TORONTO – Ugly food can mean quite a profit.
How Canadian grocery chains are tapping a new market with ‘ugly’ fruits and vegetables
They’re a unique shape plus they may have a blemish or two, but it’s what’s inside that counts, based on IGA Quebec’s campaign to market a number of odd-looking fruits and vegetables whatsoever of the province’s 290 stores.
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At least, that’s the bet Loblaw is making using its ugly duckling line of produce targeted at shoppers looking to reduce the sky-rocketing cost of fresh foods.
The company launched its Naturally Imperfect line last March, offering ugly apples and potatoes to Ontario and Quebec shoppers included in an effort run that later expanded to select stores in other provinces.
More kinds of cheaper, but blemished and misshapen, produce will quickly be accessible across the nation, the company announced Wednesday.
“It truly went well above and beyond what our expectation was,” said Dan Branson, the company’s senior director of produce.
“I think it really spoke that Canadians are available really looking for some options around driving value into their weekly shop and having greater option of that healthy eating product of value.”
Based around the program’s success, Naturally Imperfect will now include unsightly peppers, onions and mushrooms for consumers in Quebec and Ontario.
Meanwhile, Loblaw’s Real Canadian Superstore, Your Independent Grocer and most No Frills stores in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba started stocking less-than-perfect apples and peppers Wednesday, and Atlantic Superstore as well as your Independent Grocer locations within the Atlantic provinces started stocking Naturally Imperfect apples.
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The line’s produce is now also available at the Independent Grocer and Real Canadian Superstore in Whitehorse, Yukon.
The uglier form of a vegetable or fruit costs up to 30 percent less than its attractive counterpart.
That could be appealing to consumers who have been smacked with sticker shock on the produce aisle in the last year due to the low Canadian dollar and other factors, including shortages caused by a drought in California.
Between January 2015 and 2016, Canadian food prices rose four per cent, statistically Canada’s consumer price index. But fresh fruit and vegetables showed a few of the biggest increases, shooting up 12.9 and 18.2 percent respectively.
In the fourth quarter of 2015, Loblaw’s internal food inflation outpaced the CPI’s 4.1 percent jump, based on the company’s financial statements.
And while it has were able to pass most of this cost on to the consumer, shoppers started choosing cheaper products when some foods surpassed a particular price point, president and executive chairman Galen Weston said throughout a business call with investors a week ago.
Consumers, particularly those in Alberta where the economy is struggling, have flocked to Loblaw’s discount offerings, he explained.
Branson said Loblaw looks to deliver great value whatever the economy, but thinks by using the way things are the offerings might be benefiting Canadians a lot more than when Naturally Imperfect was first launched.
It plans to expand the program even more over the coming months.
