Protect yourself

Many grocery stores in the USA have the sani wipes - in this case thesign states: protect your loved on - use the wipes on the grocery carthandles ...but if you read further on the sign it says not for use onskin.

So should I put gloves on when I remove the sani-wipe or what?

Letter to Health Canada asking for rescinding the authorization of the genetically engineered corn Smart Stax

29 July 2009

We are writing to request that Health Canada immediately demand that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency rescind its authorization of the genetically engineered (GE) eight-trait corn called ‘SmartStax’ (Monsanto and Dow AgroSciences) and that Health Canada initiate a full food safety assessment of the GE corn as set out by the Codex Alimentarius Guideline for the Conduct of Food Safety Assessment of Foods Derived from Recombinant-DNA Plants.

Flyer locations are evolving

Less than 5 years ago consumers would just wait at home for the Thursday paper to arrive and pull out all the flyers and look for their deals.

Nowadays they also can go on line and read them there as soon as they are published.

It just means that grocery stores must be that much more savvy when it comes to putting together their ads to ensure they are pulling the customer in.

SmartflyerCanada.com Canadian /Flyers/ <http://www.smartflyercanada.com/>

SmartflyerCanada.com provides Canadian Consumers alternatives to paper. Find Home Depot, Zellers.ca, Loblaws, Futureshop, Read CanadianSuperstore, Zehrs, *...*

Loblaws closes the purchase of T&T Supermarket for $225 million

You've read all the headlines of Loblaws picking up the 17 store chain of T&T - a very successful chain based in Richmond, B.C. with stores in Alberta and Ontario.Annual sales, as reported by the Canadian Press, was about $500 million. Loblaws picked it up for a cool $191 million in cash and the rest in preferred shares.

This one I will watch in interest. I've always been fascinated by the products that these stores have offered. And while I have shopped their stores it has been limited since so many of the offerings are not in English. Quite often, just for the fun of it, I have picked up unknown items just for the fun of it.

The face of Canada has been changing with large Asian populations in Toronto/Richmond Hill, Vancouver/Richmond and pockets in Calgary and Edmonton. Montreal, the ever do diverse city of Canada has a small Chinatown. Will they continue to cater to Asian or will they expand their markets into other ethnic groups? Or perhaps they will use the expertise that must lie within the walls of T&T to improve the offerings of the banners that are located in mainly Asian neighbourhoods.

One thing for certain the face of the Canadian supermarket continues to change as more and more independents are gobbled up by the three main banners that exist: Metro, Sobeys and Loblaws.

560 store chain store strong in Ontario and Quebec

As someone who was born in Toronto it was a bit of a shocker coming back and finding the Dominion clock near the 427 highway taken over by Metro.

First it was the gradual disappearance of the A&P and Dominion banners (will you ever forget it was mainly because of the meat), now the clock and I'm sure in the near future more changes will be seen at store level. It's been four years in the making and from the sounds of it all their moves have been pretty solid.

The Financial Post wrote a very comprehensive piece which is linked below. One of my favourite lines - "since taking office, he has lead the 560-store chain through a deep global recession, arguably the worst since the Dirty Thirties, and still managed to string together....

http://www.financialpost.com/magazine/story.html?id=2009073