B.C. grocer avoids selling U.S. produce for 117 days in what expert calls a ‘real’ boycott

A grocery store in Victoria, B.C., has avoided selling U.S. produce for 117 days.

Garth Green, general manager of Urban Grocer, says when U.S. Donald Trump launched his trade war on Canada in March, they decided to pull all U.S.-grown produce from the shelves.

And so far, it’s been a big success.

“We’re, you know, just really trying to promote the local farms,” he said.

“And the Canadian farms. And so it’s been very, very good for us. The customers have been very appreciative of it.”

The experiment has not been without its challenges.

When Green found out they could only get cauliflower from the U.S., he realized it was currently cauliflower season in Holland.

“So we reached out to a few suppliers and said, ‘Hey, can you get Holland cauliflower for us?’” he said.

“We ended up finding some, brought it in, and you know it’s a little bit more expensive to bring in because you’re flying it in. But we just took, you know, a less margin, sell it at a regular price and be able to give the customer something that they can buy until B.C. cauliflower was available.”

Green said local farmers are now reaching out to offer produce to their customers.

“There’s people every day almost that come in here and say, ‘You know, we hear what you’re doing and we love it and we’d love to join on board with you and really shop here,’”‘ he added.

Green added that it is unfortunate that it took something like the trade war to make this change but he is happy it has been so successful.

“We’ve got a Canada-first motto that we like to push, but, you know, we’re also not blind to the fact that you can’t get everything from Canada, right?” he said.

“And so, you know, even across the store, we are working towards trying to go all Canadian if possible. It’s going to be a lot harder, but we’ve started the process and started to weed out some of the suppliers that we don’t need.”

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Sylvain Charlebois, with the Faculty of Management at Dalhousie University, researches food distribution, security and safety.

He told Global News that what Urban Grocer is doing points to a broader movement against American products at the grocery store.

“What’s really interesting is that people haven’t really boycotted chains like Walmart or Costco, but they’re boycotting products,” he said.

“And the boycott naturally worked. If you look at the data, not surveys, actual sales data, according to NielsenIQ, by volume, sales for American food products are down about 8.5 per cent.”

Charlebois said in the food retail business, that number is huge.

“That’s a boycott. That’s the boycott now,” he added.

Charlebois added that while consumers are seeing fewer U.S. products, they are seeing more products from around the world so it does not necessarily mean that Canadian product companies are benefiting from the boycott.

“The boycott is absolutely real. So this boutique store is a good, strong case study for what actually is happening across the country.”

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