Stuff the freezers with only McCain pizzas!
Ketchup connoisseurs face a very different Canada today. There’s more danger that topping your fries with a splatter of Heinz could earn a dirty look from the fellow diner. Perhaps even a lecture from an Ontario busybody ready to tell you just how you’re insufficiently patriotic. Following this week’s social networking hounding of Loblaw supermarkets into restocking French’s ketchup, which managers had initially judged inadequately profitable, any Heinz fan could be a target. Your ketchup preferences matter little to the greater cause of the Leamington, Ont. farmer, where French’s buys its tomatoes but Heinz doesn’t. “Remember,” wrote John Romanelli, leader of the French’s Revolution, declaring victory on Facebook yesterday, “all of the actually had nothing to use anything except Canadian jobs and creating Canadian jobs. Something we ought to all fight for.”
As each and every patriotic frenzy, it is the symbolism that means something most. American-owned Heinz, as it happens, employs much more Canadians than does Reckitt Benckiser, the ecu owner of French’s. And both companies combined don’t employ anything near to the number of people who work for Canadian-owned Loblaw, a business which was just designed a little bit less profitable by Romanelli and the fellow revolutionaries. The grocer, after all, is extremely attuned as to the consumers wish to purchase. “Customer preference was the only reason the merchandise was taken off our shelves,” said Loblaw spokesman Kevin Groh, Wednesday, “and the only reason it’s back.”
Stack high the cracker shelves with Dare Bretons. Stuff the freezers with simply McCain pizzas. Let Habitant pea soup wash over the canned goods aisles.
But it seems customers actually had little to do with it. Their votes were counted when Loblaw ran the numbers on French’s profitability to begin with, and also the verdict was clear: Not worth the shelf space. But local boosters like Romanelli got wind of Loblaw’s decision and took to social networking with demands that the store re-stock French’s ketchup for nationalistic reasons. He was joined by hundreds more Facebookers and tweeters. A member of Ontario’s Liberal government, Mike Colle, quickly jumped on Romanelli’s bandwagon and threatened to lead a boycott against Loblaw if it didn’t restock French’s ketchup. Thoroughly mau-maued, the retailer had little choice but to offer its surrender inside a fight it had not even subscribed to.
Romanelli appears to have been born to boost a bit of hell. He’s known as a labour activist, but also, he passes the name “John Tard,” as a person in the previous hardcore punk band the 3Tards. It had been a band known not just because of its vulgar lyrics, but evidently had a knack for creating a spectacle, too, staging mock live births and circumcisions on stage. Maybe promoting local tomato growers is recognized as punk nowadays, but French’s is bottled in Ohio. Loblaw’s house brand, President’s Choice ketchup, buys plenty of Canadian tomatoes, too, they also buy American tomatoes. Does PC, given its product sales, buy more Canadian tomatoes from Canadian farmers in total compared to purely Canadian-tomatoed, Ohio-bottled and never particularly popular French’s ketchup? Such questions would be best left to those in the scientific-technical intelligentsia class, not the punks and populist politicians on the around the frontline of the cause.
Related
- Loblaw pulled French’s ketchup since it was ‘cannibalizing’ PC brand sales, leaked memo revealsLoblaw to re-stock French's ketchup after social networking backlash’Bye. Bye. Heinz’: French’s ketchup sells out after online post praising it and its Ontario-grown tomatoes
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Their objective isn’t to contemplate, in the end, but to aggressively advance the perfect that Canadians ought to be met with grocery products that are seen to advertise Canadian workers. Stack high the cracker shelves with Dare Bretons. Stuff the freezers with simply McCain pizzas. Let Habitant pea soup wash over the canned goods aisles. For dessert, let them eat Deep n’ Delicious cakes, Jos Louis and Eat Mores. Yes, which will mean fewer jobs for Canadians employed in the processing plants, factories and logistics companies that handle the greater popular imported products. And grocers, facing displeased customers, will surely need to downsize their workforce. But those layoffs are the price we must purchase protecting Canadian jobs.
Perhaps the main difference between ketchups is not so different, and so one may not see any harm in forcing Loblaw to promote French’s over other ketchups. One taster interviewed by Bloomberg Businessweek this past year, as French’s was hitting the U.S. market, reported “It’s very very much like Heinz- a bit more liquidy and fewer creamy…I’d totally fail a Coke versus Pepsi challenge of them.” However, if the two are indistinguishable in Canada, it will enhance the question of whether our tomatoes are worth growing whatsoever. They generally cost more than American tomatoes, which is the reason Heinz brought out of the Leamington tomato game in 2014. They’re not viewed as more flavourful. Ontario farmers growing tomatoes that are pricier but offer no taste benefit over countries that have a stronger specialized advantage (in the U.S., that might be Mexican labourers) might be a less-than-optimal utilization of our labour and land. Normally, buyers would be the ones to inform us that. But Romanelli, Colle and the social media mob have decided to commandeer the content.
Until this week’s turmoil, many Canadians were probably unaware that there is a condiment war going on Body so intense that it’s difficult to know whether these grassroots campaigns are legitimate, or if French’s has had some submit all of this. French’s was last year lured in to the ketchup market, that is significantly larger than the mustard space where it’s dominant, and where there is less competition from dijons, grain mustards, honey mustards and, now, Heinz, which also recently launched its very own mustard. Ketchup sales in Canada alone count double the ones from mustard – whose seed, it so happens, Canada is the largest producer and exporter of in the world. So, if we actually want to support Canadian farmers, why are we even eating ketchup, let alone allowing stores to advertise it? Perhaps it’s the perfect time the people’s cause sought out a new enemy. Let us now find those betrayers who eat fries without mustard.
