Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Speaker 2 (00:07):
From Canadian Food
Focus, this is Ask a Farmer.
I'm your host Clinton Monchuk,a Saskatchewan farmer . In this
podcast, we talk to foodexperts to answer your
questions about your food .
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Today we're going to
be talking a little bit about
food inflation and how itaffects your grocery bill. When
we go to the grocery store,what we're paying for food has
increased over the past fewyears, especially in a post
covid type of an environment.
When we look at food inflation,it's topped up over 10% and
it's slowly coming down. Butlike I mentioned, I think every
(00:51):
family is kind of feeling alittle bit of a pinch when they
go to the grocery store. JohnScott is with us today. He's
going to talk a little bitabout why some of these price
increases exist, some of thechanges in grocery stores and
consumer trends that arehappening within the grocery
sector. Do you want to give thelisteners just a little bit of
an overview of your backgroundin your experience within the
(01:14):
grocery retail sector?
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Sure Clinton , no
problem. I'm one of those
strange people who studied fooddistribution while , uh,
working in economics atuniversity. So I've been
looking at food distribution myentire career. Everything from
how grocery stores operate tohow , uh, distribution patterns
emerge between manufacturers,distributors and stores over
(01:41):
the years. You tend to getreasonably good at something.
And I was invited to be the CEOof Canadian Federation of
Independent Grocers. I heldthat role for a very long time,
for almost 25 years. Reallyenjoyed it. Retired a few years
ago, and now I sit on someboards in this sector. I don't
(02:02):
consult, but I will go and intostores and give people a
perspective on what I think isgoing on. I love to analyze
trends, particularly consumertrends, and people are very
good at giving me data, bothour own stores and elsewhere.
And so we're able to take thatdata and look at what's going
on in the stores and see what'shappening. So that's kind of
(02:22):
what I do. It's partly a careerand partly a labor of love, a
hobby, if you will.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I always view you,
John Scott as the guru of
grocery retail, that if thereis something to learn around
this, it is from you.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
Well, thank you for
that. The key is to, you know,
for everything just to keep ontop of what's going on, because
the sector, Clinton really isdevoted to one thing, and
that's satisfying or delightingthe consumer, and people often
miss that. But that really is,everybody that's in the
business has to do that. And ,it's not an easy thing to do,
(03:00):
but for example, a grocerystore that opened this morning
has to look exactly the same orbetter tomorrow. Think about
that, every day. And nowthey're open seven days a week
In most places, they have tolook exactly or better than
they were today, and theconsumer expects that to
happen. I mean, the reality isI need to insert new consumer
(03:26):
trends as I am changing theprotocols for my store
tomorrow. And that store stillhas to look great, even though
I've integrated new offeringsto go with the trends that are
apparent. People think it's asleepy industry because it's
always there, but it's the mostfast-paced industry you could
(03:47):
possibly imagine.
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Consumers are
feeling a little bit more of
this pinch when it comes to thegrocery store, and I do about
half of the grocery shopping inour family, and we have a
family of four. I'm feelingthat it's probably in that
range of a 15 to 20% increase.
And I'm kind of curious, do weknow why this increase has
happened and like what are someof the factors that are
(04:10):
affecting the higher price of,of grocery items, whether it's
food , uh, well, predominantlyfood that we're buying in the,
in the grocery stores?
Speaker 4 (04:19):
Yeah. Okay, so it's,
it's a very multifaceted
answer. I mean, there's a quickanswer. It's , uh, that, you
know, just like on your farm,Clinton, input costs have gone
up significantly in the lastfew years, particularly
post-Covid. And it's nodifferent in grocery retail.
You know, the cost ofdelivering product from the
(04:40):
farm gate to the processor ordistributor, the cost to go
from the processor todistributor or from the
distributor directly to theretailer and the retailer
handling the product at thestore. Those costs are just
simply there. Let me back upand give you a more wholesome
or more fulsome answer. From myperspective, when Covid
started, the grocery industrywas actually losing market
(05:04):
share to what we call like therestaurants--basically, food
service . And the groceryindustry was working very hard
to mitigate that trend. And youmay have noticed at that time
there were a lot of placeswithin a store that offered
meals and meals to go, meals totake home, or even restaurants
(05:25):
within the stores. And that'swhere we were going when Covid
hit. The expectation of theconsumer was that all grocery
stores would have all products,but every time you take a store
and you move it into a arestaurant type of factory ,
you add that in, you're takingaway space. So when a consumer
(05:46):
came in during Covid to getbasic groceries, they found
that there weren't as manybasic groceries to be had. And
so the result of that was thatthe stores had to take out all
of that space and bring inproduct that the consumer was
ready to cook at home. Well,you'll recall at that time that
(06:09):
consumers, particularly theyoung people, really didn't
have a clue how to cook. And,so when they came to the stores
to clean us out, they cleanedout frozen pastas, canned
goods, basic meats likehamburgers and chicken and
stuff that they could cookeasily. And so the
(06:30):
manufacturers started to dosomething and that was
retooled. And the retooling wasagainst the easiest, fastest
product to get out of themanufacturer to the store and
get it out. So you will see alot of exotic products. Good
example is ketchup. Theketchups, the different
(06:51):
varieties they had, the spicyand that kind of thing all went
away during Covid. And so allthe lines were changed and they
were producing against aspecific base product. Well ,
coming out of Covid, of course,people have gone back to the
stores and looked for thoseproducts and they're not there.
The other thing people didduring Covid was they learned
(07:14):
how to cook and they learnedcertain things about
ingredients, which again,they've gone to the stores and
they found perhaps theingredients they're looking for
aren't there. And so when theretailer has gone back to the
manufacturer looking for thoseitems, the manufacturers had to
retool again, that's a costfactor. And they've also had to
(07:34):
develop, again, small lines tohandle that different type of
product. The variety ofproducts that we carried in the
stores during Covid would beabout 30,000 items, at the peak
of Covid. Today in a store,you'd be at 45,000 items.
(07:55):
That's the difference. That'swhat you're adding basically in
categories. But each time youdo that, you're adding a cost
to the manufacturer end becausethey're not manufacturing as
much of any one product andthen you're adding the
additional , uh, costs thateverybody's used to. So those
things have been incrediblyhuge factors. The secondary
(08:16):
factor of course, is that, andyou know this being in
agriculture, is that if you'rea processor, you're signing
contracts a long way out foryour product, whether it's
grains or pulse crops orwhatever. You're signing it a
long way out. And so you as afarmer and I as the , as a
manufacturer, are betting onthat price is going to be fair
(08:38):
six to eight months out, and itmay or may not be, but whatever
it is, that's going to dictatethe price at retail that I've
got to sell to the retailer atthat time. And of course the
retailer gets the product andthey have to put the price up.
And so that's been asignificant issue and people
can look at it this year andsay, well, it was a 9% increase
(08:59):
overall last year and we'regetting a six to 9% increase
this year. And the reasonyou're getting that primarily
this year, because theretooling took place last year.
The reason you're getting thatincrease this year is because
the lag time--they've signedthe contracts, they're
manufacturing the product,they're coming to market. Now,
when I get that product atretail, I have to look at that
(09:21):
product and say, can I add inthe same amount of margin? Can
I get the same markup that Icould in the past? And the
answer is, I can't. I can't doit. I can't make as much money
on anything as I did in 2021during Covid, which was the
highest margin. That was whenwe peaked in the industry North
(09:42):
America wide . I can't get it.
And the reason I can't get itis because of the competition
in the marketplace. Regardlessof who you are, you're up
against somebody big. You're upagainst somebody big. Their job
is to get that price as low asthey can. So I've got to make
sure that my margins give me anability to be profitable, but
(10:04):
at the same time, they have tobe competitive. So for example,
anybody who is out of acompetitive price on eggs,
butter, milk flour, peanutbutter and bananas is out of
business. You need to beroughly within that competitive
(10:25):
price range. So I've taken abath at retail on all of those
products. A big guy, because heis getting a bigger, you know,
a larger volume, is not takingthe same bath that I am. So
I've ended up as a retailertaking a lower margin as a
result of that. So that's justsome of the areas where the
(10:46):
cost increases have come. Andthe reason why Canada's
inflation rate and food isbelow most of the others in the
western world is simply becauseof that. Those big guys are
making sure that the prices areas low as they possibly can be
.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
So John , what's the
impact of consumer buying
behavior on small stores andsome of the specialty products
that are out there?
Speaker 4 (11:09):
Every store,
particularly the smaller
stores, need to be different.
They need a point ofdifferentiation. So you need to
go to X butcher shop for acertain product or you know, a
smaller store. And if theydon't have that point of
differentiation, they can't bein business. And so the impact
of this has been, it depends onthis store you're speaking
(11:34):
about, but by and large, thesmaller operations have had to
come back and reduce the amountof space for packaged goods .
Basically saying packaged goodshave basically gone to discount
and emphasize, --so you'dalways get the number one
packaged good , you might pay alittle bit more for it--but
emphasize their point ofdifferentiation, which
(11:56):
primarily is in fresh . A lotof them are moving into whole
meal replacement. Uh , most ofit at this point in time comes
into deli's, cheeses, bakeryand that kind of thing. By the
way, baked goods, for whateverreason are going through the
charts. If I have any more ofthem , I'm going to be a blimp!
But it's one of those trendsthat's really gone well. But
(12:18):
that's what stores have had todo.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
What are some of
those things that grocery
stores are doing to ease thatpurchase or the sticker price
on some of the products thatthey're buying?
Speaker 4 (12:28):
If I look at some
stores and I, and you could go
to school on , uh, storescalled Trader Joe's in the US,
which I'm sure you've been to.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
You bet.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
Wegmans, Farmboy is
primarily in Ontario. All of
those stores have donesomething significantly
different than anybody else.
That's they carry very littlenational brand or even
secondary national brandproduct. All of their product
is labeled as their own labelon it. And so you really can't
compare. But what you , onething you can guarantee is that
(13:00):
their personal label product issuperb. And so they've
maintained their customer base,but their overall count is
down. This is, I don't want toget too technical on this, but
one of the ways we evaluatestores is we take the number of
customers in a week, say 26,000in a week and what the average
(13:24):
transaction is. Now , anaverage transaction has to be
everybody from somebody buyinga stick of gum to somebody
getting a $400 or $500 order inan average transaction. We were
running average transactionsprior to Covid, I don't know ,
around $23. And last year inthe height of Covid, we were
running $75 last year. Nowwe're running what , $32. So it
(13:47):
has kind of moved around alittle bit. And so what these
stores have been able to do,and their goal is to keep the
customers, but they're losingthe dollar value of the
transaction. You with me? Sothey're losing the packaged
goods , they're losing, if Ican get a regular produce
somewhere else cheaper, I'mgoing to do that. But they're
(14:09):
maintaining the customer base.
If they keep their point ofdifferentiation, that's what
they're doing differently.
Everybody else, you know,normal stores to cope with
inflation and stay competitiveare doing all the things you
think they're doing. Changingthe packaging manufacturers
are, maybe there's not as muchGatorade in that bottle as
(14:29):
there used to be. Certainlyaren't as many chips in that
bag. Chip bags are probably alittle bit smaller, but oops,
same price.
(14:35):
I talked about private label.
One of the things we don't wantto see, but we are seeing even
in small stores is servicereductions, service reductions,
man hours against, particularlyin departments like meat . And
you'll see a lot of traditionalsupermarkets going to, meat cut
in the, in the manufacturingfacility rather than at the
(14:56):
store. And that , and that'sbeen a point of differentiation
for other stores to say, no,we're continuing to cut here.
So service reductions. But thebest way to determine service
reductions is .. and you mustnotice it yourself. You see the
number of self-checkouts thatare coming in and how easy they
are to operate. Once you putthat capital cost in and get it
(15:18):
paid for, you can imagine thelabor hours you're getting rid
of. And finally, frankly, we'retaking lower profitability.
We're not getting the same netmargins that we got. Mid Covid,
like I would say 2021 was abanner year for net income in
grocery stores. And I would saythis year it's going to be a
(15:41):
major league , uh, struggle. Soif you've got your senior
management team on a bonusstructure against , uh, a
better return this year,they're probably a little bit
worried right now. Not going tohappen.
Speaker 3 (15:56):
We're hearing in the
news that people are thinking
grocery retailers must begouging consumers because of
the higher prices that they'reseeing in the grocery bills. Is
this really true or, or what'sgoing on here?
Speaker 4 (16:10):
Not in my
experience. It's certainly not
true. And I can certainly seeit in the results because I
analyze results all the timeand I see them from, some
people trust me with them andothers are public companies.
And the net result we're seeingis, is a normal shift. What
you're actually seeing is alower net at the, at the retail
store. But people, there are somany other factors that come
(16:32):
into it now that people see it,you know, Loblaws shooting a 9%
increase quarter over quarterwhen most of that increase came
from non-food, from elsewhere.
Right? You need to understand alittle bit more than that. So
no, I don't see gouging, but Isee misunderstanding in the
marketplace. And if I was tocriticize the grocery industry,
(16:52):
there are poor communicators ofwhat's really going on. They've
done a very terrible job oftelling consumers what's really
going on.
(16:59):
I made the comment, and I
want to say it was about a
year, year and a half ago thatI could see the prices on the
commodity markets going up. Ifollow Chicago and, and all the
mercantile exchanges when itcomes to commodities. And I
could see that upward trendwith a lot of these different
commodities. We had the wargoing over in Ukraine. But we
(17:20):
had some of those retoolinglike you had mentioned and some
of the manufacturing that wascausing some, some sticking
points. But it was prettyobvious for me as a farmer that
the prices of all theseingredients were going up and
there was no way that consumerscould not feel this in the
future. I'm seeing there's nowan upward tick in the commodity
(17:44):
prices again. So it kind ofwent back down after the, the
main harvest in North Americaand the European Union last
year. But because of some ofthose issues in Ukraine, some
of the drought situation herein North America, it appears
like we could be destined formore inflation. Is that what
(18:04):
you're kind of looking at goingforward in the future too ? Or
is or is some of that retoolingalready done?
Speaker 4 (18:10):
No , no. I agree
with that. No, no. I mean,
Russia just recently said we'renot going to honor the Odessa
agreement again, that had animmediate uptick in
commodities. So buying thatday, buying a commodity for six
months out , uh, I might wait aday or two and see if it
settles out. The climate changeissues and how that's affecting
(18:33):
agriculture, I should havetouched on that. That's another
big one. But especially aswe're our globalization, that's
been a huge, huge impact. Willthis continue to go up? We saw
prices starting to increase indeclining rate. I was just, as
I said, I was in Vancouver twoweeks ago and we spent a lot of
time looking at our pricingstructure and some of them were
(18:54):
increasing at a declining ratelast year. They were increasing
at an increasing rate at thistime. Just to give you an idea,
with 40,000 items in asupermarket last year , we
changed prices on 26,000 ofthem , and 25,000 were upward.
Just to give you a comparison,in 2020, we changed prices on
(19:14):
2000 items. That's all. Sothat's the difference. So I
asked our group, are wecontinuing to see adjustments?
And they said , yes , we'reseeing adjustments, but at a
declining rate. But the factorsyou've just mentioned are very
real and could lend lend a handto it. It continued to
(19:36):
increase. But it's been a...you know, the consumer's
pretty smart, like very smart.
And they've, they've they'vemade some significant changes
with their feet and basicallyshowed us where they're going
to go if these prices are goingto go up. And we in turn have
turned around and said, well,here's what we can do. So
that's, that's kind of wherewe've been at the last little
(19:57):
while.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
And you've mentioned
a little bit about the margin
and how tight of a businessthis is for those of us
listening to , uh, the media inthe last six months, it seems
like there's been thisconsolidated effort, and
particularly by politicians tohold these grocery retailers
accountable for the higherprices. But I think it's kind
(20:21):
of obvious that, you know, whenyou do a comparison to other
countries, even though ourprices of food have increased,
you know, pretty substantially,it's still not like it is in
say, the United States. AndI've traveled down there a few
times in the last couple yearsand it feels like the price of
food down there is quite a bithigher than here. So what are
(20:45):
your comments on, on that? Isit more shock and awe that we
see in the media when it comesto the grocery retailers?
Speaker 4 (20:51):
I don't want to take
shots of the media, but it's
shock and awe . It'snow there's abject naivety
there. And you certainly--andno disrespect to the
government, but you certainlydon't want government starting
to interfere in themarketplace. Or you may have
something you may not havewished for as a consequence of
(21:12):
that. Okay, so let's talk aboutthat, about overall margins and
who's making lots of money.
Let's look at the big badLoblaws who just announced
their earnings again and theywere up some 9%. People say ,
oh my God, you know, they've,they've really taken it to us
this time. Except for a couplethings. One is Loblaws is a
(21:35):
huge company and they have alot of facets and some of their
increases are non-food, some oftheir drugs, some of their
financial services and thatkind of thing, which again,
have had price increases oftheir own in a different venue.
So if you look at the actualfood, they're only up 6%,
that's below the rate ofinflation. Wow. Say, well, gee,
(21:55):
that puts it a little differentspin on it. So they're not even
with their food keeping pacewith the inflationary trends
that I just discussed. And Ican flip over to Empire who own
Sobeys, who just had theirannual meeting two months ago
and they did okay, but again,their results did not keep up
(22:17):
with food inflation. And so yousay, well, what are they going
to do about it? Well, it wasvery clear that the CEO said
they're going to move to morediscount and they're going to
go to more value private label.
Those are two weapons that bothLoblaws and Sobeys and Metro
are using to mitigate some ofthe costs on consumers. And
(22:42):
again, it's where consumers aregoing with their feet. The fact
that Empire, Sobeys stood upand said that so definitively
at the annual meeting said tome, they're hurting and they
need to know where to go forthe long term . What was
interesting, Clinton in both ofthose was in Loblaw's case
(23:04):
where they said they're goingto increase their emphasis on
no name and they already have65% in discount and Empire
increasing their discount andgoing to value private label.
What it said to me was, thisisn't going to be over early.
They're seeing this is going tobe a trend out for a period of
time. So if I was a smalleroperator, I'd be looking at
(23:29):
this totally differently interms of my offering because
what they're saying is, you'vegot to go discount in order to
keep yourself level in themarketplace. You've got to go
discount just to keep yourselflevel, just to keep that 6%
when the actual inflation's 9%and they're looking at it for a
longer term. So that says to methat the big boys at least
(23:52):
think that the inflationarytrend may continue for some
time.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
So touching on that
and the discount kind of ,
whether it's the brands or, ormore of an emphasis around
discount, I've seen the rise ofthe dollar stores, right? So
you see them, it seems likeevery suburb now has, you can
throw a stone and hit three ofthem , right? So are they
slowly starting to take some ofthat market share away from
(24:18):
like that ? There seems to bealways a lot of people when I
go into to buy the odd thinghere and there is, is that a
new trend that's coming whereconsumers are saying, you know
what? Whether it's real orperceived, I want to go in
there to buy some discountedstuff.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Well, you know, it
is great value in certain
areas. I mean, they don't havea full offering, although I'll
tell you the COO of DollarStores is one of the most
accomplished merchandisers wehave in this country. She's
amazing. Everybody would loveto have her on board . So I'm
not surprised at their growth.
I look more at the Costcos andthe Walmarts Clinton, that's
(24:56):
where I think they had aformula that tended to work.
And it was fueled by Covidbecause a lot of people went to
Costco, got a ton of stuff,threw it down in the basement,
and were able to live forseveral months. We were all
locked down and they didn'thave to go out and catch the
dreaded bug in the supermarket.
And so they learned all aboutCostco and what you get at
(25:17):
Costco. So, you know, bigchange there. And that, that
was a huge change. And if Ilook at the growth of Costco or
what I call adventure discount.
I call it adventure discountbecause when you walk in,
right? I'm sure you go therethe odd time, you walk in
there, you see on the wall, yousee this stuff and you say,
(25:39):
gee, I should pick that up. Butif you don't do it, it's not
going to be there next time. Soit is kind of an adventure. And
then you, you know, you , youdo know where you're going to
pick stuff up, but they havebenefited greatly from
offering. But I would say fairprices, they're not all
discount prices, but fairdiscount and fair prices have
gotten away with that. The samewith Walmart. They've tried to
(26:02):
stick with their discountformula. Again, they're more
than competitive. I'm not goingto comment on the quality that
anybody carries, but they'remore than competitive and
they're offering something thatconsumers are going to embrace.
So when people are going to gothere , uh, that we call those,
we call, by the way, theWalmarts and the Real Canadian
(26:23):
Superstores a soft discount,where you can get more than
just grocery. You can get otherthings there. And then you go
to the hard discount wherethere's no service and
everything is rock bottom. Youlook at... I wish I could take
you back two years and take youthrough a no frills and show
(26:44):
you what their mix was there.
The mix of President's Choiceagainst No Name and take you
there today and show you themix and No Name. And you can
see that, you know, that's beena dramatic change. And that's,
remember I said that off thetop, is a change in
merchandising. Every daythey've changed that
merchandising from that moresophisticated President's
(27:04):
Choice to No Name becausethat's where the consumer's
going. You know, one thing theconsumer learned during Covid,
which is a riot, and that was,they learned how to ingredient
cook and some of them becamegreat cooks, right? And that's
why we're not, so we're notreally fighting off the
restaurants right now becausepeople really like to cook.
They like to eat at home. Butone of the things that
(27:25):
consumers learned was that itreally doesn't matter about the
ingredient. You can buy it atdiscount or you can buy it at
high end . It comes down tobasically the cost. You know, a
chili pepper is a chili, pepperis a chili pepper, and
consumers became very wise onthat. So why wouldn't you go
where there's lowest pricesavailable? So discount is
(27:45):
driving a lot of that stuffnow. So discount and floor
space discount in the privatelabel product available.
Speaker 3 (27:53):
Do you see there's a
little bit of a trend that if
people are starting to cooktheir own food, are they
starting to possibly grow someof those, you know, chili
peppers or lettuce on theirrooftop patio or, or something
like that? Or is that notreally something that's
happening?
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah , it's , it's
there, but it's, let's say it's
inconsequential, but it's, it'speripheral to , you know, the
central part of our business.
But not everybody is. Yeah .
But they do, you know this, youknow this because you're a
farmer--they do trust youClinton, they trust you and
they trust grocery. Yeah . Andneither one of us can abrogate
(28:32):
that trust. Yeah . They trustus to have that chili pepper
sitting in there and it's goingto be safe and nutritious for
them and their family. It's nota trust to be abrogated. That's
very important. So I don't , Idon't know if it's a trend. I
think it's great if people aredoing it. Yeah . But I don't
know if it's a trend. You know,one thing we hear all the time
(28:52):
in Canada and people do likethe local thing. Yeah . Like
big. I live in Niagara On TheLake and you know, right now
we're doing corn and tomatoesand potatoes and you know,
it's, it's wonderful, right?
It's great stuff. But it's aharsh winter and you know, we
don't grow stuff in the winter , so we need to be
confident of the products we'regetting through the winter from
elsewhere around the world. Andwe trust our grocers to bring
(29:15):
them in.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
At this point we can
talk about our fun farm fact.
And did you know that in 2020,food related charities
outnumbered grocery stores by aportion of 4 to 1 and
distributed roughly $33 billionworth of food according to an
(29:37):
article on the Globe and Mailin October 11, 2021. And it
struck me as interesting, firstof all, one of the bigger
contributors to the food banksand a lot of these charities is
the grocery retail sector. Butsecond of all that there is
that much need in our countryfor food.
Speaker 4 (29:58):
Tragic, isn't it?
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
It is . Yeah. Yeah.
It's, it's something that, youknow, is there and, and I think
we have to acknowledge it, butuh, at the same extent, kind of
a little sad to indicate thatwe need to have that, right?
Speaker 4 (30:11):
Yeah . It's quite
sobering. And that you don't
know which of your neighbors isneeding that support and it
might surprise all of us. Yeah.
I don't , I don't know ifthere's a solution to that. I
think there's a lot of tragicsocietal issues going on right
now, but that in particularit's sad in a country that has
(30:33):
so much to offer. And our foodproducts are so amazing. So I'm
very pleased that our industrysupports it the way they do. I
truly am. But it's unfortunatewe have to do that.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
So John, we, we know
you've been in the grocery
retail for decades now and youhave the experience of working
with the different groceryretailers. What's one trend
that you feel has kind of stuckon for the longest time over
all these years?
Speaker 4 (31:07):
We have
trends in fads and , you know,
somebody said that the otherday, trying to figure out a fad
versus a trend is really aproblem. I'll tell you the
trend that has been constantand that is the continued
interest in better food. It'sphenomenal. It's never changed.
(31:28):
And the consumer has beendriving for that. They've
driven the industry, they'vedriven the industry to change .
Do you remember when Kraft hadto change all their processes?
Remember? To get the color outof Kraft dinner and all of that
of stuff? The consumer hasdriven all of that. So the
consumer driving for betterfood has been a dominating
(31:49):
factor in this country and inEurope it has been phenomenal.
They question absolutelyeverything and you've got to be
on your toes Clinton, but so dowe in the retail sector, you've
got to know it. So I would saythat's it. And I think it's
great how our agriculturecommunities responded to it.
And I think it's great ourretail communities responded to
(32:12):
it.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
So we want to take
this time to say thank you very
much, John, for being part ofthe podcast. We could talk for
hours and hours about some ofthis stuff.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
Well, you know, it's
been a pleasure and doubly so
because you, you do what halfthe grocery shopping for your
family? I do 90% of ours,because I love wandering around
stores and seeing what's new.
So, you know, speaking toanother person who observes in
a supermarket is, in myopinion, rare and appreciated.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I want to thank you
for taking the time to listen
to our Ask A Farmer podcast. Weat Canadian Food Focus value
the input from our listenersand ask that you share this
podcast with your friends andfamily. Remember, this is a
two-way street, so we seek yourinput for future segments that
are of interest to you aboutfood and farming. To do this,
(33:09):
please click on the 'Ask Us'icon at the top of our website,
canadianfoodfocus .org . Whileyou're there, feel free to
follow our numerous socialmedia links and sign up for our
newsletter. This segment wasproduced and edited by Angela
Larson, research and writing byDorothy Long and Penny Eaton.
Music by Andy Elson . I'm yourhost Clinton Monchuk. And from
(33:35):
all of us here at Canadian FoodFocus, we wish you good health
and great eats.