Cream cheese that's been a staple on Toronto grocery shelves has been discontinued
Two popular brands of cream cheese are disappearing from Toronto shelves, leaving countless bagels left un-schmeared as customers scramble to find a decent replacement to slather all over their breakfasts and brunches.
If you're a fan of Western Creamery or Liberté cream cheese, now would be a good time to drop everything, stock up, and deep freeze a long-term supply, as both of the brands have been discontinued.
someone please tell me it's not true that BOTH Liberté and Western Creamery cream cheese have been discontinued
— Racehorse, Walrus (@ourwalrus) August 17, 2022
Toronto-based Western Creamery has long been a popular grocery staple for the local Jewish community, the company manufacturing a range of certified-Kosher dairy products, including cream cheese and pressed cottage cheese.
@GayLeaFoodsCoop are you really discontinuing Western Creamery cream cheese???
— Humanitarian Nuclear Holocaust (@cpbreton) August 26, 2022
The company was purchased by large dairy empire Gay Lea in 2019, though links to the Western Creamery product line either redirect to other items or result in error messages as of August 2022.
It should be an election issue. Is there still Western Creamery cream cheese, or are we in the steel grip of Big Philly?
— Mary Lamey (@marylamey) August 26, 2022
And if you thought that you could just go to Western Creamery's competitor in Liberté, you thought wrong, as the last run of cream cheese from the Montreal-area business — a subsidiary of Yoplait since 2010 — has also rolled off the production lines and into the fridge's of desperate cream cheese connoisseurs.
Schmear today, gone tomorrow: Montreal bagel lovers distraught as Liberté discontinues its cream cheese https://t.co/mlbOk5Ow6W
— Montreal Gazette (@mtlgazette) August 29, 2022
Unlike Western Creamery, Liberté is keeping the rest of its product line in production, but people are not taking this sudden drought of quality schmear personally, angrily tweeting at the powers that be, including an aggressively-worded shot directed at Yoplait's parent company General Mills.
Hey scumbags @GeneralMills, since you made the brilliant decision to destroy an 88 year old brand and cancel Liberte` cream cheese, myself and many others won't be buying any of your other products. #corporategreed
— So Annoyed (@JustTrikes) August 27, 2022
If you buy your cream cheese from a deli or bagel shop, you probably won't have much of a problem finding a comparable product, but the loss of these brands on grocery shelves is leaving shoppers with very little option but to go with a less authentic offering like a certain brand named after a city in Pennsylvania.
