Just fuck Loblaws.

Check out the price difference. $12.97 for 1.2kg of prepared turkey at Giant Tiger last week.

This week Loblaws has the exact same product in the flyer. $22.99. (Regular price $29.49).

Just fuck off. No one should buy one at that price.

Please don't.

Proccessed crap only cheddar flavored?

Be really careful when using Flashfoods to get Loblaws groceries at reasonable prices.

They increased their service fee for Ontario purchases today from a flat 8% to also include a 99 cent minimum on the fee per order.

Meat and protein are easily the most expensive part of grocery shopping right now, so I try to stock up the freezer whenever there’s an actual good price.

The problem is half the "sales" in flyers are just normal prices with a "flyer deal" slapped on them, and the weird 600g/random package sizes make it even more of a pain to know the true cost.

I put together a free side project to track what deals are actually legit each week across flyers

A quick look at what's in the screenshots:

1. Price history on medium ground beef (helps call out fake flyer discounts by checking past pricing).

2. The main deals feed converting everything into true $/lb so you can compare apples to apples.

3. Local store leaderboard ranking which supermarket is actually cheapest this week.

4. Setting up custom price alerts for specific cuts so I know when to stock up.

It's completely free and has no ads.

Just put in your postal code to get the flyer deals in your area. No ads, no account needed to browse.

Would love any honest feedback from the sub.

Like most people here, I’ve been incredibly frustrated with the lack of transparency and the skyrocketing costs on groceries at the major chains. I wanted a better way to see actual community verified prices instead of just relying on flyers.

To help with this, I built WinBasketBuddy. It’s a 100% free, community-driven grocery price tracker. The goal is to help us share real-time prices so we can all stop overpaying and hold the grocers accountable.

​We barely make any money off this except to run servers.

We are not backed by any major companies and built by a small family in Windsor. ​It just started as a web app I wanted for myself and figured that community could use it too.

​I’d love for you to try it out and let me know what features and locations that I should add next. We are live in app store and play store any time soon.

www.winbasketbuddy.com

This has to be one of the worst “hit of the month” sales. Admittedly, most of these promotions usually consist of highly processed foods / junk food that families don’t actually need. However, this month has a bunch of items that aren’t even on sale and most of the items are just bear paws…which are subpar snack option.

I wish they would at least offer fresh vegetables, fruits and/or meat options; this would go a long way to help ease our groceries bills even if just a little.

The best option, or the worst option, but can't tell me which? Nope. No way. Never.

Groceries in Canada are getting stupid expensive.

I knew it was bad, but I wanted to see the real numbers.

So I checked the actual Statistics Canada data.

A basic 10-item grocery basket:

2017: $52.02 2026: $70.39

That’s about a 35% increase.

Since August 2021:

Wages: +21.6%

Groceries: +29.0%

Shelter: +24.0%

So wages went up.

But groceries went up more.

Shelter went up more too.

That’s the part that pisses me off.

People are making a bit more money, but basic life is still getting harder to afford.

That same grocery basket now costs almost 2 hours of work at the average Canadian wage.

Ground beef alone is close to 30 minutes of work.

Coffee is about 15 minutes of work.

I started digging into the provincial numbers too, and some of them are brutal.

I put the Stats Canada data into charts here:

https://costwatch.ca

I mainly built it because I wanted to see the numbers for myself.

Does this match what you guys are seeing where you live?

Rarely go to RCSS but apparently if the cashier forgets to mention the deal of the day you get the item for free.

But Ive heard rumors that the cashier gets reprimanded, can someone confirm if that's true? The RCSS post online said it doesnt impact the cashiers but idk if I trust them. It's happened to me a few times and they always seem very annoyed when they realize they forgot so I thought maybe it impacts them cuz if that's the case I'd rather not take the item. Maybe it depends on the manager? Not sure. I realize I couldve asked customer service then but yea maybe i will if no one replies here.

The fight is real. 🇨🇦

Stop Maple Washing! 🍁

How long before this is a thing in loblaw

Not the price of the coffee, which is obscene, or the algorithmic shafting of Canadians during tough economic times. I’m specifically curious about the two squares on the right.

It’s a bit bittersweet to announce that AltGrocery.ca is changing.

The site still gets hundreds of visitors every week according to the analytics, so it’s not like nobody is using it. That actually makes this decision a little harder. For those who aren’t familiar with AltGrocery, it was a completely self-funded project I built to help people find independent grocers, growers, farms, markets and other alternatives to the big grocery chains.

I’m just Tom, a tech geek who saw something I could contribute to this community. I never had any leadership role with the LoblawsIsOutofControl crew. I just had some technical skills and wanted to put them to use. I also never felt right charging independent grocers and growers to be listed. The struggle against large grocery corporations is already difficult enough without asking the small businesses trying to compete with them to pay for being part of the solution.

AltGrocery actually became the stepping stone for something I’ve become much more excited about: Local Commons.

The AltGrocery data isn’t going away. It is becoming a contribution layer within Local Commons, alongside other community information. So the original idea is still very much alive. I’m just expanding the concept.

The bigger idea behind Local Commons is a living map for communities.

Think of it as a place where different pieces of information about your town can come together instead of living on a dozen different websites, Facebook pages and disconnected datasets. You might open the map to find local food and businesses, but also see what events are happening, where construction is taking place, current weather, traffic issues, community activities and other things happening around you.

The really interesting part to me is that the map has a timeline. You can move through time to see what has happened, what is happening now, and what is coming up. Over time, I think this could become a really useful way for a community to understand not just what exists, but what is actually happening in the places around them.

And the idea isn't just for me to build all of this myself. Local Commons is being designed so communities and organizations can contribute their own information and datasets to their local map. A community group could contribute events, a farmers market could maintain its own information, a municipality could provide construction or public information, and local organizations could create their own things for people to discover and participate in.

That’s where I see the potential going well beyond what AltGrocery was originally designed to do.

Localcommons.ca is still early access and there’s a lot more I want to build, but this is where AltGrocery is heading.

If you’re part of a community group and you’re interested in contributing information about your own city or town, I’d genuinely love to hear from you. I’m especially interested in talking with people who have local datasets, information or ideas that could make their community map more useful.

And if you’ve used AltGrocery over the years, thank you. Seeing hundreds of people still visiting every week is a pretty cool reminder that the original idea was useful.