Canadian grocers expect to see record-breaking profits in 2023

While many Canadians continue to struggle to keep up with the high cost of groceries, Canada’s grocers are expected to rake in record-high profits in 2023.

This is according to a new report from the Centre for Future Work released on December 10.

The report notes that while supermarket executives — such as Galen Weston Jr. of Loblaw Companies — have claimed that they haven’t profited from food price inflation, that isn’t quite the case.

The report cites the latest industry-wide financial food retail data from Statistics Canada, which indicates that food retailers are earning more than double the retail profits since prepandemic norms and their profits continue to grow.

The data also indicates that food retailers earned a whopping $4.6 billion up to October 2023, and are expected to exceed $6 billion in profits in total for 2023.

The report notes that the record profit levels of food retailers are in contrast to the profits of food manufacturing and input industries (such as energy) that supply the food retail sector.

In these sectors, profits have substantially moderated since the record highs seen in 2022.

Industry-wide data also doesn’t support the claim that the profit margin of grocery retail hasn’t changed and has kept up with the rise in food costs and prices.

This comes at a time when Canadians continue to struggle with food prices.

Food inflation has slowed over the past year but is still higher than overall inflation. The report states that food prices rose by 5.6 per cent during the first nine months of 2023, compared to the general inflation of 3.1 per cent.

And it seems like Canadians won’t be able to catch a break on grocery spending in 2024.

Canada’s Food Price Report 2024, which was published last week by Canada’s top universities, predicts that overall food prices will increase by 2.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent.

This means the average Canadian family of four is expected to spend $16,297.20 on food in 2024, an increase of up to $701.79 from last year.

Over the past year, the federal government says lowering grocery and food costs has been a main priority, and has introduced Bill C-56, which aims to amend Canada’s Competition Act, in order to increase overall competition in Canada’s grocery sector.