With Canada's supermarkets facing a daily deluge of price-gouging accusations and food inflation remaining significantly higher than the headline inflation rate, it's understandable why the public has dwindling respect for our top grocery brands, who meanwhile go on reporting record profits.

Some retailers and their executives — such as Loblaws and Galen Weston — have been demonized and boycotted more than others over their contemptible pricing practices as of late, but even those brands that are traditionally associated with bigger savings have been lambasted for seemingly over-charging for staple items.

Among these is No Frills, which some shoppers are concerned has fallen far from its earlier reputation as "the people's store" — and it's not just the store's price hikes that people are taking issue with.

No Frills says "Poverty is not a choice" while paying minimum wage, found it a bit ironic.
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One resident shared a code of ethics of sorts posted in what looks to be an employee area of their local No Frills, which expressed support for all types of causes, including fighting poverty. The individual pointed out, though, that people employed by the store may very well be impoverished given the current cost of living in the province and what No Frills (and supermarkets like it) pays.

"No Frills says 'Poverty is not a choice' while paying minimum wage, found it a bit ironic," the person wrote along with a photo of the poster — which contains the above line, among other things — on Reddit over the weekend.

As we all well know, living in a city like Toronto on minimum wage is unfortunately just not possible anymore given ever-rising housing, food and other prices.

Advocates have also shown that getting by comfortably in the city necessitates earning more than double the provincial minimum, which virtually no entry-level position, retail or otherwise, pays, which Metro grocery workers recently held a strike over.

Posters like this one thus have the opposite effect and end up simply being disheartening and demotivational, hanging as they are, as one person in the comments section put it, "in a lunchroom where people are supposed to briefly rest after being screamed at because they didn't say hello in the right tone."

"When you see slogans like this from big corporations, grocers, banks, telcos, insurance companies, and the like… you know they don't really mean it," another added.

Other relatable and sage gems in the comments include "Need to get those painful teeth seen by a dentist? Not on our salary! Why doesn't anyone want to work?" and "Tack on to the end of that, 'If it was legal to pay you any less, we would.'"

I bought a Nestle item at Food Basics 2 weeks ago for $7.99. Today, the same item was $9.99. That's quite an increase. It had been $7.99 for the past 4 months.

— Hank (@HCchillman) May 17, 2023

Regarding No Frills specifically, numerous customers have taken to social media to complain of jacked-up prices for all sorts of products in recent months, from chicken to juice to Portuguese tarts that one resident complained on Nextdoor went up by 28 per cent nearly overnight.

Others, though, assert that the store is one of the limited few where deals can still be found, though it is owned by the reviled Loblaw Companies Limited.