How absentee and supply issues are affecting your grocery bill

By Mike Vlasveld

Some Ottawa grocery store shelves are becoming bare and the stores are charging a lot more for some items than they used to.

Vice President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Grocers Gary Sands tells CityNews' The Sam Laprade Show, Wednesday, January 19, 2022, that there are a few major issues facing grocery stores which are impacting costs.

An employee shortage is number one.

Sands wants to see better access to rapid testing in grocery chains, as there often isn't enough staff to stock shelves.

“We could test the employees, and we could do that more than once a day,” he explains. “It's not a magic wand that's going to make Omicron disappear, of course, but it would help us to manage this issue instead of the issue managing us.”

He says the biggest factor affecting local grocery costs, however, is the fact that the COVID-19 Omicron variant is also ripping through the supply chain.

The cost of receiving goods has gone up about 30 per cent for many stores.

“In grocery, the margins, or the profits are about 1.5 or 2 per cent. And that might not mean a lot to people but that is significantly lower than in other business sectors — it's just a low-margin business. So, you can only imagine, if you're on that kind of a margin and somebody is delivering something with a 30 per cent cost increase, you can't help but pass that onto the customer,” says Sands. 

He says many grocery stores are struggling but he doesn't expect any will be forced into closing anytime soon.

Sands emphasizes that many Independent Grocer stores in Canada are the only grocery stores for many smaller communities. He's working with his partners to develop a “grocery code of conduct” to ensure small rural grocery stores stay open no matter what.

Listen to Sands' full conversation with Sam Laprade:

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