During the company’s second quarter earnings call on Thursday morning, Loblaw executives fielded questions from analysts about the grocery giant’s soft food retail sales — and whether a boycott organized online had impacted the company’s profits at all.
Some Canadians have been boycotting Loblaw since May, after the moderators of an online Reddit group called r/loblawsisoutofcontrol began encouraging its then-45,000 members to stop shopping at the store and its subsidiary brands.
During the company call, neither CEO Per Bank nor chief financial officer Richard Dufresne used the word boycott. But they didn’t deny that it was a factor in food retail sales that “came in a little soft” compared to the same time last year.
The company’s earnings results note that food retail same-stores sales increased by 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of this year, compared to a 6.1 per cent increase during the same quarter last year.
The boycott did certainly have an effect whether business analyst Wong or anyone at Loblaws wants to admit it or not. They missed their targets.
I’m not going to buy anything from Shoppers, T&T, Loblaws or NoFrills anymore for as long as I can.
Got a relative who’s worked at a local Loblaws warehouse/distribution center for decades - he said within days of the boycott starting, their orders from stores dropped dramatically and they were sending people home and scaling back shifts. Comparatively speaking they used to be so busy that basically anyone could opt for overtime whenever they wanted it. It was great to hear that from the inside and validate what murmur was in the media about it back then.