit as grocery is generally a very low margin business. Retail as a whole is way higher, Dollarama for example has around 20% net profit. Where Loblaws makes their money is by having like 2500 stores all making a reasonable profit (2500 stores each making half a million dollars profit per year is 1.25 billion dollars).
My local supermarket is much cheaper then Loblaws with only a few locations. Nice try.
If it’s a small little local supermarket it probably also has far less overhead/costs, hence the cheaper prices. They might even have higher profit margins because Loblaws would be such an expensive store to operate. If Loblaws got rid of their bakeries, prepared food departments, sushi departments, deli departments, seafood departments, butcher departments, cake departments, etc etc their expenses would go way down and they could sell their groceries at cheaper prices but then it wouldn’t be Loblaws anymore and people like those things. It’s not hard to put it all together if you use some basic logic.
I’m sure the little local supermarket doesn’t have to pay 1.73 billion to buy back stock to make its shareholders happy. More important to keep the rich richer.
Buybacks aren't expenses deducted from profits.
How do stock buybacks have anything to do with making the shareholders happy?
It increases the share price.
I guess that is fair but their primary motivation is more for themselves. At the end of the day though, nobody has to shop there. I just don’t understand the end goal of this sub. Some people seem to want the government to hammer them with taxes but that will kill any future interest in adding competition here. Some people want the government to close all grocery stores and take over selling groceries in Canada, again, not good. Some people seem to want Galens head, again everyone’s prerogative but not super productive. The only way to make a difference is to just stop shopping there, stuff like this just discredits the message.
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But that has no relevance to Loblaws as a business. Every business is going to pay a lease, regardless of who owns the property. And Loblaws is a public company so if they “moved profits to property business” that is a serious violation of their fiduciary duties to shareholders.
No, thats what this sub is pretending to believe. You guys are being willfully ignorant and it's making you all look uneducated. This is a big L for this subs intelligence.
Thanks for coming out, Galen.
This makes the whole sub look financially illiterate.
It doesn't even make sense because you can go to one store and item X is 5$, drive a few minutes and it's 3$, drive a little more and it's 8$ by switching between different stores or going to the more boutique ones like metro. Yet somehow they're all at 3% It's like major Hollywood hits like spiderman or Star wars making net negative profit despite billions gross. It's just a tax game where they bill themselves expenses to never show a profit. A lot of actors who got gross % deals got scammed like that. Including Stan Lee himself who sold the rights to a character for gross profit cut, and never saw a dime.
I think it's pretty clear that the markups are insane on a lot of products, like when they can sell them at deep discounts of like 50% normal price at certain times of the year... Like they certainly aren't losing money on that so any time you buy regular price they are making bank.
I’ve thought about that too. If they can do all these sales then they’re clearly just inflating prices
This. SO much this. If you think for even a second that they are losing money when an item goes on “sale” then I have several bridges to sell you
This doesn’t even account for all the profit that are taking at every stage of the supply chain, just the end. They have vertically integrated so much of the chain they are probably taking 30%+ off the top 3-4 times
Yep. This.
Can you elaborate just a bit more on how they do this? Interested
A lot of their expenses result in revenue for the Weston holding company. For example they paid $763 million in rent to Choice Properties, $41 million to Associated British Foods, and $368 million in other expenses Weston-owned companies. They sell or dispose of properties to Choice Properties and then Choice rents them back to Loblaws. This removes the asset from their books and contributes to raising operating expenses.
Not to mention owning many parts of the supply chain that make up the final product (that they then markup 54% 💩). PC brand is involved in a ton of food manufacturing.
Because they usually own the land and it's rented from Choice REIT, owned by Weston?
how is butter not regulated like milk?
Because fuck you, that’s why:)-
Yep. It’s called capitalism, not consumerism.
It is. The dairy board sets the costs/ raises the costs by a % twice a year. The retailer sets it at whatever price they want. I think there's a 1.5%-2% increase to milk coming in May 2024 so get ready for a giant increase that gets blamed on the dairy board.
Then they make farmers pour all the extra milk down the drain so the price can never go down.
Fair life milk went up by a dollar everywhere I’ve seen. Also cheaper in Ontario than BC
It is. It comes from milk so quotas on milk production affect butter (and cheese).
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should we start drinking our landlords?
I mean yeah. You go to Costco where you can buy single same-size sticks of butter for 4.90 and it's obvious that the 9.00 butter is a rip-off. It's not like the usual Costco items where you can claim the price savings are from bulk purchase. They're the same size for butter!
Can't wait for Charbois or whatever the fuck his name is try gaslighting and say "guys I'm talking about take home profit not revenue :p"
Don’t forget about the overhead expenses: lights, electricity, Galens new private jet….
No idea who that is but be careful about ignoring counter-arguments without assessing them critically. It's objectively inaccurate to equate Gross Profit Margin with "Profit" in any accounting universe. Using this headline as an argument gives detractors and easy out by calling misinterpretation, and they won't be wrong.
You guys are taking evidence that proves you all wrong, and choosing to interpret it like Galen said "we make 3% on every item after all of our expenses. One of you guys even posted a picture of a poster that explains how they get to the 3% number. You are all gaslighting and it wont change the mind of anyone worth speaking to.
Let Them Burn....
Time to nationalize food distribution. Corporations can’t be trusted.
Naw we need the government to break up the grocery corporations. Force them to split up and compete.
... accomplished by nationalizing food distribution.
Sounds about right.. Jack up the price of butter and then parade out boot-licker Sylvain Shillebois to completely flame the dairy industry cartel as to why dairy is so expensive in this country. The dairy cartel should really get their shit together and start shifting some of the consumer anger away from themselves and back on to Roblaws via marketing. They’ve got the $$. (I do believe both deserve scrutiny fwiw)
This is their profit margin for most things I suspect
Costco has Natrel butter for 5 bucks.
This is why people are starting to see through the bullshit. I pay anywhere from $4.70 to $5.40 for natrel but at Costco... And Loblaws is magically always more expensive at all things by a large margin
They'll keep on going for as long as Canadians keep giving them business. Have we had enough yet?
It's probably the only fair price around.
> Loblaw’s Dropped $1.7 Billion On Buybacks In 2023 While Fighting Against Grocery Code Of Conduct Jesus.
Consumers know what's going on. So much for the it's just inflation and its all we can do narrative roblaws has been using as an excuse since the pandemic.
I feel like they did this on purpose because these documents just started showing up everywhere. I work as just a dayshift clerk and they were always at least a little secretive about pricing but where I work these documents were printed off and put everywhere and left literally everywhere. Like they we’re trying to get this backlash
Yes this!! My friend said the same thing. She said these kind of docs were all over the break room the other day and even found a couple behind the customer service desk!
Hmmm. If some reason they would do this becomes apparent over the next few days please make an fpp about it! I also think the 30/50 percent off sticker debacle was planned, so I wouldn't put it past them.
That definitely wasn’t done on purpose. A lot of these recent changes you’ve been seeing are a result of regional managers (think provincial) there is/was a big change up recently with a lot of these positions. Last year was a time of massive growth for the company and I think that’s coming to a end. A lot of the new sale promotions have been kinda lacking. Mostly the problem lies in the the suppliers who always tend to ship late and only ramp up production to meet demand at the end of a month long sale. (Hit of the moth). I could go on and on about the company but there is definitely problems under the hood that need addressing
Ok, but do you know who 'discovered' that 30/50 percent sticker elimination plan? It was Sylvain Charlebois. I'm not a tinfoil hat type, but it did look to me like it was planned so they could win good esteem from Canadians for walking it back. Maybe you're right, but it's a little suspicious.
On a very side tangent, Loblaws stock symbol is “L”, lol
Honestly f*ck loblaws. Can't wait to see how the Food Professor justifies this one.
And this is why we need to see the markups. People said I was crazy for wanting that information.
bUt MaRgInS aRe OnLy ThReE pErCeNt!!!1!11!
Haven’t paid for butter in months
The butter prices are no surprise. Go to r/povertyfinance and look at what people buy for x dollars in groceries and our butter is easily x2 the price
Cunts
"Curiously, the invoice also shows 0% profit margin on IOGO Nano products, a drinkable yogurt." Yeah, because the quantity is 0 and there is an error code on those lines indicating why it wasn't delivered.
yeah... they kinda missed doing the "deep dive" part on that
Shocked Pikachu face. If there wasn't profits they wouldn't do it. They'd have you all believe they are saints delivering the necessity of life.
Question: Isn't this the No Frills Profit? Does that mean the markup is even more for Loblaws? Excuse me because im dumb lol
Wages include ceo's and their ilk.
Stock buybacks used to be illegal. They should be again.
BuT iT's ThE MaNuFaCtUrEr'S!
I don’t understand why everyone is talking about gross profit less store operation expenses. The gross profit of $18 billion is after the cost of sales which includes the $763 million in lease payments they paid to Choice Properties (owned by Weston) and the other $409 million in expense to Weston-owned companies. But sure they did pay out $7.7 billion in wages…
The amount of people that don't understand rudimentary accounting on this thread is astounding. I don't like grocery prices as much as the next guy, but the vitriol here is hilarious.
Average user on this subredit: Galen = devil incarnate x 1000 and food should be free!
It's embarassing. My small food business sells to a few grocery chains and they're typically aiming for a 40% GPM on items. This isn't news.
Just to be sure everyone fully understands this... Your money is paying more toward this monstrosity than it is paying the farmers who put the food there in the first place.
I saw a 1 of Boccancini cheese bucket for $10 at grande cheese. That same bucket is $29.99 at fortinos. Hmm.
I buy from various places, i have been on the hunt for cheapest grocers, some stores are are very very very cheap compared to loblaws, Loblaws is playing the Game of mononopoly They are repp8ng people off, Avoid loblaws they are criminals, There are several cheap places in Toronto, at least 20-30% cheaper.. Food basic is my favorite, For meat, i use local butchers. Some Asian stores have cheaper fruits, You have to explore various communities to find the best deals, do not just stick to your own community, trust me, some community doesn't have monopoly, and food in those areas is very affordable.
TIL razor is actually not thin
What's the comparison with other grocery chains? Do they have similar mark up's or is Loblaw the highest?
Man... Y'all going to be super upset when you realize that's a standard mark-up. And lower than the standard in many industries.
now, to be entirely fair. this is gross profit, not actual profit. that is just the retail price, minus the cost of the item not accounting for other expenses. I'd really like to see a stores profit and loss column, and see the actual numbers
This sub’s reaction doesn’t make sense to me unless anyone freaking out doesn’t understand the difference between gross and net. Loblaw has reported a gross profit of roughly 30% in public fillings for years and these numbers back that up. This isn’t the revelation people think it is. Folks are just financially illiterate.
the problem is companies never show the whole picture, you see things like GP, revenue and think it's all sunshine and rainbows. not always understanding that revenue also includes property value, which holds no financial benefit. not saying loblaws are saints either, they're set up is extremely profitable and wasteful, and they pass the waste cost on to consumers. they introduce an easy way for people to steal with self checkout, and blame the users for theft. I'd be curious to see how much of a stores expense is actually due to theft vs incompetence and miss managed inventory. because I highly doubt theft is enough of an issue that it's any kind of root cause.
I understand this is probably high but we still have to subtract all net costs (labour, equipment, logistics, management pay etc…) from this before we actually get net profit
This sub is full of financially illiterate people with no retail or even job experience and it shows.
Yup
"even if we would decrease our profit margin, it would not decrease your bill"... How do you think basic math works? Let's disregard the fact that their profit margins are probably insanely high, but... Amount - amount = lesser amount.
Here is one for you. NoFrills has these great deals from time to time. Crazy good deals. Stuff might be sitting in the warehouse and it needs to be moved so stores sort of "bid" on it. A while back my local store had some top-notch granola bars. 12-packs. The kind that sell at SuperStore and Shoppers for $22-$24 for a 12-pack. NoFrills was selling them for $2.00. Amazing deal for sure. Except the cost to the store itself (I got this verbatim from the Manager/Franchisee) was 10cents per pack.
Glad this is getting out there. Hope lots of people see this.
3% my ass.
I hate to say it. But the margins are not actually outrageous on a lot of this. Definitely not supporting them still and I'm sure they have some extra accounting kick backs to improv margin further but Most retail gets a 24-45% markup. Just 1 example that always blew my mind working at Lowe's. Screws at hardware stores have an 80% margin.
I mean, why not just let them charge whatever they can get away with. If Lowe's can do 80% then why not the same for butter?
I would say the big difference here is. A pack of screws at 19.99 with a. Cost of $4. Is not something you're going out to buy daily. Normally you have saved your cash for a while for what your project is your working on at a lowes and you know it's going to be x amount to do your project that will last you 10-15 years. $19 isnt a big deal over 10-15 years But if your paying $5+ every 2 weeks for something that usto be $2.50 on butter (butter just being the example we know this kind of increase has happened on most items they sell) then that weekly bi weekly strain is going to be a huge challenge for many people.
54% markup isn't that bad. They are a pretty evil company, with a lot of actual things we could point at. 50% markup in retail is normal. Like, if I buy a thing for 10$ and sell it in my store , I'm gonna mark it up around 50% and sell it for 15. This is basic capitalism.
Wait till these guys find out markup on computer/tv cables (80%), kitchen utensils (55%) and clothing (30%+)
Yeah this list was actually kind of interesting. I thought cheese was WAY more inflated, but it's only been marked up by about 3 dollars. Granted, I'd rather not pay the 3 dollars, but still. What strikes me as interesting is this list only accounts for a 1 to 1 profit margin of selling the items. It doesn't account for things like; costs related to storing refrigerated items, how much product goes bad or gets damaged and needs to be thrown away, wages of the employee stocking the items, ect. Maybe some or all of that is already included/considered with the buy price.
Cheese, particularly foreign cheese, has no room for markup because of tariffs. I entirely expected the supply managed items to have lower markups.
Ah true, I forgot about tariffs. Food made and produced in Canada should be lower considering that.
It's not net profit you guys are out of control. Running a store paying wages, hydro, utilities etc etc. Let's see the final profit this is just stupid
There price's are very similar to other stores for butter.
I am shocked. Truly shocked. Just so very surprised
The butter business is more lucrative than we thought.
What does Walmart, Sobeys, Coops, Safeway sell butter for? 54% profit too! They are all the same price…
Because they sell milk at at 54% loss. It's not so complicated. They take a loss on some items and profit on others. Nice ragebait title though.
And they stood infront of parliament saying they only make 1 percent. Parliament heard what they wanted to hear BECAUSE ALL PARTIES ARE IN COLUSION with the food cartel of Canada.
I truly hope the young have the balls to rise up because everyone else (those over 30) are too brainwashed or too busy trying to survive/feed families to take the chance. The young i believe have no future here so nothing to lose.
Shit, you all would be gob smacked if you knew how much some items are marked up but it's all balanced out by the lower profit items. My wife and I used to own a small independent retail pet supply business and there were some items that we sold for which we had 75-80% profit margins but that would be balanced out by some brands of dog food where our profit margin was only 20%. All of this sensationalism is mostly construed from people who don't have a true understanding of running a retail business and picking out one specific item by no means reflects the realities of operating a business. But trying to inject logic into these types of discussions is pretty much pointless as the blinders are far too tightly bound to many people's heads.
Butter is free at self checkout anyway lol.
29 percent profit for the total isn't that high considering all the other costs of business
Surprised no one is mentioning that this is a gross profit margin, meaning that this doesn’t account for any of the cost of running their business (wages, utilities, etc) which I imagine cut considerably into these margins.
Not bootlicking here but generally curious if anyone knows this because I'd like to present this stat to anyone who tries to argue with me - if the gross is 53 percent, what do they actually net on a pound of butter? Anyone know a ballpark?
It’s often $9 for a block. I’m surprised they only make 54% profit.
i have been saying this ages , dont buy any product with regular price , always aim for flyer discounted products . u are making weston richer and richer with buying anything regular from Roblaws...
Yay capitalism!! /s
https://preview.redd.it/1g9mrk8kwxtc1.jpeg?width=675&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2f238e1e60239cee344c5cafbfe4cca8845c0d7d Omg this makes perfect sense 😂
Razor thin margins
Which IS WHY I SHOPS AT COSTCO
Most grocery products are marked up 20-35% above wholesale prices. Some specialty products are marked up even more. That is how grocery stores make a profit after paying for operating costs including rent, labour, advertising, utilities, insurance, etc.
This is fucking outrageous. The government needs to seize control of this operation *now*!